The Importance of Open Access and Technology with Mark Hahnel > ScienceTalks

"In this episode, Nikesh Gosalia talks to Mark Hahnel, Founder and CEO of Figshare. Mark talks about his background in genomics and how a gap year spent travelling eventually led him to do a PhD in stem cell biology. As a PhD student, the struggles he experienced trying to publish his research findings inspired him to build his own publishing platform, which is now known as Figshare. For Figshare’s 10th anniversary, Mark reflects on Figshare’s collaboration with Digital Science and how the visionary thinking of their CEO led to the birth of Figshare before open science became common practice.

Mark talks about the different versions of Figshare, from the free figshare.com which is open to everyone, to purpose-built versions of Figshare meant for specific organizations. This ties in with the concept of “as open as possible, as closed as necessary”, where not all datasets should be publicly available for safety. Mark shares his thoughts on what academics want out of publishing: something fast, good, open, and possibly free. He also addresses some problems with open data systems like Figshare, such as quality control, lack of data curation, no peer review, and content monitoring issues...."