Alan Cottey advocates openness from beginning to end

I advocate a radical kind of openness for science projects which has, I believe, never been tried.

The publication of polished results is, by itself, an insufficient basis for an adequate understanding of scientific practice.  For this, it is necessary to know how the science is produced.

This would mean documenting, in real time, all stages of the project, including its passage through institutions' ethics and safety committees; the application for funding; review by the funding body; the funding body’s terms for support; the institution’s terms; log of the course of the project; reports; manuscripts submitted for formal publication; referees’ comments; revisions and published papers.

The radically open kind of scientific project that I advocate is made technically feasible by current IT. An Open Science (OS) Project will have a definite starting point and full details of the work will be logged on a website and accessible to all in real time. This may sound like a science blog but there is an important difference, in that any OS Project will be a serious attempt to add to scientific knowledge. To do this on the web in real time will be scary.

Current practice

That science should be open is a commonplace. On the other hand, private ownership now encroaches further into almost everything, including knowledge. Parts of the science commons are being enclosed. The BA has, throughout its history, been a player in this contest, its work for inclusiveness being a contribution to openness.

It is generally assumed that the essential requirement for science to be open is that the results be published and rigorously criticised. The most open kind of science that has been practised to date is however still far from fully open.

There always were problems with the traditional model of scientific practice. Is it as pure as the ideal would have? The norms of science – universalism, disinterestedness, communalism, scepticism - as identified by Thomas Merton are accurate as norms, that is, they describe scientists' values on how scientific knowledge should be produced.

Obviously actual practice does not meet these ideals fully. Parochialism, special-interest, privatisation and credulity do enter. Scientists are 'close' during the course of an investigation, until they and a few trusted colleagues have checked thoroughly for mistakes and omissions. They polish the presentation to make it persuasive.

This way of producing reliable and useful knowledge has worked remarkably well since it was developed in the 17th century. The aim of my Open Science proposal1 is not to undermine this approach, which I see as having the potential to serve human survival and advancement for a long time to come. Rather, the proposal is for an addition to what has been tried to date.

Objections

One objection that I get in conversations with colleagues is that scientists will not expose themselves to the risk of someone else muscling in and getting credit by beating them to the finishing line. My answer to this is that for most of us the problem is the opposite – to be heard above the cacophony.

Another concern at the prospect of doing a radically open project is that all scientists know how muddy is the path to the clean published report. Scientists have reputations to lose, or hope to gain them. Fear of losing face is probably the principal obstacle to pursuing some research projects the OS way.

My answer to this objection is that most scientific research will not be best done according to a defined protocol for open science but it will be informative to do some projects in this radically open way. For reasons of practicality, the first OS Projects will be simple, small and not too controversial. The originality lies more in the OS method than in science path-breaking.

How to begin

The OS way sits especially well with inclusive science, for example involving a community or studying aspects of lifestyle. Environmental impact studies comprise a class of current importance. One such project I am considering is a comparison of machine dishwashing with manual dishwashing.

I believe however that OS Projects are possible in all areas of science. Even in big science, tiny elements of a complex project can be suitable.

A modest corpus of OS Projects may reveal aspects of the balance between the various levels of openness - in a group of web pages on Open Science1 I call them secret, restricted, circumspect and open - that cannot be known without trying the open way. The full spectrum will then have been experienced.

Reference
1. For Open Science, see 
http://www.uea.ac.uk/~c013/open_science/open_science_front_page.html 
Dr Alan Cottey is a Fellow at the University of East Anglia and a member of Scientists for Global Responsibility