Space Cadet Girl

Sharing is caring right? Well, collaboration may be cool at school, but cross-corporation communication is a concern to many. So, is open science good for research and/or good for researchers? Then answer is what answers nearly always are: it depends.

My friend Bora Zivkovic was on a Columbia University panel to discuss this issue, along with Barry Canton (founder of OpenWetWare wiki and  Gingko BioWorks ) and Jean-Claude Bradley (Associate Prof. at Drexel and founder of UsefulChem). Ultimately, each panelist agreed that in most situations open access to information is a good way to move forward in the sciences.

Bora  pointed out that “There are enemies of open access because there are people making a lot of money on keeping things closed... I think in science, years from now, people will be asking, ‘why weren’t you open, why were you hiding?’” Of course, Bora and the other panelists recognized that when it comes to concerns like research related to security, patents, future Nobel Prizes etc., those doors do need to be closed. It’s common sense, not rocket science (except when it is rocket science, of course).

One audience member’s concern was how the shift towards open research may affect professional credentials. After all, many science careers are based on peer reviewed publication, not blogs. Bora replied by asking us to think about the long-term. The shift will take some time, and some aspects of the move (like this one) will be clunky. But imagine if people could have left comments and questions about the work of great scientists who lived long before the internet? This would be a wonderful resource for us today, and future scientists will certainly find this kind of resource incredibly valuable.

I’m delighted that most everyone acknowledged that open is awesome, and that it’s OK for scientists can come out of the closet– though no one is expecting a marriage between private companies and open research anytime soon (well, maybe in Canada…).

* On a side note, if you’re interested in science blogging, you will probably enjoy The Open Laboratory: The Best in Science Writing on Blogs