Open science is a broad movement aiming to make scientific research accessible to all. In today’s information-driven world, it’s important that the foundations are in place that allow this global dissemination to happen.
One key component is preprints. Because they are published as open access and without peer review, they accelerate research dissemination and access and thus support the principles of open science.
In this article, we’ll explain what open science is, the importance of supporting this global movement, and how preprints complement its mission.
What is open science?
Open science facilitates free access to scientific research publications as well as data, methods, educational resources, and all elements of a research process. As a movement, open science promotes transparency, collaboration, and reproducibility in scientific research, with the intention of advancing the knowledge base and deepening trust in research.
The advent of the internet and the subsequent open access movement at the end of the 20th century signified a new age of widespread information exchange. It develops the important groundwork set out by open access, ensuring that key findings and data are free to be accessed and built upon in the public domain.
The importance of supporting open science
So, why is it important that we support the development of open science?
Open science is perhaps our greatest gateway to a more equitable future. The easier it is for beneficial information to be accessed, the more good that can be done for society on a larger scale. Freely accessible scientific research can go on to inform real-world policy implementation and help develop pioneering treatments.
By supporting open science, we support its principles. Some of the movement’s main principles include:
- Accessibility
- Transparency
- Equality
It’s easy to see why we should actively support these principles. They are in favor of the greater good, orientated toward the ethics of openness and fairness, and therefore having a positive impact on global politics.
Open science believes that knowledge should not come with a price nor be gatekept, especially when it has the potential to improve the livelihoods of others. It’s therefore necessary for us to support open science by ensuring that these principles are upheld from within the publishing landscape we operate in.
Support through preprints
One important way of supporting open science is by facilitating access to and the development of pioneering scientific research. That’s where preprints come in, a key component of the open science publishing landscape.
A preprint is essentially a work-in-progress, an insight into ongoing research. This may sound detrimental to the validity of the research by releasing it in an early form, but doing so has important benefits for both researchers and the public.
A big draw is the increase in research visibility and priority. This model increases the visibility of your preprint by making it openly available to a global audience, thus increasing citation impact and engagement. As for research priority, every researcher dreams of being the first to publish key findings on a particular topic. Preprints provide researchers with the opportunity to establish priority in their research field, protecting their intellectual ideas and improving academic reputation.
Transparency
Enhanced transparency and collaboration are further benefits of publishing a preprint under the open science model. By being published as open access, preprints encourage open discussion and collaboration among researchers. Although they do not undergo the typical peer review process, others may provide feedback on the preprint, providing helpful observations that can aid the work beyond its early stages.
The fact that research isn’t peer-reviewed should not deter an author from publishing a preprint. As well as the aforementioned benefits, there is often high reliability between the datasets used for the preprint and those in the final published version.
To summarize, the benefits of publishing a preprint under the open science model are:
- Increased visibility
- Research priority
- Enhanced transparency
- Early feedback
- Opportunities for collaboration
Although containing research that’s early in its development, the preprint and the process of publishing one grant the author the opportunity to observe the impact and future potential of their work.
Utilizing open science efficiently
Open science is a philosophy with its own principles. But it’s also a global infrastructure with tools in place to support authors and help communicate information to the world.
To utilize open science efficiently, it’s vital that certain practices aren’t just implemented but proactively supported through certain avenues. Preprints are a proven way to adopt these principles while ensuring that research advances at a fast pace.
By fostering an academic context wherein accessibility, transparency, collaboration, and equality all drive the research output, preprints help nurture the most positive aspects of open science. To find out more, read our previous article on why preprints benefit research.
