Open sciencin’ all over the world
So people silly enough to follow me on Twitter will know that I’ve been bouncing all over recently in the name of Open Science! This has all been part of the ‘Journey to Nowhere‘ adventure that I’ve been on, as a prelude to exploring SE Asia. I’m back in Berlin now briefly, and preparing for our OpenCon satellite event this week, which quite simply is going to be epic – due to the speakers, the theme and the audience!
Last week though, my adventures took me to Ljubljana in Slovenia, which was an interesting, but exhausting diversion. This was for a conference on Open Science in the European Research Area, where we heard from an interesting combination of policymakers and researchers. I was invited to give a talk on my thoughts on Open Science as an early career researcher. I took the opportunity to discuss closed science (i.e., the issues with the traditional scholarly publishing process), as well as the benefits of open practices more generally. As well as this, I was fortunate enough to sit on a panel with some fairly important people, including senior members of the EU Commission, and drill home points such as:
- Commercial interests should not interfere with public benefit when it comes to scholarly communication;
- Open science practices need to be drilled into the grad school system, or earlier, along with a sustainable communication infrastructure;
- The impact factor and other ‘alternative metrics’ need to be used VERY carefully, if at all, in scholarly evaluation;
- Inclusivity and equality should be principles embedded into any open science policy.
Thankfully, the video was recorded, and you can see the whole presentation and panel discussion here! Slides are also here.
Is there anything I missed out, or got wrong? Anything I could have delivered better? Anything I said that you like? I’d love any feedback at this stuff, seeing as I give talks far too often for my skill level and feel like I have a lot to do to improve.