Open science is the ideal way for scientists to share their data with the world, so that others can also work with it. The data must be open, freely accessible, transparent and reusable.
Research funder NWO now wants to reward scientists for their efforts in the field of open science. They can receive up to EUR 50,000 for their project. The Open Science Fund is expected to be awarded in the summer of 2021.
Research
At the same time, VNSU, the university association, has published a research report on how often open access articles are read compared to publications that have to be paid for. The research into 6,000 readers of scientific articles was carried out together with Springer Nature, the university library and publisher.
The most important result of the analysis is that open access articles are read 2.7 to four times more often than publications behind the payment wall. In addition, they reach a wider audience. No less than 43% of the readers do not work in science themselves.
Peter Duisenberg, Chair of the VNSU, explains that “The results of this research will help us further work towards the impact of science on society. We will use these insights to develop a toolkit with which scientists can further increase the social impact of their publications. In any case, this makes it all the clearer that further investment in Open Access is necessary and useful.”
Open access, open science
Open science goes a step further than open access. The latter is the pursuit of free publications in science, so that knowledge does not disappear behind a paywall. Open science is also about the data underlying the publications.
HOP, Bas Belleman / Jos Wassink
- Download the VNSU report Open for all: Exploring the reach of open access content to non-academic audiences. Free of charge, of course.
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