Stephen Curry gave a presentation on the history and current state of open access and open science. He discussed how open access originated from both grassroots efforts by researchers as well as policies promoted by governments. While many researchers and institutions now support open access in principle, issues around costs, incentives, and cultural changes present ongoing challenges to broader adoption. Curry argued that changing behaviors requires addressing these practical concerns, promoting openness as an inherent good, and continuing advocacy at both the individual and institutional levels.

1. Stephen Curry | Imperial College London | 7ª Conferência Luso-Brasileira Sobre Acesso Aberto | 2 Nov 2016
From Open Access to Open Science
(Let’s take back control?)
Humboldt’s lecture notes — from The Inven(on of Nature by Andrea Wulf

2. Source material for this talk
“Open Access: the beast that no-one
could – our should – control?”
Chapter in a forth-coming book.
Preprint available through figshare
hRp://www.fameimages.com/Um-berners-lee-olympics
h8ps://figshare.com/ar(cles/Open_Access_the_beast_that_no-one_could_or_should_control_/3422956

3. Where did open access come from?
“Technology manufactures not gadgets, but social change…”
hRp://www.fameimages.com/Um-berners-lee-olympics
3

4. Where did open access come from?
hRp://www.fameimages.com/Um-berners-lee-olympics
4
technological change: access to informaUon
cultural change (e.g. societal, academic)
policy change (driven by economics, but also govt transparency & public engagement…?)

5. Open access from the bottom (the research community)
hRp://www.fameimages.com/Um-berners-lee-olympics
5
Harnad’s Subversive proposal (1994) advocated the free electronic dissemina>on of research results:
“applicable only to ESOTERIC […] scienUfic and scholarly publicaUon…” to further the learned enquiry
by “fellow esoteric scienUsts and scholars the world over.”
Budapest Open Access Ini>a>ve (2002) defined open access to the research literature as:
“its free availability on the public internet, permibng any users to read, download, copy, distribute,
print, search, or link to the full texts of these arUcles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to
sodware…”

6. Open access from the top (governments):
hRp://www.fameimages.com/Um-berners-lee-olympics
6
David WilleIs, UK Minister for Universi>es and Science (2012)
“As taxpayers put their money towards intellectual enquiry, they cannot be barred
from then accessing it.”
White House memorandum on open access (2013):
“ciUzens deserve easy access to the results of scienUfic research their tax dollars have
paid for.”
European Union guidelines on open access for the Horizon 2020 program (2014):
sees open access as a way to “involve ciUzens and society” through “improved
transparency of the scienUfic process.”

7. Open access and parallel approaches to scientific openness
hRp://www.fameimages.com/Um-berners-lee-olympics
7
“The governance of emerging science and innovaUon is a
major challenge for contemporary democracies.”

8. Is openness a core feature of scientific culture?
hRp://www.fameimages.com/Um-berners-lee-olympics
8
Is our amateur (and open) ethos s(ll one of the norms of the academy?

9. Wikimedia Commons (Dona Eidam/USGS)
Are researchers too focused on research to bother with open science?
9

10. Common researcher reactions to open access…
10
See it primarily as a service to science (so what’s the problem?)
Does the public need access? Are they capable of understanding?
Ask paUent groups, science bloggers (and journalists)…
Are open access mandates an infringement of academic freedom?
h8ps://www.knaw.nl/en/news/publica(ons/opening-the-book-on-open-access

11. Researchers are sympathetic but compliance and costs are issues
“There has been some concern raised by research funders about the
quality of service received from publishers in return for Gold OA
charges… These problems are parUcularly prevalent amongst publishers
offering a hybrid OA opUon.”

12. Cost-benefits of journals and their impact factors
Nature CommunicaUons - $5200
Cell Press - $5000
Science Advances (w. CC-BY) - $4600
Ques>ons of culture… it’s complicated.
Trust and reputaUon are important to us. Don’t journals provide that?
The value of disciplinary journals. Is OA in the best interests of learned socie(es?
No-one wants to drown in informaUon. Don’t journals provide important filters?
hRp://www.nature.com/news/science-publishing-the-golden-club-1.13951

13. Full analysis needs to encompass all the costs
h8p://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/ar(cle?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1001747
hRp://iai.asm.org/content/79/10/3855.full
Issues of trust and reliability: can they be addressed via open access, open review, open data?

14. The problems are well known – but how do we change behaviour?
14

15. Declarations are not enough
hRp://www.fameimages.com/Um-berners-lee-olympics
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,
that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Hancock, J. et al. (1776)
“The principle that the results of research that has been
publicly funded should be freely accessible in the public
domain is a compelling one, and fundamentally unanswerable.”
Dame Janet Finch (2012)
“All scienUfic papers should be freely available by 2020…”
Commissioner Carlos Moedas (2016)
15

16. Policies can help, but need careful handling & communication…
From April 2016: To be eligible for
submission to the post-2014 REF, authors’
outputs must have been deposited in an
insUtuUonal or subject repository.”

17. Poynder’s critique of HEFCE open access policy – and a response
“the HEFCE policy is problemaUc — because the REF process has liRle
or nothing to do with rewards, but a great deal to do with sanc>ons
and punishment. As such, the HEFCE policy could turn researchers
away from open access rather than towards it.
…the principles inherent to the OA movement are those of sharing
and egalitarianism, not eliUsm and sancUons…“
AllocaUon
Accountability
Bench-marking
Influencing research culture
HEI performance management norms
17

18. Good practices don’t spread by themselves (or by exhortation, or by sanctions…)
Why was Anaesthesia adopted more rapidly than An(sepsis?
hRp://www.fameimages.com/Um-berners-lee-olympics
hRp://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/07/29/slow-ideas
“First, one combaRed a visible and immediate problem
(pain); the other combaRed an invisible problem
(germs) whose effects wouldn’t be manifest unUl well
ader the operaUon.
“Second, although both made life beRer for paUents,
only one made life beRer for doctors.”
“People talking to people is s>ll how
the world’s standards change.”
18

19. Academic initiatives to combat cultural impediments
The Metric Tide
Report of the Independent Review
of the Role of Metrics in Research
Assessment and Management
July 2015
Can openness change behaviour?

20. Changing behaviour at ground level
Mike Taylor
“It feels morally wrong, given the capacity we have to
do that, not to do it.”
h8ps://www.jisc.ac.uk/news/its-stupid-that-we-care-about-labels-so-much-24-oct-2016
h8ps://emckiernan.wordpress.com/pledge/
Alexandra Elbakyan

21. Institutional initiatives
Are benefits to researchers aligned
with benefits to the public?
Vale, R. D. (2012) Mol Biol Cell 23, 3285–3289.
h8p://www.nature.com/news/fewer-numbers-be8er-science-1.20858

22. We need to talk about open access as a good in itself
Access
Pre-prints (for speed)
Open peer review
Largest possible audience (sharing & scruUny)
Data sharing (sharing & scruUny)
BeRer for addressing societal problems
Keep authors in the picture
Rewards for good behaviour

23. We need to talk about open science as a good in itself
Tell researchers about:
New (non-tradiUonal) audiences & scienUsts
CommunicaUon + ParUcipaUon = Public Trust
Zooniverse
23

24. After Brexit, we need to reassert the values of the academy…
We have to go public.
We have to be open.
hRp://www.fameimages.com/Um-berners-lee-olympics
“People in this country have had enough of experts.”
24

25. Open access & open science: keep the faith – and keep talking about it
It’s not the answer to everything but
OA is an opportunity to show:
- that openness is part and parcel of
the noble calling to be an academic
- how the academy is relevant to
people’s lives
- that we care about delivering value
for money
- that open science is beRer science
(e.g. how the transparency of
openness leads to more rigorous
research)
25
TheincredulityofSaintThomas,Caravaggio
hRp://www.caravaggio.org/the-incredulity-of-saint-thomas.jsp

26. Thank you
@Stephen_Curry
s.curry@imperial.ac.uk
26