ROSEMARIE RAPISARDA
Staff Writer
Graphic by Gwen Devlin|Special to The Leader
College students will agree that there are few things more frustrating than finding the perfect article for your research paper only for it to be blocked behind a paywall.
Inspired by the White House’s recent open science initiative, Reed Library is making strides to prevent this from happening.
About a year ago, the White House and the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) launched the “Year of Open Science.”
The purpose of this action is to advance national open science policies across federal agencies.
According to the White House fact sheet, there have been “new actions to advance open and equitable research, including new grant funding, improvements in research infrastructure and broadened research participation for emerging scholars.”
In honor of this ambitious plan, Fredonia’s Reed Library is hosting its own “Year of Open Science.” Through new federal guidelines, the library is helping faculty members publish their research more openly.
The staff at Reed Library have continuously embraced opening research to the public by including free databases on their website. With the action of open science, they’re shedding light on this research’s importance.
Research and Information Literacy Services Librarian Christina Hilburger has organized this new initiative and will head events and workshops throughout the year. Reed Library is even organizing a second Dryad workshop for researchers to learn about storing and sharing research data.
According to Hilburger, the goal of Reed Library’s Year of Open Science is, “to usher in a transformative era in national open science policy.”
She emphasized that by “embracing open-access publishing, open data and other open practices, the library is actively contributing to a more inclusive dissemination of knowledge, and helping to dismantle traditional barriers to access.”
Hilburger also mentioned how, “adopting broader and more equitable access to scientific research is a moral imperative and a strategic move towards addressing societal issues efficiently.”
These principles of open science have been successfully advocated for and are being slowly adopted in different research communities. Hilburger also discussed how the “Year of Open Science” impacted many areas, including being a catalyst for COVID-19.
According to a BioMed Central (BMC) Medical Research Methodology that Hilburger shared, there is a call for a wider adoption of open science practices. This is why there must be a broader endorsement of open science principles.
Hilburger asserts that in this way, we can remind ourselves that science should always be a rigorous, reliable and transparent process. The importance of this is even greater in the context of a pandemic, in which research findings are being translated into practice even more rapidly.
Luckily for Reed Library and its team of staff members, the “Year of Open Science” has been proven valuable for the future of research.