Articles, software, data: An Open Science ethological study

Abstract

Background. Open Science seeks to render research outputs visible, accessible, reusable. The Open Science framework is currently evolving vigorously due, among others reasons, to the UNESCO Open Science Recommendation adopted in November 2021. In this context, it is relevant to better visualize and describe the relationships that hold among the direct protagonists of this changing landscape: research teams and their research outputs, namely: articles, software and data, as their comprehension will certainly contribute to foster better Open Science practices.Method. In this work we review and describe, through the information collected in a large number of bibliographic references, the current changing trends involving some essential, defining, characteristics and behaviors of the main components of the scientific production, namely, research teams and three kinds of research outputs they produce in many scientific areas. This comparative study is based, among others, in our recent work on the evolving concepts of research software, research data in the context of Open Science.Results. In this work we observe and document some key features in this evolving landscape such as the changing and extended roles of research team members; the need to develop a new citing and referencing culture for articles, but specially for research software and data; the rising relevance of open access (to publications, software, data) policies all over the world; the existence of some barriers and difficulties like the regulations concerning academic research close to industry, or other technological applications; the need to develop standards for the “right to be forgotten”; the need to consider the impact of Open Science costs for less favored communities, countries, institutions...Conclusions. This calls for the urgent need to observe and depict further this changing Open Science ecosystem, and to propose –as we have partially attempted in this work– new concepts to analyze this context as well as to contribute to ongoing research-on-research and to improve the implementation of Open Science practices, in order to foster better ways towards a sound, inclusive and fairer Open Science landscape.