Is Open Research a positive thing? | Clarky: Video & Audio

" ... But is open research a good thing or a bad thing? Traditional scientific research often includes an individual or team coming up with a hypothesis, devising tests and interpreting the data, all in a very isolated fashion. This privacy in research means that when a conclusion was found the research can be published in a journal and sold. How does open research change this? Well for a start it would be pretty hard to sell information that is already freely available online! But one of the big disadvantages of the traditional method is that, while there may be a global expert on the researcher’s subject, they are likely not going to be involved in the process of research. As such the person conducting the research could end up spending a lot of time and money looking into something that would not, in the end, have been worth their while. On the other hand open research makes use of a greater collective consciousness: the online community. All throughout the process, the entire scientific community can have their say and can put their collective heads together to not only do much more thorough and valuable research, but also cut down on unnecessary research [Woelfle et al. 2011]. One of the largest disadvantages of traditional research, for example in the pharmaceutical industry, is the lack of research for the lack of funding. I take the pharmaceutical industry as an example (as Kepler et al. [2006] do) because they have the potential to fund research into lifesaving drugs, yet if there is no chance of a profitable return on their investment into the research it is unlikely that a corporation will fund that research. However, it is very much possible that likeminded scientists could collaborate openly online to conduct such lifesaving research, at a fraction of the cost and most likely a fraction of the time. This means that more meaningful research, which may stand to be a commercial loss but a huge humanitarian positive can be conducted, and because it is done openly it means that no one company would own the rights to manufacture and distribute a drug that could save lives worldwide. One such case can be found here ..."