Open science, done wrong, will compound inequities

"Ten years ago, as a new PhD graduate looking for my next position, I found myself in the academic cold. Nothing says “you are an outsider” more than a paywall asking US$38 for one article. That fuelled my advocacy of open science and, ultimately, drove me to research its implementation.

Now, open science is mainstream, increasingly embedded in policies and expected in practice. But the ways in which it is being implemented can have unintended consequences, and these must not be ignored.

Since 2019, I’ve led ON-MERRIT, a project funded by the European Commission that uses a mixture of computational and qualitative methods to investigate how open science affects the research system. Many in the movement declare equity as a goal, but reality is not always on track for that. Indeed, I fear that without more critical thought, open science could become just the extension of privilege. Our recommendations for what to consider are out this week (see go.nature.com/3kypbj8). ...

Even those rooting for equity often argue that we should first enable access and then consider unintended side effects, such as marginalization of authors from low-income countries. But how change is implemented will have long-lasting consequences. Once new forms of inequity are in place, it will be too late to fix the system efficiently...."