Open science consists of the notion that scientific outputs need to be as open as possible for others to access, reuse and distribute without undue limitations. By doing this, open science helps uphold important features of research and innovation, such as transparency, openness, verification and reproducibility, across the whole lifecycle of research. Open science is facilitated through open access and open research data in line with the FAIR principles (findable, accessible, re-usable and interoperable).
The European Commission has identified eight pillars for Open Science:
- The future of scholarly publishing: All peer-reviewed scientific publications should be freely accessible, and the early sharing of different kinds of research outputs should be encouraged
- Open data: Data that is Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable (FAIR). Data sharing should become the default for the results for EU-funded scientific research
- The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC): Federated set of infrastructures that will allow countries and researchers in Europe to store, share, process and reuse FAIR data and other research digital objects (publications, software, protocols). EOSC will not build a central infrastructure or data archive or repository. Rather, it will link interoperable infrastructures where they exist. Countries, research organisations and universities must thus invest in such infrastructures in order to engage with the EOSC as a pan-European development
- Next-generation metrics (‘Altmetrics’): Alternative metrics to measure the quality and impact of research outcomes
- Rewards and incentives: Research career evaluation systems that fully acknowledge open science practices
- Research integrity: All publicly funded research in the EU should adhere to commonly agreed standards of research integrity. The results of Research & Innovation activities should be reproducible
- Education and skills: All scientists in Europe should have the necessary skills and support to apply open science research practices
- Citizen science: The general public should be able to make significant contributions and be recognised as valid European science knowledge producers
The Institute has developed an action plan to support embedding open science practices in our organisation. The figure below is a timeline representation of the ten actions contained in the action plan.
Download the action plan to embed open science at the Babraham Institute.
The action plan to support embedding open science at the Babraham Institute has been developed in the context of the Horizon 2020 funded ORION Open Science project.