Exploring complexity: the two sides of Open Science

"One may see Open Science (which some prefer to call Open Research) as an altruistic movement towards opening up research methods and especially its outputs for the sake of their visibility and open availability to the wider society. The legitimate right for any citizen to read research outputs resulting from public funding is regularly raised by every Open Access advocate – including yours truly – when explaining the rationale for Open Science. Patients, schoolteachers, doctors are highlighted as the sort of citizens that may need to access scientific literature and may be forced to pay for such access unless we succeed in our push towards Open Science. And SMEs. Yes, one always mentions SMEs here as well. In fact anyone who happens to be outside the institutional subscription bubbles.

There is another take to Open Science though, a far more pragmatic and hence more likely to succeed approach. This other take, although not unconcerned with access to research results by the average citizen, is mostly about the possibility of exploiting the synergies between research and industry by making not only research results but other areas such as research facilities or expertise as openly available to industry (and the wider outside world) as possible. This is the approach driven by innovation that sees research and its commercial application as a continuum and understands the value of openness for the purpose of realising that continuum...."