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Open Access

A guide to open access; understanding what it is, why it's important, and what you can do.

Open Access - Beyond Publishing

Discussing open access is not limited to publishing models and researchers' final peer-reviewed work.  Open access includes the accompanying data and information essential to the research lifecycle. As outlined by the Open Knowledge Foundation, open access involves the "openness" of all knowledge to develop a robust commons for universal participation.  Terms such as "open data," "open science," and "open source" encompass the surrounding material that are vital to researchers' work.

Open Science: the practice of science in such a way that others can collaborate and contribute, where research data, lab notes and other research processes are freely available, under terms that enable reuse, redistribution and reproduction of the research and its underlying data and methods. (FOSTER Open Science)

Open Data: Open data is data that can be freely used, re-used and redistributed by anyone - subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and share-alike. To openly access, share, and re-use data unlocks a wealth of knowledge, enables reproducibility of research results and facilitates transparency and trust in science.

Open Source: Originally open source applied to the creation of computer programs. Software code was freely available to be redistributed and modified. Today, however, "open source" designates a broader set of values. Open source projects, products, or initiatives embrace and celebrate principles of open exchange, collaborative participation, rapid prototyping, transparency, meritocracy, and community-oriented development.

Open Science

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and the National Science and Technology Council define Open Science as:

“The principle and practice of making research products and processes available to all, while respecting diverse cultures, maintaining security and privacy, and fostering collaborations, reproducibility, and equity.”

U.S. funding agencies

The Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) issued a memorandum, "Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research" on August 25th, 2022 directing all federal agencies to update their public access policies and require all federally funded research to be free and immediately accessible. This expands on the 2013 Memorandum, which only required certain federal agencies to provide publicly accessible research and data within 12 months of publication. The updated guidance now requires any research that receives federal funding to be freely accessible without a delay. Agencies with research and development expenditures of at least $100 million annually will submit their initial public access plan updates by February 21, 2023. Agencies with smaller research and development expenditures will have until August 20, 2023. All federal agencies must have updated plans in place by December 31st, 2025. Further guidance on this will be forthcoming, and researchers who receive federal funding may reach out to us with questions about making their publications and data freely accessible. 

Here are some resources to help stay informed.

Open Data

Open data makes science more accessible, inclusive, and reproducible. In order to support this, data needs to be made available in formats that others can use, include metadata that describes the data, and provided with helpful documentation. When made available, open data enables new discoveries and unforeseen uses.

The Turing Way Community. This illustration is created by Scriberia with The Turing Way community, used under a CC-BY 4.0 license. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.3332807 

Support for Open Data from the Federal Government

Open Source

Open-source software is distributed with its source code without cost, making it available for others to use, modify, and distribute with its original rights and permissions. Sharing your code makes it easier for others to reproduce your results, helping to validate findings and reduce resources required to duplicate experiments. Understanding how to find and use others' code, create your own, and share it is an important part of advancing open science.

Citizen Science

Citizen Science is scientific work undertaken by members of the general public, often in collaboration with or under the direction of professional scientists and scientific institutions. Citizen science allows everyone to contribute to science no matter where they are. Whether by asking questions, reporting observations, conducting experiments, collecting data, or developing low-cost technologies and open-source code, members of the public can use their talents to help advance scientific knowledge and contribute to a greater good. Open Access enables citizen scientists by providing greater access to scholarly content.

5 Reasons to become a Citizen Scientist!

  1. There's a project for every passion: games, history, space exploration, hiking, biology, and more!
  2. Learn new stuff!
  3. Help researchers learn new stuff!
  4. Make an immediate impact on how we understand our universe!
  5. It's fun!
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