Open Science Without The Overwhelm

Open science works best when it’s practiced in the spirit of science itself. Incremental choices, made by humans, evolving into something bigger. Including open science principles into your workflow can make a long road to publication seem longer, but we’ve put together a guide about how to make open science manageable one choice at a time.

There’s more to open science than open access

You might ask, “Does publishing open access mean I’m already doing open science?” Yes, but there’s more to the story. Open access (OA) has grown from a niche concept into one of the most visible expressions of open science. What’s less visible are the many other practices that help make research accessible, understandable, and reusable.

• “What’s the difference between open access and open science?” Open access (OA) makes research publications freely available to readers through an OA journal or OA article publication, institutional or preprint repository, or other compliant route. Open science (OS) is the broader practice of making elements of the research process more transparent, accessible, reproducible, and reusable where appropriate. It includes open access publishing, open data, preprints, repositories, licenses, reproducibility and more.
•  “What does open science look like in practice?” Preprints, open data, shared code, documented methods, open peer review, or transparent reporting that are guided by the FAIR principles¹ are all expressions of open science. FAIR data is Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reuseable. Building these concepts into your work from the beginning and choosing a journal with data and code sharing built in, like APL Computational Physics and APL Machine Learning, is one way to ensure your work meets the rigor of open science criteria.
•  “Does everything need to be completely open?” Openness is a spectrum. Privacy, ethics, security, intellectual property (IP), and disciplinary norms all matter. Be sure to understand exactly what your grant, institution, and team can, and wants, to share.

Build your open science strategy one step at a time

The goal is to build an OS workflow that fits you and the way you work. Identify a set of practices early to follow alongside your current workload. First, think about what you can make more open right now. The data you collect, the code you write to analyze it, and the methods you develop to interpret it could all go further than a single publication. Choose one or as many as you’re able from your outputs and make the sharing plan before publication.

Start with what you already have

1. Research outputs: research articles, reviews, letters, perspectives, and other journal-specific article types
2. Data and supporting datasets: Raw data, processed datasets, supplementary tables
3. Code or software: Analysis scripts, models, tools
4. Methods, protocols, and workflows: Lab protocols, experimental workflows, SOPs
5. Preprints or conference outputs: Preprint versions, conference papers, posters

Meaningful openness starts when you think about who does the work, who has access, and who benefits.

• If you can share it: check for ethics, consent, or IP restrictions first. If the answer’s no, note why and stop there.
• Where you can share it: a journal, a repository, or a preprint
• How others can reuse it: add metadata, documentation, a license, and a persistent identifier, then summarize it in your article’s data availability statement
• Check your OA options and funder requirements: If your target journal is not an open access journal, it may still be possible to publish your work OA and follow your funder or institutional mandates. At AIPP, we offer Author Select^® for all our subscription journals. It’s designed to help authors meet funder mandates while publishing in the journal best suited to their research. Author Select^® charges and APC and allows your article to be freely available in the journal.

Make Informed Choices About Research Sharing

Cost is more than an article processing charge (APC). Your time and effort, and that of your team, have hidden and soft costs to consider. You can’t set the APC, but you have some control over who pays the APC, whose time is spent on what and how, and ultimately, who can access the work once published. Early planning can have a big impact on your open science strategy.

Deciding early on defaults like updating ORCID iDs, identifying your go-to repository, and what data is to be made available will not feel like extra steps as the work progresses if it’s part of the plan from the start.

Before

• Discuss authorship and sharing expectations with collaborators at kick-off
• Add data-sharing and preservation decisions to your research data management plan
• Decide early whether a preprint makes sense

During

• Document your data and code as you go
• Check journal OA policies and costs before you submit
• Keep your ORCID iD and other identifiers current

After

• Review process outcomes for successes and learnings
• Share your work widely: at conferences, on social media, and through professional networks

Also make decision on key roles and outcomes:

• Who pays the APC: APCs are the most visible expense. Check if your institution has an AIP Fusion or  Read and Publish agreement in place that may pre-pay the APCs for affiliated researchers. Also look to the publisher’s website for waiver and discount programs to see if this could offset some of the cost. Alos check if your grant covers publishing costs and examine diamond open access journals that have no APCs. Reputable publishers have OS programs to help make OA as affordable and accessible as possible.
• Who does what part of the work: Decide early which research partners will prepare data, code, and documentation and if you want to openly share your article’s data set. All these tasks take time and may have software or lab fees. Some of those costs may be written into your grant.
• Who has access: Knowledge only helps the people who can reach it. An OA journal, a repository copy, or a preprint can put your work in front of readers without a subscription or researchers with fewer resources. This is where following the FAIR principles will help your work have the greatest reach possible.
• Who benefits: When research can be discovered, verified, and used by others, your work benefits and so does your entire field of study. Publishing your work OA and sharing the data, code, or methods behind a paper is one of the best ways to help researchers around the world find and build upon your work. More reach can translate into more views, citations and shares. Make a sharing plan part of the project kick-off.

If you make an OS strategy part of your project planning, it will become second nature and part of your natural workflow. If you’re mid-project finding small ways to incorporate openness into your workflow and it can make a big difference when it comes time to publish.

When a project is completed, take time to review your process. Which practices made your work easier to find, share, reproduce, or reuse? Keep the practices that work for you, your goals, and your values. Let go of the anything that didn’t pay off or didn’t align with your work.

Deeper Reading: For tips and best practices for building open science into your next grant proposal read our Breakthrough blog post, “Tips for Effective Grant Writing for Scientific Researchers,”

Making openness sustainable

Knowledge always costs something. Your time, effort, and the unavoidable fees that accompany open access publishing are all costs to be measured. However, restricting access to published work has its own price. No single researcher can do that alone, but every decision about where you publish, what you share, how you document it, and how you preserve it influences who can access, use and contribute to the scientific record. You don’t need a complete open science strategy tomorrow, but start with one research output. Make one intentional choice about openness and see where it takes you.

Get Your Free Guide! Download “Expert Advice: Selecting the Right Journal to Publish Your Research” featuring Melissa Patterson, Ph.D., Head of Journal Development, for insider tips to help you with your next submission.

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¹https://fairsharing.org/