TOPS Open Science 101

Transform to Open Science

Welcome to the open science guide for Transform to Open Science (TOPS).

What is Open Science?

The United States government defines open science as “the principle and practice of making research products and processes available to all, while respecting diverse cultures, maintaining security and privacy, and fostering collaborations, reproducibility, and equity.”

They believe that open science—-opening up the scientific process from idea inception to result—-increases access to knowledge and expands opportunities for participation. Sharing the data, code, results, and knowledge associated with the scientific process enables more inclusive, diverse and equitable participation in science, while also leading to more transparent, replicable, and reproducible results. But achieving this openness requires changing how we work, to help us move forward together.

The Open Science Journey

Research labs, scientific funding organizations, and individual researchers have known and discussed for many years how interdisciplinary and diverse teams are capable of advancing scientific progress. These groups and individuals began to advocate for inclusive labs and organizations; places where data and scientific practice was equitable and accessible to people from different backgrounds, with differing levels of academic training, and with different lived experiences. Although they may not have called this movement towards diverse and accessible research “open science,” these same principles of equity and inclusivity are core to the open science ethos.

Other researchers and organizations have come to advocate for open science through their experiences trying to access data, code, research methods, and publications through the course of their own scientific practice or funding apparatus. Frustration with embargo periods, incomplete or unsorted data sets, non-replicable results, or code that is anything but user-friendly have all resulted in a movement for full transparency of research, from the idea inception through the pre-registration of studies to the final results via open-source code, public data-sets, and open-access publications.

This guide is for you, your team, or your organization to become more involved with this movement. We are so glad that you are here on the road to open science with us!