Open science/Advantages and risks

On this page, you can discuss advantages and risks of open science.

Advantages

• Open scientists get ideas from non-scientists and other scientists regarding their work. This creates the potential for enriching their scientific process.
• If open scientists write about their work in a way which is understandable by non-scientists, scientific results are given to the public. This may result in a change of the public's image of science.

Risks

• Scientists often argue that publishing their work in progress would enable others to steal the ideas. But: If an open scientist writes about an idea, i.e. in his personal weblog, it is clear that he had the idea and when he had it. If other scientists read about his idea in the blog, they are obliged to reference the website.
• Writing about work in progress includes the risk of writing about erroneous thoughts. Open scientists make their mistakes public. But: Teachers tell their students in schools that they should understand mistakes as chances to learn. Wouldn't it be great if scientists would be models of learning from errors and reflecting on mistakes?

Literature

• G. Reinmann contrasts the ideas of online publishing of scientific papers with claims of publishers, publishing companies etc. in her weblog, based on personal experiences of own research activities.