Biological mechanisms discovery by globally-distributed research force - EuroScientist journal

"A new open science approach could soon change the way we think about research. It is based on charging those keeping discoveries private to subsidise those who publicly share their findings. Here, we examine how this new way of handling scientific findings could work in practice. To illustrate this approach, we take the example of discovery of biological mechanisms underlying health and disease....

For this solution to work, all kinds of paid services could subsidise the free services associated with publication of findings made available for sharing and further testing. For example, users have the option to do micro-payments to preserve the confidentiality of queries in DKP. They can also choose to buy private subscriptions to EKP workflows from EURETOS. There might be many other ways of generating additional revenues.

In essence, all actions that contribute to open science in this system should be free or rewarded accordingly, potentially financially in some cases. For example, any action can be automatically recorded on its authors’ CV–particularly via systems like VIVO, which recognise the unique research identification number ORCID. Thus, sharing is subsidised by not sharing; in many cases for good reasons.

I invite all scientists concerned to get together and make this happen sooner rather than later."