Threat of policy alienation: Exploring the implementation of Open Science policy in research practice

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erika Lilja
Keyword(s):  
Policy Implementation ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Research Evaluation ◽  
Open Science ◽  
Policy Practice ◽  
Explorative Study ◽  
Incentive Problems ◽  
Survey Responses ◽  
Quality Of Research

Abstract Many European countries have introduced Open Science (OS) policies to improve the quality and efficiency of science and to increase economic and societal growth. Researchers’ perceptions and experiences of OS policies remain relatively under-investigated. This explorative study applies the policy alienation perspective to understand researchers’ perceptions of OS policy implementation. Analysis of survey responses indicates that researchers have difficulties in coping with OS policy and that they feel policy alienation from OS policy. Hence, researchers may be less willing to try to support OS policy implementation despite the fact that OS policies are motivated by the desire to enhance the excellence and quality of research. The findings address how the incentive problems lie not only in the research evaluation and academic credit systems but also in the policy–practice divide. These problems need to be solved in terms of participation in policymaking and in the knowledge production of ‘openness’ itself.

scholarly journals Beyond state capacity: bureaucratic performance, policy implementation and reform

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Martin J. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Policy Implementation ◽  
State Capacity ◽  
Institutional Development ◽  
Actual Performance ◽  
Incentive Problems ◽  
Internal Information ◽  
Bureaucratic Performance ◽  
Broad Consensus

Abstract There is a broad consensus that state capacity is central to economic and institutional development. But while the concept originated as a tool for macro-historical and comparative analysis, its success has led the term ‘capacity’ to become a default metaphor for discussing the quality of government bureaucracies. This paper discusses the limitations to conceiving of narrower questions of bureaucratic performance and policy implementation through the lens of the broad, aggregate concept of capacity. Whereas capacity refers to bureaucracies' hypothetical potential, this usually differs from their actual actions due to internal information and incentive problems created by bureaucracies' collective nature, and the constraints and uncertainty imposed by their multiple political principals. Capacity is a convenient shorthand term and is appropriate for some purposes, but it achieves this convenience by abstracting away from the mechanisms that determine bureaucratic performance and policy implementation. To advance the study of bureaucratic quality, researchers should seek to understand the implications of bureaucracies' collective nature, engage with contextual specificity and contingency in policy implementation, and focus measurement and reform efforts more towards actual performance than hypothetical capacity.

Methodology and Scientific Competition

Episteme ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Max Albert
Keyword(s):  
Quality Standards ◽  
Open Science ◽  
Average Quality ◽  
High Quality ◽  
High Quality Research ◽  
Quality Work ◽  
Beauty Contest ◽  
Relevant Field ◽  
Quality Of Research

Why is the average quality of research in open science so high? The answer seems obvious. Science is highly competitive, and publishing high quality research is the way to rise to the top. Thus, researchers face strong incentives to produce high quality work. However, this is only part of the answer. High quality in science, after all, is what researchers in the relevant field consider to be high quality. Why and how do competing researchers coordinate on common quality standards? I argue that, on the methodological level, science is a dynamic beauty contest.

scholarly journals A collective challenge: Open Science from the perspective of Science Europe

2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 424-430
Author(s):  
Marie Timmermann
Keyword(s):  
Data Management ◽  
Data Sharing ◽  
Open Science ◽  
Research Data ◽  
Major Research ◽  
Research Data Management ◽  
Management Policies ◽  
Good Research ◽  
Quality Of Research

Open Science aims to enhance the quality of research by making research and its outputs openly available, reproducible and accessible. Science Europe, the association of major Research Funding Organisations and Research Performing Organisations, advocates data sharing as one of the core aspects of Open Science and promotes a more harmonised approach to data sharing policies. Good research data management is a prerequisite for Open Science and data management policies should be aligned as much as possible, while taking into account discipline-specific differences. Research data management is a broad and complex field with many actors involved. It needs collective efforts by all actors to work towards aligned policies that foster Open Science.

scholarly journals Open science requires an open internet

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niall W Duncan
Keyword(s):  
Open Science ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Unrestricted Access ◽  
Quality Of Research

Open science initiatives have great potential to improve the quality of research and make access to it more democratic. Many of the features related to open science are, however, dependent upon unfettered access to the internet. We should be aware that the voices of many people are excluded because they do not have this unrestricted access. Vigilance is also required to ensure that access remains free where it is currently.

scholarly journals Making research evaluation more transparent: Aligning research philosophy, institutional values, and reporting

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael R Dougherty ◽  
L. Robert Slevc ◽  
James Grand
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Research Evaluation ◽  
Open Science ◽  
Scholarly Activity ◽  
Psychological Science ◽  
Institutional Values ◽  
Curriculum Vitae ◽  
Research Philosophy ◽  
New Procedures

There is a growing interest in changing the culture of psychology to improve the quality of our science. At the root of this interest is concern over the reproducibility of key findings. A variety of large-scale replication attempts have revealed that a number of previously published effects cannot be reproduced, while other analyses indicate that the published literature is rife with underpowered studies and publication bias. These revelations suggest that it is time to change how psychological science is carried out and increase transparency of reporting. We argue change will be slow until institutions adopt new procedures for evaluating scholarly activity. We consider three actions that individuals and departments can take to facilitate change throughout psychological science. These three actions are the development of individualized research philosophy statements, the creation of an annotated curriculum vitae to improve the transparency of scholarly reporting, and the use of a formal evaluative system that explicitly captures behaviors that support reproducibility. Our recommendations build on proposals for open science by enabling researchers to have a voice in articulating (and contextualizing) how they would like their work to be evaluated and by providing a mechanism for more detailed and transparent reporting of scholarly activities.

scholarly journals Open Science Saves Lives: Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lonni Besançon ◽  
Nathan Peiffer-Smadja ◽  
Corentin Segalas ◽  
Haiting Jiang ◽  
Paola Masuzzo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Research Output ◽  
Open Science ◽  
Scientific Process ◽  
Science Practices ◽  
Link Type ◽  
Research Communities ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Potential Impact ◽  
Quality Of Research

AbstractIn the last decade Open Science principles have been successfully advocated for and are being slowly adopted in different research communities. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic many publishers and researchers have sped up their adoption of Open Science practices, sometimes embracing them fully and sometimes partially or in a sub-optimal manner. In this article, we express concerns about the violation of some of the Open Science principles and its potential impact on the quality of research output. We provide evidence of the misuses of these principles at different stages of the scientific process. We call for a wider adoption of Open Science practices in the hope that this work will encourage a broader endorsement of Open Science principles and serve as a reminder that science should always be a rigorous process, reliable and transparent, especially in the context of a pandemic where research findings are being translated into practice even more rapidly. We provide all data and scripts at https://osf.io/renxy/.

Institutional repositories as complementary tools to evaluate the quantity and quality of research outputs

2014 ◽  
Vol 63 (1/2) ◽  
pp. 46-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anabel Bonilla-Calero
Keyword(s):  
Research Evaluation ◽  
Research Output ◽  
Free Access ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Institutional Repositories ◽  
Evaluation Practice ◽  
Quality Of Research ◽  
Original Approach

Purpose – The aim of this study is to analyse the advantages of using an institutional repository (IR) as a complementary source to evaluate the research output produced by a university. Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on previous studies where IRs have been used as source to analyse the research output. Findings – Some advantages of using repositories as a tool to evaluate research output are: they help to evaluate the research output from different perspectives, using multidimensional approaches that combine various factors and types of documents with free access to all researchers, evaluators and society in general. Practical implications – The paper is aimed at researchers and experts that use Web of Knowledge and Scopus services to evaluate the research output. It recommends that they consider using IRs as an additional, practical and complementary tool to traditional databases. Originality/value – To underline the advantages of using an IR as a complementary source in the evaluation of research outputs; this evaluative approach is not sufficiently appreciated in comparison with the role of traditional (non-open access) databases. Adopting this original approach would be a significant enhancement to current research evaluation practice.

scholarly journals Promoting Open Science to Increase the Trustworthiness of Evidence in Special Education

2018 ◽  
Vol 85 (1) ◽  
pp. 104-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bryan G. Cook ◽  
John Wills Lloyd ◽  
David Mellor ◽  
Brian A. Nosek ◽  
William J. Therrien
Keyword(s):  
Special Education ◽  
Scientific Evidence ◽  
Open Science ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Individuals With Disabilities ◽  
Science Practices ◽  
Quality Of Research ◽  
Selection Of

Scientific evidence should guide the selection of practice for individuals with disabilities. Scientific evidence, however, must be trustworthy to move special education toward greater empirical certainty and more effective policies and practices. Transparency, openness, and reproducibility increase the trustworthiness of evidence. We propose that researchers in special education adopt emerging open-science reforms, such as preprints, data and materials sharing, preregistration of studies and analysis plans, and Registered Reports. Adoption of these practices will require shifts in cultural norms, guidelines, and incentives. We discuss how adopting open-science practices can advance the quality of research and, consequently, policy and practice in special education.

scholarly journals Open science saves lives: lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lonni Besançon ◽  
Nathan Peiffer-Smadja ◽  
Corentin Segalas ◽  
Haiting Jiang ◽  
Paola Masuzzo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Research Output ◽  
Open Science ◽  
Scientific Process ◽  
Science Practices ◽  
Link Type ◽  
Research Communities ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Potential Impact ◽  
Quality Of Research

AbstractIn the last decade Open Science principles have been successfully advocated for and are being slowly adopted in different research communities. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic many publishers and researchers have sped up their adoption of Open Science practices, sometimes embracing them fully and sometimes partially or in a sub-optimal manner. In this article, we express concerns about the violation of some of the Open Science principles and its potential impact on the quality of research output. We provide evidence of the misuses of these principles at different stages of the scientific process. We call for a wider adoption of Open Science practices in the hope that this work will encourage a broader endorsement of Open Science principles and serve as a reminder that science should always be a rigorous process, reliable and transparent, especially in the context of a pandemic where research findings are being translated into practice even more rapidly. We provide all data and scripts at https://osf.io/renxy/.

scholarly journals The case for free and open source software in research and scholarship

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Fortunato ◽  
Mark Galassi
Keyword(s):  
Open Source ◽  
Open Source Software ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Open Science ◽  
Academic Community ◽  
Original Form ◽  
Academic Settings ◽  
The Common ◽  
Quality Of Research

Free and open source software (FOSS) is any computer program distributed under a licence that grants the user rights to run the program for any purpose, to study it, to modify it, and to redistribute it either in its original form or modified.We explore the close ties between FOSS and academia, and in particular the intersection with computational reproducibility. We begin by situating FOSS in relation to other open initiatives in academic settings — namely open science, open research, and open scholarship. In this context, we argue that anyone who actively contributes to the research process today is a computational researcher, in that they use computers to manage and store information. We then provide a primer to FOSS suitable for researchers in any field, and anyone in the academic community concerned with the quality of research and its sustainability. Next, we illustrate how the notions introduced in the primer apply to resources for scientific computing, using the GNU Scientific Library as a case study.We conclude by discussing why the common interpretation of “open source” as “open code” is misplaced, and we use this example to further articulate the case for free and open source software in research and scholarship.

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