One of the significant social challenges for the integration of RI / RE and OS into national research and innovation schemes emphasized by several project reports is economic disparities between countries (both between EU countries and globally). The economic disparities between countries have direct consequences on their implementation of OS. On the one hand, OS may bring economic benefits for countries, societies, and institutions, while on the other hand, several reports mentioned costs emerging in the context of OS, which can be a significant economic barrier for developing countries and institutions experiencing financial struggles.
Cultural differences in the context of scientific practice are also a major challenge, not only between different countries but also between different groups in the same country. The degree of awareness of OS and attitudes towards it varies across scientific disciplines. When looking at cultural barriers for implementation of OS, academic culture seems to be one of significant barriers for research funding organisations (RFOs) in their efforts to introduce OS. Some studies show that there can be a cultural resistance towards re-organization of scientific process, also specifically in case of OS significantly changing the existing ways of doing research[1]. In case of cultural resistance, a targeted management to change academic culture at institutional level, as well as personal attitudes becomes a crucial incentive to promote OS. Cultural issues also include a tension between values of openness and transparency vs. intellectual property and sensitivity of research data.
Another challenge is the existence of a gap between society and science and the need to increase public trust in science and its products, including shared knowledge. OS has been suggested as one of the approaches implying narrowing this gap and building trust by increasing openness to external actors. The public engagement in science is fostered to bridge the gap between researchers and the public, to integrate public concerns in research practice and to disseminate research results. At the same time, the existing diversity of approaches and definitions for public engagement may cause confusion in scientific communities. OS and open access publications are considered as a part of the solution in this context. However, there still are a number of difficulties even in countries where the OS principles have been included in policy documents: publications are written in specific jargon and may not be understood by the general public – not to mention non-native English-speaking public-; it is difficult to change existing publishing practices, etc. Even if data and publications are technically available to public, there may be barriers to the re-use or to free use of knowledge.
High competition for research funding, existing inequalities in scientific communities and other factors leading to hyper-competitive practices in the field of science increase potential of breaches of research integrity. Therefore, there is an identified “hidden opposition between excellence and RRI, viewed as two competing priorities[2]” and the fact that the existing system for assessing the scientific performance promotes publishing in English language journals with high impact factor and fast publication schedule, rather than prioritizing social impact, openness and responsibility towards the society. Accordingly, in such an environment open access may be viewed as an additional challenge for achieving excellence in science by researchers. Furthermore, the implementation of OS requires a lot of cooperation among scientists and institutions, and it is hardly possible to introduce OS in a hyper-competitive environment.
There are differences between countries in scientists’ attitudes towards OS, possibly caused by various socioeconomic and/or cultural factors. There are also differences in attitudes and readiness to engage in OS between different fields of science. Differences between scientific disciplines are explained by differences in technical skills, traditions, data specificity (qualitative/quantitative/sensitive/personal etc.), history of practicing OS, etc. Ethical issues in case of human subject research may affect researchers’ ability (and sometimes willingness, according to the ROSiE report) to share data. Medical and social science researchers involving human participants sometimes cannot share research data because of confidentiality or privacy issues. Some scientific disciplines such as genetic genealogy, atmospheric science, and oceanography have well-developed traditions in OS and data sharing and have developed the necessary infrastructure and databases, whereas other disciplines may lack this experience, traditions and infrastructure. Publishing of preprints has a long tradition in physics, mathematics, astronomy, and information technology, nevertheless this practice is new for many other disciplines; the coming years will tell whether such a tradition spreads in biomedical research where the use of preprints emerged during the Covid-19 crisis. There might be differences in attitudes related to perception of data, where some scientists may almost see the research material and data as their personal property.
Different conceptualization of responsibility and various understandings of what responsibility means in the context of RRI and OS show that there are differences between countries, institutions and fields of science. Responsibility implies close collaboration of all social actors and institutions involved in OS and RRI. Responsible research at all stages of the Research & Development process involves individual responsibility of the researcher. Another group of responsible actors is policy-makers and RFOs. Academic and research institutions are important stakeholders with their responsibilities regarding responsible research and implementation of OS. Academic publishers are responsible for enforcing OS principles, as well as strengthening research ethics and integrity. Another important stakeholder in OS process is industry.
[1] Martin, E. G., & Begany, G. M. (2017). Opening government health data to the public: benefits, challenges, and lessons learned from early innovators. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 24(2), 345-351. Cited by Mežinska, S.; Mileiko, I.; Neiders, I. & Kalēja, J. (2022), in ROSiE’s report, op.cit.
See also: Maire, A. The digital disruption of science: Governments and scientists toward an “Open Science”. The Digital Transformation of Labor, 2019. Armeni, K et al., “Towards wide-scale adoption of open science practices. The role of open science communities, 2021.
[2] d’Andrea, L., Berliri, M. and Federico M. (2018). Summary Report, Deliverable 1.3. Available: https://zenodo.org/record/1434355, p. 82. Quoted by ROSiE D.2 report, op.cit.
This passage is part of D6.2: Final analysis and mapping of existing European and national OS infrastructures with regard to promoting responsible OS written by Carole Chapin, Nathalie Voarino.