Preparing for The Future: The Impact of Research Reform Declarations on You as a Researcher
May 17, 2024
The Open Science movement is steering the scientific process towards being more reliable, accessible, and collaborative. It is an ideology that is now slowly being transformed into institute policies, funding guidelines and even legislation. Here’s how these sweeping changes directly affect your role and responsibilities as a researcher.
Understanding Open Science
Open Science is an ideological shift driven by multiple forces:
- Fellow Researchers, especially from the fields of Psychology and Neurosciences, are advocating for practices to tackle the reproducibility crisis. Such practices include as preregistering your hypotheses and methodologies before data collection begins and publishing detailed protocols. This initiative curtails questionable research practices and facilitates easier replication of studies and verification of results.
- Global Crises like pandemics and climate change demand effective resource sharing across laboratories worldwide. Establishing infrastructures that promote easier and more widespread sharing of knowledge, data and methodological tools is vital for tackling these international challenges.
- Political Influence, since most research is publicly funded yet remains largely inaccessible to taxpayers. Engaging the public through open access research outputs, involving citizens in the research process and participation in public engagement events are seen as solutions to this disparity.
The Era of Declarations
Although there are already numerous tools and infrastructures to support Open Science, these alone are insufficient to foster a cultural shift in research. Concerns about the time investment versus benefits continue to deter many researchers and institutions. The current academic system does not incentivize following Open Science practices, as researchers and institutions are generally only evaluated by their research output in the form of the publication list. In response to this mismatch, a new phase has emerged: the era of declarations. Various stakeholders, recognizing the need to shift away from rewarding researchers predominantly for publications in “high-impact” journals, have formed initiatives to encourage a more holistic approach to research evaluation:
- DORA (Declaration on Research Assessment) emerged from discussions at the 2012 American Society for Cell Biology meeting. It advocates for moving beyond journal impact factors to evaluate scientific research. Over 246 institutions have committed to this declaration.
- Leiden Manifesto, introduced in 2015, outlines ten principles for the responsible use of metrics in research evaluation. It's used as a guide and inspiration for institutions seeking to refine their policies.
- CoARA (Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment), building on DORA’s principles, formalized a commitment in 2022 to reform research assessment, supported by over 700 organizations. CoARA provides a framework to develop alternative methods for assessing research(ers).
- Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information is the most recent declaration, being initiated in 2023. It advocates for default openness in research information, managed via unique identifiers, such as DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers) and ORCIDs (Open Researcher and Contributor IDs). So far, the Barcelona declaration already has the backing of over 40 institutions and more than 10 funding bodies and governments.
Implications for Individual Researchers
The underlying motivation of these reforms is to make science more reliable and sustainable. So if you became a scientist to seek the truth and positively influence society, these reforms are theoretically beneficial, as they should recognize various forms of contribution that you may have already made or want to make. Even if you have concerns about some of the aspects that come with the Open Science movement, the reforms are still highly relevant for your career. Here’s what you need to consider:
- Stay Informed: These are not just institutional changes on a local scale, but are part of a large movement affecting the research ecosystem globally. Funding bodies are also involved, like the European Research Council, which is already incorporating these reforms into its grant review processes. Be aware that evaluation criteria are adapting and keep this in mind when you use previously successful grant application as inspiration for your own.
- Plan for the Future: Contributions such as Open Software, Open Data, and outreach activities could soon become key assessment criteria. Integrating Open Science some of these practices into your routine now could long-term significantly benefit your future career. Some of the practices are easy to implement and can also help you to plan your research better, to be more organized, to build collaborations, to save time in the future and to gain international visibility.
- Balance Priorities: Keep weighing the trade-offs, such as the choice between being the first to publish novel findings based on your closed data set versus the visibility and acknowledgements you for making your data immediately open for all. Over time, the scales may tip differently as new norms and values take hold in the scientific community.
- Building a Future-Proof Research Profile: More holistic research evaluations could give you more freedom to build a profile that leverages your strengths and interests as a researcher. There may also be new job types and funding schemes specific to the different aspects of Open Science. On the other hand, the more holistic evaluations may also mean that in order to stay competitive, you have to tick more boxes.
- Preparing Your Lab for Future Transparency: As a Principal Investigator, it's imperative to begin adapting your lab's organization, documentation, and data management practices now. The shift towards more transparent research practices is accelerating. Starting to optimize these elements will not only align with future requirements but also position your lab at the forefront of the evolving research landscape. This proactive approach ensures that your lab remains compliant and competitive, ready to meet the demands of increased scrutiny and openness.
Conclusion
The trajectory towards Open Science is not only inevitable but accelerating, promising more declarations and guidelines in the future. As research becomes a more politically driven field, adapting to these changes is crucial. Optimizing the sustainability of your workflows now is an investment in your future.
Useful resources:
Rushforth, A., & Hammarfelt, B. (2023). The rise of responsible metrics as a professional reform movement: A collective action frames account. Quantitative Science Studies, 4(4), 879–897: https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00280
Leiden Manifesto: https://www.nature.com/articles/520429a
DORA: https://sfdora.or
CoARA: https://coara.eu/
Barcelona Declaration: https://barcelona-declaration.org/
Research evaluation updates by ERC (moving away from quantitative metrics): https://erc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/2024-02/Evaluation_of_research_proposals.pdf
Incentives for implementing Open Science practices in your daily research: https://osf.io/45ue9