The new normal

Sharing research with the outside world? Of course! But why limit it to scientific journals that are read by a small audience? In Utrecht, the public sharing of science is becoming more and more common. "Even with a nice story in the NRC or de Volkskrant you miss a big part of society."

“It’s not just about open access publications anymore”, says Isabel Arends, Dean of the Science Faculty where the first of a new series of symposia about Open Science was held recently. “Open Science is also about open data, open coding and open software. And about collaborations and public engagement to share your work.”

It sounds so obvious, but it isn’t in the world of science. “We’ve created a system in which it is all about publishing in high impact journals. That has to change. And we can change that”, Arends says. “Open Science is about changing the system. It’s a transition to a new normal.”

Show what has been researched, not just what has been published.

"The Ebola pandemic might have been prevented, if a specific publication had not been behind a payment wall."

Open access

An evident step is to make scientific publications freely available. This can take all sorts of forms and shapes, from providing insight into the reviews of the preprint to sharing failures and negative results. In this way, scientists not only show what has been published, but also what has been researched. And that is important to accelerate scientific progress.

The consequences of withholding research data, even temporarily, can be severe, especially in the medical and life sciences. In 2015, a group of medical officers wrote an open letter in the New York Times in which they stated that the Ebola pandemic that had claimed more than 2,200 lives might have been prevented, if a specific publication had not been behind a payment wall. With the Corona virus outbreak things are already different: scientists shared their research openly and immediatly, to contain its further spread and improve treatment. The DNA sequence, for example, was shared openly by Italians after discovery in order to be able to take measures more quickly.  

Publishing in open access journals is not yet the norm, but more and more of Utrecht University’s research is already being published in open access journals. The Faculty of Science is a frontrunner in this respect. "When I receive a request to review a publication, my standard reply is that I focus my review efforts only on gold open access journals, to support the open science movement", says oceanographer Erik van Sebille as keynote speaker at the Open Science symposium. And that movement has been noticeably set in motion, says Van Sebille.

“If something took you ten years, you want to be the first.”

Credit

Earning the credit is still an important reason for researchers to keep data for themselves until the moment of publication. And that is not surprising, says molecular biologist Tzviya Zeev-Ben-Mordehai at the Open Science Symposium. "Clarifying the 3D structure of a protein can take more than ten years. And once the structure is known, it's also easier to predict similar proteins. You can only publish if no one else has already described the structure, so you want to be the first.”

In order to breach this competitive field, more and more researchers are opting for a different way of publishing or to supplement conventional publishing outlets. In the Protein Data Bank, researchers can report their newly discovered protein structure before publishing - now even a requirement of scientific journals. And in the BioRxiv preprint server, researchers place their studies with a scientific journal prior to publication and peer review. A kind of preview. Such developments help prevent researchers from being scooped in the sometimes lengthy publication process and alleviate the pressure to publish.

Now when I see a publication in a scientific journal, I often think: I've read that already.

“Publication pressure makes bad science”

Publication pressure

This pressure to publish as soon as possible also results in something else: what researchers call the ‘replication crisis’. "Because everyone wants to be the first and publish as soon as possible, there is no time to thoroughly check your results or to try to reproduce them yourself”, says pharmacologist Enrico Mastrobattista. As a result, a lot of research turns out not to be reproducible, so somewhere something went wrong. Only 11 percent of the results of pre-clinical cancer research is reproducible, Mastrobattista shows. "There is no penalty for publications that turn out not to be reproducible, and the reward for publication is high. This encourages bad science, because even these incorrect publications are still cited – despite the corrective power of peer review.”

According to Mastrobattista, the solution is first and foremost to reduce publication pressure and increase accountability for bad science, but also to use better statistics. "Be careful with what you publish and make sure it is reproducible. That also means: train students even better in statistics and reproducibility". More transparency, post-publication review and a 'reproducibility stamp' as a kind of hallmark for reproducible science can, in his opinion, help with this. And above all: more openness and less publishing. "The entire peer review system is ancient. We have many tools to modernise it. We just have to do it."

To build trust with the community, you must first give people access to the development of the code

“The NRC or de Volkskrant is not the general public.”

Public Engagement

More surprisingly, public engagement is also one of the cornerstones of open science. For oceanographer Erik van Sebille public engagement a regular part of his research. “And that is more than sending out a press release. A piece in the NRC or de Volkskrant is nice, but that is not the general public. You then miss a big part of society”, Van Sebille says. “You have to be more inclusive if you want to share research. Be part of the society.”

In the Utrecht primary school project Meet the Professor, professors therefore get on their bikes - in toga - to visit schools and tell about their research. "A wonderful example of Open Science: share what science is about and why we do what we do", says Van Sebille. In the same line there are the school programs Slimme Gasten, Waar of niet waar? and Apekool. "We do these programs because Utrecht University knows how important Public Engagement is. We even have a Public Engagement Seed Fund, which financially supports innovative, research-related public engagement activities.”

New normal

The road to new normal, as dean Isabel Arends calls is, has begun. Open Science is a hot topic for Utrecht University. The Executive Board has even set up an Open Science Programme to make science more open and more reliable, efficient and relevant to society. Open Science is part of the university's Strategic Plan. And Utrecht University recently signed the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA): a declaration that states that the way scientific output is evaluated should be improved, and should not revolve around impact factors. Open science is becoming the new normal. "Every now and then you come across a dinosaur", says Erik van Sebille. "But we all know what happened to the dinosaurs."