Towards societal impact through open research

The Council Library regularly organises information sessions with publishers, authors and information providers aimed at promoting the library collections to our users. As the coronavirus outbreak has forced us to put our on-site information events on hold, we have decided to move the library talks to our blog.

We invited Springer Nature, one of the world’s leading publishers, to present its open research and open-access initiatives to our readers. Timon Oefelein, Senior Manager at Springer Nature,  gave detailed answers in response to our questions, which we will publish in two library notes. Our first questions are about open research and its impact on society.

• What is open research?

“Open Research” is a broad term used to describe the many diverse open practices that increase research transparency, collaboration, accessibility, and ultimately, reproducibility. These practices include, amongst others: open peer review, open data, open software and code, and open access.

The key to unlocking the power of open research, in my view, lies in interlinking these activities. This increases collaboration and data-reuse, which in turn speeds up discovery, scientific robustness, and the path to application. Thus, the approach is ideally suited, and highly responsive, to addressing societal challenges.

Potential obstacles to open research are mainly technical and legal, especially in areas where there is a need to protect data privacy and where there is a lack of interoperable data-sharing standards.  The term “open research” is frequently referred to as “open science” and of course informs the conversations around open access. There are many excellent examples of open research in action.

The Human Genome Project (HGP) remains the world’s largest open research project and was completed between 1990 and 2003. During this period, thousands of scientists collaboratively mapped the entire Human Genome. Key achievements include: new DNA cancer screening tests and treatments; a better understanding of many diseases, and gene therapy and control systems for drugs. Another key milestone for open research was the Polymath Project, which demonstrates how scientists can successively collaborate online to solve complex mathematical problems. More recently, open research has also facilitated basic research and treatments for viruses such as Ebola, Zika and, of course, Covid-19.

In all cases, the key is making the research process transparent by making its components, e.g. methods, data and results, not only interoperable but also openly accessible and re-usable. The Center for Open Science in the US is a key global champion for advocating, funding, and developing best practices in open research, especially with a view to increasing the reproducibility of research.

• Can open research really make a tangible impact on society?

Yes it can and there are many excellent examples. For instance, one such case comes from Norway, where Professor Alexander Refsum Jensenius at the University of Oslo coordinates an experimental open research project, called MusicLab, that explores how our body’s sensory systems, such as  breathing and heartbeat, react to musical rhythms. As the project is highly experimental in nature, at first glance you wouldn’t necessarily expect any immediate tangible impacts on society. Yet by openly sharing the  findings with scientists from other domains, Alexander entered into a unique collaboration with physiotherapists at a Norwegian hospital to develop cerebral palsy screening tests for preterm infants to see if they are at risk. The tests are based on Alexander’s algorithm of music rhythmicity. There are many other examples of how open research facilitates collaboration, team sciences, and industry application.

That said, measuring and quantifying exactly how open research impacts on society, especially across an entire university or even country, continues to be a very challenging undertaking with little standardisation across Europe. One challenge is that many of the outputs of open research are only now starting to be formally recognised as indicators of impact. Whilst journal articles have a long tradition of being key to decision-making in academia for tenure, promotion, and funding, much less attention has been given to related outcomes such as: data sets, peer review activity, patents, technology transfers, social attention; level of international collaboration and interdisciplinarity, or relevance to societal challenges. In my view, all these factors together contribute to “societal impact” and thus need to be taken into consideration for measuring and tracking how open research impacts on society.  How best to do this will continue to be a tough challenge for years to come.

You can discover thousands of open-access titles, also from Springer Nature, in our Eureka catalogue. They can be found in the search results by applying the Open Access filter in the facets list on the right-hand side of the Eureka interface.

Springer Nature is a leading research, educational and professional publisher, providing quality content through a range of innovative platforms, products and services. For more information visit: springernature.com/group and follow @SpringerNature.

The blog post does not necessarily represent the positions, policies, or opinions of the Council of the European Union or the European Council.

The Council library reading room is currently closed. The Info Desk remains open on-line and will reply to queries by email from Monday to Friday, 10.00 to 16.00.