Editorial: Open Science and Ethics

Abstract

Academic institutions in Europe (e.g.universities, research funding institutions, academies) are increasingly committing themselves to 'open science' principles (see e.g.http://openscienceasap. org/open-science/).Those principles are increasingly seen as the basis of good academic practice.They include a broad spectrum of considerations.On a primary level they include principles like 'transparent documentation of methodology' and 'peer review' that are already well-established elements of academic practices.On a secondary level they have to do with access to research (use of open sources and open access): access not only to the results of research, but also to underlying information, such as the empirical data on which research results are based.On a further level open science refers to a research culture in which research is communicated in ways that are not only accessible to specialists in a field.Open science principles require that such communication with various societal stakeholders should not only be a one-way communication (academics inform the public about their research results) but instead should be a two-way communication, in which relevant stakeholders should have significant impact on the formulation of research questions.Research processes should in this view be increasingly seen as responsive to public discussions and public interests.The role of research can be summarized as supporting society in understanding and solving societal challenges.The debate on 'open science' is at the moment primarily located on the level of funding bodies and university boards.But increasingly institutions have declared that they will organise their funding schemes according to open science principles and in some countries (like the Netherlands) there are discussions about whether appointments and promotions of academic staff should take into consideration to what extent the staff has shown their commitment and ability to confirm to those principles.And the strong support in Europe for Open Access (https://www.coalition-s.org/)has to be seen in this context as well.The protagonists of Open Science see Open Access as part of a more general change of research strategies.At first sight it seems to be self-evident that the ethics-community should embrace those open science principles unconditionally.Transparency, accessibility, and solving societal challenges are laudable goals.Understanding and solving societal challenges seems to be

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