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Open Science

Open Access, or Open Science is the movement to make scientific research (including publications, data, physical samples, and software) free, immediate, online availability of research articles coupled with the rights to use these articles fully in the digital environment to all levels of society, amateur or professional. Open science is transparent and accessible knowledge that is shared and developed through collaborative networks.   

Open Science encompasses practices such as publishing open research, campaigning for open access, encouraging scientists to practice open-notebook science, broader dissemination and engagement in science and generally making it easier to publish, access and communicate scientific knowledge.

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) – first in 2013 and now in 2022 – have affirmed the importance of public access to the outputs from federally funded research. It is worth noting that the 2022 memo moves the official OSTP stance more towards an open access posture (e.g., removal of the 12 month embargo period for papers). In accordance with the memorandum, OSTP recommends that federal agencies, to the extent consistent with applicable law:   

  1. Update their public access policies as soon as possible, and no later than December 31st, 2025, to make publications and their supporting data resulting from federally funded research publicly accessible without an embargo on their free and public release; 
  2. Establish transparent procedures that ensure scientific and research integrity is maintained in public access policies; and, 
  3. Coordinate with OSTP to ensure equitable delivery of federally funded research results and data.

Levels of Open Access​

The main types or levels of open access (OA) are:

  • Diamond: Articles published with no fees to neither reader nor author.
  • Gold: Articles published directly in an OA journal and immediately, openly available via the publisher's website.
  • Green: Articles published in traditional journals but then self-archived by the author in a repository or OA archive.
  • Hybrid: Traditional subscription journals that offer an OA option if authors pay a (typically hefty) publishing fee, known as an article processing charge (APC).
  • Bronze: Articles published in traditional journals but made freely available at the discretion of the publisher without a formal license, meaning no guarantee of reuse or permanency.

Categories denoting various levels of access and reuse continue to evolve and come in and out of use. Other types you might see include: Libre, Gratis, Delayed, Black.

Were can you publish research?​

A preprint is a full draft research paper that is shared publicly before it has been peer reviewed. Most preprints are given a digital object identifier (DOI) so they can be cited in other research papers. Preprints achieve many of the goals of journal publishing, but within a much shorter time frame.  

Some publications allow publishing of the finished work for free or at a cost, ideally this cost should be built into the grant from the start. You can publish in several ways:

Here is a research guide to help you: https://researchguides.uvm.edu/scholarlymetrics/OA

You can also search journals and get an understanding of their costs and policies here https://doaj.org/

Where can you publish code from research?​

The most common places to publish code is on platforms like GitHub, or GitLab (UVM has an official GitLab account which you sign into with you netID). If your code is stored in GitHub, you can archive your repository and get a permanent citable DOI by archiving in either Zenodo or Figshare. These are data repositories that allow management of all kinds of data, and are both free for researchers to use. Zenodo and Figshare can also be used to store research data. MIT has a great guide here. A GIT primer is here.   Making your software citable both gains credit for your work, and improves reproducibility of research that relies on the software. There are a variety of ways to make your software citable:

  • Publishing your software in a software journal provides a citation with a persistent identifier, and provides peer review.
  • Publishing your software in a major general replication archive provides a citation with a persistent identifier, and usually allows you to publish citable new versions of the software as you choose.
  • If you publish software in Github, you can create a citable archived version whenever you choose, through Zenodo.
  • If you publish software in a channel that does not directly support citation, you can include a citation file in the software itself.

Where can you publish data from research?​

The UVM Library has some great resource to help publish research data, go here to learn more