Open science is a set of practices that increase the transparency and accessibility of scientific research. To better understand why open science matters — to everyone, not just scientists — we spoke with leaders working to advance the movement. Here are highlights from our discussions.*

Nici Pfeiffer
Chief product officer, Center for Open Science

Nici Pfeiffer, chief product officer, Center for Open Science

Q: Tell us about the Center for Open Science.

A: The Center for Open Science (COS) started in 2013 as a non-profit, mission-driven organization. Our mission is to increase the openness, integrity, and reproducibility of research. We have several different focus areas that are all interconnected: infrastructure, policy work, and research.

Q: This might sound obvious, but why is open science important?

A: From the perspective of a funder or an investor in research, if you are putting in time, effort, and money, knowing that what comes out at the finish line is solid and credible is really important. When science is made open, you have more opportunity for others to review it and test its credibility. When it is credible, you have that endorsement of the community.

If I think about how I talk about what I do at the Thanksgiving dinner table, medical science issues are coming up a lot right now. When someone brings something up, I will ask if they saw a certain study, and, if so, where they found it. I will say, let’s talk about that study. How much of that data can you actually go and explore yourself? Can you confirm researchers were not biased in their interpretation of the data? So many Americans are struggling with this right now. Society is asking for ways to understand science and make unbiased assessments. Openness, rigor, and transparency of research are the answers.

Q: Do you think the pandemic will prove to be an accelerant of open science?

A: Yes. I wish we would see more researchers preregistering [sharing a research plan in advance of the study and submitting it to a registry]. However, I have seen preprinting. Many researchers are choosing to preprint their studies to accelerate dissemination and get it out there now. There has been a large increase over the last four or five years in preprint servers, like bioRxiv and medRxiv. We have several community-operated preprint servers we host as well. A lot of those articles are being submitted for peer review or plan to be, but their authors are not waiting — they are putting their findings out there so they are shared and discoverable for everyone to see and build upon, which is part of what accelerated the vaccine work for COVID-19.

Dr. Steve Arlington
President, Pistoia Alliance

Dr. Steve Arlington, president, Pistoia Alliance

Q: Tell us about Pistoia Alliance. What is its mission?

A: The Alliance was founded in 2009 by representatives of AstraZeneca, GSK, Novartis, and Pfizer who met at a conference in Pistoia, Italy. Our mission is to lower the barriers to innovation through pre-competitive collaboration. We act as champions of open science, its practitioners, and our membership community, which numbers more than 150 organizations. The founding group understood that far more could be achieved by working together than trying to “go it alone.” They realized that often, the pharma world’s lack of openness, even around knowledge considered pre-competitive, meant they were unwittingly duplicating each other’s projects and were coming up against the same hurdles.

Q: Could you share some examples of how you champion open science?

A: Firstly, we are wholly member-led. We develop projects that members suggest and commit to funding. Secondly, all of our projects have a tangible outcome to not only support innovation in the lab, but produce results that reach back to patients. We also have a proven legal framework that all members can use to guide their work together. Some of our current projects include FAIR Implementation, to support the implementation of the Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Re-usable (FAIR) guiding principles that enable scientists to share their data. This project group published and continues to develop the FAIR Toolkit, which collates use cases and methods from pharmaceutical companies such as Bayer and Roche.

Q: Why is it important to create a research environment that encourages collaboration and communication?

A: Life sciences R&D is continuing to change rapidly and there is an urgent need for multidisciplinary expertise. Scientists are increasingly looking to incorporate technology — from AI to wearable devices — to help them make advances. Rather than building solutions themselves, which is an expensive dead-end, scientists, technologists, publishers, and regulators are better served by working together to pool resources and knowledge.

Additionally, R&D generates huge volumes of data, much of which is precompetitive and does not presently add value to research projects. Sharing such data between companies could significantly boost innovation. We also know that tackling major health challenges requires a stable underlying infrastructure. Areas like data governance and standards are just as important as “moon-shot” initiatives. An open science approach helps to develop a research environment that is structured for collaboration and will get therapeutics to patients faster.

Gajendra Katuwal
Founder, Open Science Organization (OSO)

Gajendra Katuwal, founder, Open Science Organization

Q: What is OSO?

A: OSO is a non-profit decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) managed by scientists. It aims to make science open, unbiased, and efficient.

Q: Why did you start it?

A: I started OSO after being frustrated by the current state of the scientific research process during my PhD. I observed and experienced that the process is outdated and inefficient with most of the scientist’s time spent in securing funding and publication process instead of in conducting the actual research. The current system also incentivizes quantity over quality of research and highly discourages high-risk high-reward research paths.

Q: How does OSO make the scientific research process more efficient, open, and unbiased?

A: We are developing a software platform for the research ecosystem where all the activities in a research cycle (fund→research→review→publish) can be performed in one place. The OSO platform will be fully open source, community owned and managed, and decentralized (based on web3 technology).

Our mission is to make the OSO platform the backbone of the human knowledge economy. If the rapidly increasing human knowledge base is like a car, then the platform will be like an efficient engine of a car. To give another example, the OSO platform will be for science what Github has been for software development.

Q: Why is open science important?

A: Human society is rapidly becoming knowledge-driven, and scientific research is the driver of it. Since the future of human civilization is becoming increasingly dependent on new knowledge creation, and hence on science, making the research process open will allow us to improve the process of knowledge creation and sharing in a collaborative fashion. Similar to how open source software has improved and accelerated software development, open science will make science more efficient. If we can improve the scientific research process via open science, we can not only improve the current state of human civilization, e.g. faster discovery of cheaper drugs and vaccines, but also ensure the future health and survival of the civilization.

Gareth O’Neill
Principal consultant on open science, Technopolis Group

Gareth O’Neill, principal consultant on open science, Technopolis Group

Q:You have played a big role in advancing open science in Europe. Why are you so passionate about the movement, and what does open science mean to you?

A: I personally believe science should be much more transparent. I am against closed access to research publications for many reasons. It stifles communication between scientists, it stifles innovation, but it also creates an unfair playing field for those who can afford access to expensive journals, and those who can’t. The same goes for the data. I believe all data sets should be made “fair by design.”

Q: Tell us more about your expectations for data.

A: Minimally, I would expect a publication that uses data to have made that dataset both fair and open so I, as a researcher, can find that dataset, access it, and check if what’s in the article stands up to the data. I don’t need access to their entire dataset, but I do need access to the data the researchers used to argue their case in a publication. The data should be in a structured format that I can run queries on.

Q: Why is it important for all science to be shared — not just the science that leads to exciting breakthroughs?

The idea is that we stop wasting money on redoing research that went nowhere. At the moment, academia is focused on publications, particularly in prestigious journals. It’s a problem because nobody wants to publish the boring negative results. I won’t say the “bad” science, but the not-so-interesting science that is methodologically sound. When that doesn’t get published, we repeat that research. We don’t know what’s been done, so we end up wasting money and repeating experiments. If you publish something negative, it tells me not to go there, or it tells me I need to check it to see if I can replicate it. I believe all methodologically sound science that has been peer-reviewed by experts should be published.

*Interviews have been edited for clarity and brevity