Corresponding authors: Leo Lahti (
Academic editor:
Nov 31 - Dec 1, 2016 in Helsinki, Finland
Around 100 students, scholars, advocates, and practitioners from various disciplines joined the event to discuss the philosophical and historical roots of the contemporary open science movement. The invited speakers were (in alphabetical order):
The development of information technologies continues to transform science and society. This transformation is pushing the academic system towards greater openness on various fronts of the research process. The open science movement is calling for increased openness in data collection, analysis, and collaboration; in education and in publishing and evaluating academic work (
Since the 17th century, the academic system has gradually evolved from a ‘language of alchemy’ towards a more openly communicated and collaborative discipline. While technical and institutional aspects have largely dominated the contemporary open science debate, broader historical and philosophical perspectives have received less attention. This is paradoxical, as open communication and reproducible experimentation have been cornerstones of academic practice since the early modern period or even antiquity, and many of the current opportunities and challenges are conceptually similar to those of the past. More thorough historical and philosophical analysis can help motivate and guide the contemporary open science movement in addition to aiding it in recognising the varieties, significance, and limitations of openness in the scientific process.
Early motivations for open scientific communication in the 16th and 17th centuries ranged from ideas of Christian charity to pragmatic needs of patrons to identify and attract the best scientists (
Openness has the potential to improve the quality and the overall efficiency of research, for instance by accelerating reuse of data, methods, reported findings, and other research outputs; by helping to avoid overlapping activities and facilitating collaboration; and by promoting transparency and reproducibility. While the histories of science in general and of open science in particular overlap and parallel each other in significant ways, it is important also to recognise the fact that openness is a an exceptional feature of the scientific venture. Digitisation and the evolution of the internet have in an unprecedented way enabled, and even created in some sense, what we now call the open science movement. There are also many aspects of open science today that do not have any conceptual precedents in history. But this is by no means a reason for us not to reflect on the history of open science and study, for example, Enlightenment ideas of science. What it does mean is that understanding the nature of open science includes accepting that the story of open science is not a simple and straightforward continuum from Aristotle to SciHub.
Here we see the reason that the concept of open science, viewed in light of its philosophical grounding and historical development, remains paradoxical: on the one hand openness is a central component of the definition of science; on the other hand various economical, ethical, technical, and social challenges tend to place practical restrictions. While technical innovations and the ideas of open science are increasingly utilised in the natural and social sciences as well as in the humanities (
One purpose of PHOS16 was to offer complementary perspectives on openness as a core scientific value. Varying contemporary definitions of open science and their roles and limitations in academic value creation were covered by Benedikt Fecher’s talk on the open science schools of thought (“
The challenges for openness were considered on both structural and microsocial levels. Examples of structural challenges include technical and institutional aspects such as funding models, science policy and regulation, and communication technologies as well as social aspects such as gender bias and family upbringing, which can remarkably limit an individual’s chances of entering and succeeding in academia. An example of the latter is the fact that access to the scientific community has historically been largely restricted to men, as was showcased by Camilla Mork Rostvik in her talk on women and the Royal Society: "
One hotly debated set of issues at the conference included the analysis of the concept of socially relevant knowledge, the idea of co-production, and the tensions between expert knowledge and democratization of research (
Open science is also an active movement which is driven by an increasing number of scientists adopting, innovating, and promoting open practices to improve the quality of research, collaboration, and overall visibility of their research. There are also conscious endeavours towards explicit policy goals seeking to influence prevailing institutions: the various national campaigns to increase transparency in the current academic publishing model provide one topical example. These campaigns aim at redefining the relationship between the academic community on the one hand and commercial publishers on the other (a Finnish example of such a campaign is
While there have been tensions between openness and profit-seeking, secretive, and often privateinterests, the transition into more and more open science is ongoing on all levels within the academic community and a number of publishers and commercial companies have identified rapidly emerging business opportunities. Public interest has a remarkable role in defining the rules and regulations within the scientific community, including the standards for openness. While societal impact does not equal financial impact, open science can also be profitable. Openness can increase the overall efficiency of research and dissemination thereof, thus bringing added value to the allocation of resources. Its value can be challenging to quantify, however, and adoption of open practices has concrete costs that need to be accounted for within academic research and funding communities. Open science is simultaneously driven by various parties and that its development is in part due to the tensions just enumerated rather than despite them.
Since the early modern period, scientific endeavour has been motivated by a desire for knowledge driven by ideas, not authorship, with the result that texts have often been anonymous. Opening medieval codices, one is struck by how often they are compilations of sources on one topic rather than assembled groups of works by one author. This creates significant challenges in assigning authorship and new technologies are providing new opportunities to study medieval scholarship, for instance by cross-linking and collaborative analysis of texts, over great distances and at an historically unprecedented scale. These new collaborative methods and ways of accessing sources are significantly changing the ways in which historical sources are contextualised and understood as well as highlighting their influence in the long term. The most recent developments in this field were covered by Jeffrey Witt in his talk referencing the work done at the Scholastic Commentaries and Texts Archive (“
The
In many ways, open science is a very pragmatic concept that promotes access to scientific outputs to facilitate the process of knowledge generation. All this is facilitated by technological development, as was illustrated by Scott Chamberlain’s talk on contemporary
Improved access to scientific research data, methods, publications as well as other outputs of scientific research will not only serve to increase transparency. It will also provide opportunities for further use, and innovative combinations, of ideas, information, and data. This is turn opens new avenues for creative thinking and scientific activity.
The recently proposed European Open Access Platform and the so-called diamond open access model have gained attention and provide one alternative that could replace the currentcommercial publishing system in the long term (see e.g.
Modern technologies have opened up historically significant opportunities driving a culture shift inhow we share, collaborate, trust, and evaluate scientific work (
New technologies come with remarkable practical and social challenges such as the storage of massive data collections, the need for increasingly sophisticated algorithms, and the overall dependence on technology. Culture and norms do not always follow technical opportunities. While the digital revolution of recent decades has changed the way we communicate irreversibly, many popular features of the present open science movement, such as open data or electronic notebooks, are of concern to a very specific geographically, economically, and technically privileged set. We can therefore with good reason ask the following: on what grounds should we talk about the history of open science that extends beyond the digital era? These themes were discussed from a bird’s eye perspective by Koen Vermeir in his talk “
Looking back at the historical and philosophical foundations of openness in the scientific process generally will be valuable for understanding, and also guiding, the ongoing transformation of the academic system into a more open way of doing science. One way to do this is to utilise established ethical frameworks as tools for the evaluation of and decision-making about open science (
We believe these kinds of well-founded and systematic approaches to open science can and should be interwoven also into discussions of open science and its role in research ethics and integrity. An example of how this might be done was provided by Katrien Maes’ talk on how European research institutions can be a force in making openness in science reality (“
The reasons for using cryptic alchemical notations in the 17th century have been transformed into new kinds of challenges associated with the complexity of modern information technologies. Despite this transformation, there are strong parallels between the different eras regarding issues of reproducibility, priority, scientific communication, funding, commercialization, and other aspects of doing science. These new forms of challenges contribute both to the modern reproducibility crisis and to the push towards more open science (
The complex alchemical recipes that featured in Rampling’s talk were then sharply contrasted by Scott Chamberlain’s aforementioned talk on the latest modern practices of shared and reproducible software as well as Mikael Laakso’s talk on the latest research on exploring the ecosystems surrounding traditional scientific publishing and feasible open access (“
The open science movement has led to a transformation in the funding, regulation and communication of science with potentially far-reaching implications for the way the scientific system is organised. Open practices can help increase the quality of research and help create added value for society in the form of new economic incentives generated by enhancing the flow of information and access to digital methods, and by enabling new forms of collaboration. But where we are still lacking is in understanding the precise role of openness in the scientific process and what grounds the concept of openness. This understanding can be furthered by philosophical and historical analysis. Viewed from a broader historical and philosophical perspective, what the open science movement highlights is the importance of adapting community norms and practices in a changing world and of ensuring that core values of science can receive continued support.
Open science is a vast concept that touches on nearly all aspects of research practice and dissemination. It covers social, cultural, ethical, and structural issues as well as reflecting broader trends in science and society. The PHOS16 conference highlighted a variety of historical parallels and pointed out new avenues for understanding and promoting openness in academic research. This was achieved by linking contemporary topics with closely related philosophical and historical ideas and processes with a particular focus on the early modern period.
At PHOS16 we sketched the overall foundations of openness as a core scientific value, discussed the scope and limits of openness (
We are looking forward to this perspective article and the associated audiovisual material accelerating further debate on open science. Recordings of the live online streams of the entire conference are available (
Caroline Bassett (Sussex):
Scott Chamberlain (rOpenSci):
Benedikt Fecher (Berlin):
Inkeri Koskinen (Helsinki):
Mikael Laakso (Hanken):
Katrien Maes (LERU):
Michael Markie (F1000):
Arto Mustajoki (Helsinki):
Samuli Ollila (NMRLipids/Aalto):
Manuela Fernández Pinto (de los Andes):
Jennifer Rampling (Princeton):
Werner Reichmann (Konstanz):
Camilla Mork Rostvik (St Andrews):
Koen Vermeir (Paris):
Jeffrey Witt (Loyola):
The event PHOS16 would not have been possible without the generous support received from the Faculty of Arts at University of Helsinki and Helsinki Center for Digital Humanities (HELDIG). The event was also supported by the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture Open Science and Research Initiative (ATT) and Digitalia in Mikkeli. The conference was sponsored by Gale.
We would like to thank Ville Vaara and Hege Roivainen for their contribution to the practical arrangements before and during the conference, Katri Lassila for editing the audiovisual material, and all session chairs for their work: Pirjo-Leena Forsström, Kristiina Hormia-Poutanen, Eero Hyvönen, Joona Lehtomäki, Eetu Mäkelä, and Antti Poikola.
Around 100 open science scholars and advocates joined the PHOS16 conference in Helsinki to discuss the philosophical and historical roots of the contemporary open science movement.
PHOS16 Conference Programme.