Genome Biology | Full text | When will ‘open science’ become simply ‘science’?

"Open science is the practice of making everything in the discovery process fully and openly available, creating transparency and driving further discovery by allowing others to build on existing work. When I read such definitions, I think ‘but isn’t that just science?’ Sadly not. In his review of Michael Neilsen’s book Reinventing Discovery[1], Timo Hannay describes academic science as ‘self-serving’ and ‘uncooperative’, ‘replete with examples of secrecy and resistance to change’ and describes the natural state of researchers as ‘one of extreme possessiveness’ [2]. And who can argue? The majority of publications are behind a paywall, raw data are hidden, methods ill-described, software unreleased and reviews anonymous. Open science is often described as a ‘movement’, bringing to mind images of revolution, a few plucky visionaries fighting against an unfair ruler; but revolution against what? Who is the unfair ruler? At what point did we allow science to become closed? How did we allow this to happen? At present, open science is seen as an optional extra, on the fringes of everyday research: open access to articles is offered at additional cost; including raw data in publications isn’t mandatory; anonymous peer review is the default. Imagine the opposite. Imagine having to pay to make your work closed; imagine having to state and then justify why your raw data should remain secret. In other words, imagine if open science was considered normal, and closed science considered weird. Wouldn’t the world be a better place? Of course, in some cases, privacy and anonymity are justified ..."