It’s not just culture that suffers because of walls built by copyright: science, too, has a terrible problem in this regard. In some ways, that’s even worse, since copyright often prevents the free, frictionless flow of information in the form of academic papers, reports, books etc. that will lead to more research and more discoveries. Here, copyright is throwing sand in the engine of science, and holding back humanity’s progress.
Fortunately, researchers are waking up to this colossal brake on their ability to innovate. Increasingly, they are embracing open access – making their research papers freely available to all – along with open data, publishing the raw information they gather. Together, these form what is often called open science and open research. Governments, too, are finally realising the benefits. Here’s the UK government funding work to promote open science and open research:
A consortium of 18 universities – members of the UK Reproducibility Network – has received significant funding to drive uptake of open research practices across the sector, furthering the UK’s position at the forefront of rigorous and reproducible research.
The Bristol-led project is worth £8.5M over five years and includes £4.5M from the Research England Development (RED) Fund.
Open research ensures transparency across the research lifecycle, promoting rigour, reproducibility, and public trust in research. The benefits of open research practices for improving the quality and integrity of research have been widely documented, and are recognised by the UK Government R&D Roadmap as contributing to improving the culture of research.
Open access and the scandal of academic publishing is a topic we’ll be discussing in future Walled Culture posts and interviews. You will be shocked by what is happening in this field.
Featured image by pxfuel.
