Open Science, equity and the Brazilian context

"Open Science, a global movement created by the scientific community, has undertaken efforts aimed at increasing the popularity of scientific knowledge production and making the results of scientific research widely accessible to society. Open Science principles, which aim to make research outcomes freely available through scientific journals or open access repositories, and to promote transparency to their processes, replication and reproducibility, have generally been well received by the scientific community. Its transparent, accessible and collaborative nature is widely recognized, but discussion of potentially reckless aspects for implementation, such as the costs of participation and the need for a favorable policy agenda, are also in focus.1   As this "umbrella of strategies" spreads, some questions become more frequent: how can we promote equity from such an inequitable basis, after all? The venue for the "open science party" has been set, but the capacity of the guests to take part in it has not been the same. Surveys show that the article processing charges (APCs), charged by international open access journals have increased sharply and constituted a barrier to the visibility of scientific production of researchers globally.2,3 Thus, the Brazilian scientific community is among those agents whose capacity to participate is compromised by budget constraints for research and the lack of resources directed to publication fees by funding agencies in Brazil.   Science has been deeply marked by advances and setbacks, in Brazil. Even in the early 2000s, the structural working conditions, regional imbalances, funding options and conflicts between the public and private sectors were already seen as challenges.4 The situation has not changed much and, despite an upward trend in federal government spending on science and technology, from 2003 to 2015, this trend was reversed as of 2016, reaching levels below the investments in 2009 by 2020.5 This funding setback has imposed heavy burdens on the entire scientific community, reflected in difficulties to maintain institutions and projects, and consequent expansion of barriers, making Brazilian researchers even more distant from the effective implementation of Open Science...."