Open science, shared knowledge

Earlier today, I attended the United Nations' 1st Open Science conference via web-TV. Here are some of the key takeaways / pearls of wisdom / enlightening nuggets/ from the conference (and social media engagements/ debates around the content):

1. We must ensure that scholarly networks are inter-connected, and access to knowledge is the key goal. (Thanos Giannakopoulos, Director UN Library)
2. We need to craft Open Scholarship policies that place universities & scholarship directly in the service for society.
3. Research is more than just a publication - a mentality graduate schools need to embed in their philosophy & skill up young researchers.
4. 'We have the technology, but do we have the courage?' - ‘Open’ is not the end goal, but is, or should be, an enabling strategy to achieve equity for humanity. We keep that at center of all interventions.
5. Science is currently 50% of open, and is on track for 70% - but researchers still don’t necessarily care about openness, so have missed a big opportunity to align scholarly activities with larger goals and values.
6. One of the biggest challenges for next decade is knitting together a cohesive global policy environment for open science.
7. Latin America has a model of open science (government and universities subsidize research dissemination) that all should aspire to, instead of 'wins' elsewhere that extract resources.
8. Creating a common, new way of incentivizing outside of impact factor has been a challenge because without indicators we don't have policy.
9. We have adopted Open Access without changing scholars behaviour and reward system and have missed a big opportunity.
10. We need to focus on what we need in science: what we have, what we can use who is going to use it and for what purpose? Policies tend to be country-based its time we position our policies in the global context. Think and act globally.
11. If we allow corporate vendors to sell our users data, we are not providing safe spaces.
12. Libraries should develop their own shared open source software but do we have the courage to walk away from existing legacy systems?
13. Open science is so much more than open data. In some areas of science, open lab and sample access is more important than open data.
14. Copyright retention by authors and/or their institutions is critical for text & data mining & other computational uses.
15. All science will be data science very soon.
16. Europe is de facto going to open access.
17. #OpenScienceUN is a cohesive global approach to Open Science. It is not about being on the right side of the border - what we do at local level must be translated to a global level.
18. We need to recognize that research outcomes are not just publications - if we want to bring about culture change, we need to focus on transforming scholarly/research processes, not products.
19. We have an epistemological discrimination in academia. That discrimination is also deeply rooted in (post)colonial notions of prestige, power, and impact.
20. “Liquid Science” or Open Science?
21. Sadly we never use the moral argument for Open, instead use the ROI argument. This must change.
22. We must avoid preaching to the choir, but rather equip the choir. Libraries are more than bill payers - economics-based access arguments don't get us to equitable knowledge exchange. Rather, libraries *are* the infrastructure.
23. Open source platforms such as libraries are vital in supporting the mission of unlocking knowledge. It's clear that it's not enough to open up the information, open science requires that the infrastructure is opened up too. 
24. Open source platforms such as libraries are vital in supporting the mission of unlocking knowledge. It's clear that it's not enough to open up the information, open science requires that the infrastructure is opened up too. 
25. 'If you're in a dilemma between pragmatism and your values, don't lose your values'.
26. ‘We can't just dress up access and call it equity. We need to see power. We need to give it over to the communities affected by it. Engage and create a scholarly communication cycle respectful to indigenous people’.
27. We should focus on thinking through the five Rs (respect, reciprocity, responsibility, relevance, & relationships) when we strategize the co-creation of an open infrastructure useful to & usable by indigenous communities.
28. How do we mediate between HEAD (doing science) and HANDS (sharing science)? - between the head and hands must be the HEART”!

...And my favourite quote of the conference:

‘We can’t stand on the shoulders of giants if the giants are behind a Paywall !!...'

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Dr Naseem Naqvi FRCP FHEA MAcadMed MSc FBBA

Editor in Chief, The Journal of the British Blockchain Association (JBBA)

Honorary Lecturer, University of Liverpool

Interim Chair, Centre for Evidence Based Blockchain

#JBBA #Blockchain #research #openscience #OpenScienceUN #openaccess #CEBB #EBB #BBA