Open Science

Resources

Definitions

Open [science] aims to transform [science] by making it more reproducible, transparent, reusable, collaborative, accountable, and accessible to society. (The Turing Way Community 2021)

…open science is […] an inclusive construct that combines various movements and practices aiming to make multilingual scientific knowledge openly available, accessible and reusable for everyone… (UNESCO 2021)

Successes

  • Between 2004 and 2024, the number of fragile p-values (\(.01<p<.05\)) published in the psychological literature has markedly decreased. Sample sizes have increased, effect sizes slightly decreased. (Bogdan 2025)
  • As of July 2025, the Center for Open Science lists over 300 journals that provide an option for submission of Registered Reports.

Opportunities

Additionally, few policymakers have access to academic journals behind paywalls, meaning that publishing open access can help make research available to decision makers. Open access publishing can also support scientific literacy in the wider population, playing an important role in tackling misinformation. (Fell, Watson, and Huebner 2024)

Journals can help [detect paper mills] by promoting open science and demanding the raw data for studies — the more information is available about papers, the easier it is to spot new tricks by paper mills. (Abalkina et al. 2025)

References

Abalkina, Anna, René Aquarius, Elisabeth Bik, David Bimler, Dorothy Bishop, Jennifer Byrne, Guillaume Cabanac, Adam Day, Cyril Labbé, and Nick Wise. 2025. “‘Stamp Out Paper Mills’ — Science Sleuths on How to Fight Fake Research.” Nature 637 (8048): 1047–50. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-00212-1.
Bogdan, Paul C. 2025. “One Decade Into the Replication Crisis, How Have Psychological Results Changed?” Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science 8 (2): 25152459251323480. https://doi.org/10.1177/25152459251323480.
Fell, Michael J., Nicole E. Watson, and Gesche Huebner. 2024. “Open Science and the Climate Crisis.” PLOS Climate 3 (2): e0000336. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000336.
The Turing Way Community. 2021. “The Turing Way: A Handbook for Reproducible, Ethical and Collaborative Research.” Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5671094.
UNESCO. 2021. “UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science - UNESCO Digital Library.” https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000379949.locale=en.