What do Open Science, Access, Source, & Standards mean, anyway?
The terms Open Science, Open Access, Open Source can confuse the general public. Below, we’ve put together a primer on these concepts, and how they apply to our project.
The Real Vegan Cheese project is not a biotech startup. Though we were the first group working on developing dairy products through precision fermentation, our goal is not to monopolize all possible Intellectual Property in this field. Rather, we are passionate about developing the technology and making sure that it remains open and accessible to people and companies that want to use it. Sometimes, that means pushing back on some of the patents that other companies are trying to claim, which in our view are too broad.
Open Science
From the development to the dissemination of knowledge, several concepts belong under the umbrella term of “Open Science”.
In general, Open Science (OS) is the movement to make scientific research, data, and their dissemination available to any member of an inquiring society, from professionals to citizens. It draws upon principles of scientific growth and public access, including practices such as publishing open research and campaigning for open access, with the ultimate aim of making it easier to publish and communicate scientific knowledge.
By broadening the principles of openness to the whole research cycle, OS fosters sharing and collaboration, bringing a systemic change to the way scientific research is done. The transition towards a comprehensive, effective open science is not an easy one; albeit challenging, a multifaceted cultural change remains essential to ensure scientific efforts have a real-world impact.
Real Vegan Cheese strongly believes in open science and operates as a project that is open to anyone of any age to participate in. Additionally, we aim to openly share and publish data, protocols, and even strains, as it is appropriate.
A couple useful links on Open Science:
Open Access
The term “Open Access” means that scholarly publications are free to read for anyone who wants to access them. This is different from the traditional way of publishing scholarly articles, where people must pay to read them. Open access helps to ensure long-term access to scholarly articles, because anyone can create a copy of them.
The open access movement is a response to the high cost of many scholarly journals. With traditional journal publication methods, it is not uncommon for an institution to have to pay for an article twice. First, they pay scholars to produce the work and then the institution's library pays to purchase the work back from the journal publisher. However, with the advent of new technologies and software programs, it is becoming increasingly less expensive to compile and distribute scholarly information.
By using different funding methods and electronic delivery of journals, the costs can be absorbed by alternative means to subscription fees. Open access also helps ensure long-term access to scholarly articles. Unlike articles that are licensed in traditional article databases, libraries and others can create local copies and repositories of these resources.
The idea is that by making articles available for free, more people will be able to read and use them. There are nine different types of open access, and the idea is growing in popularity because it can help reduce the costs of scholarly journals. Libraries, by working together to make repositories of open access literature, can ensure continued access to these scholarly publications into the distant future.
Different open access models include:
e-print archive (authors self-archive pre- or post-prints),
Unqualified (immediate and full open access publication of a journal),
Dual mode (both print subscription and open access versions of a journal are offered),
Delayed open access (open access is available after a certain period of time),
Author fee (authors pay a fee to support open access),
Partial open access (some articles from a journal are available via open access),
Per-capita (open access is made available to countries based on per-capita income),
Abstract (open access available to table of contents/abstracts, and
Co-op (institutional members support open access journals).
The Real Vegan Cheese project is committed to making its work available to anyone, for any use, at cost or free wherever possible.
Also check out the new US policy on Open Access research - Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research
Open Source
Open Source software is software that is available for free and includes the source code. This allows anyone to improve the software by providing enhancements and bug fixes. Libraries can save money by using open source software because it is free or very low cost. Open source software is also often easier to implement and support.
Open source software is software that anyone can download and use for free. It is usually developed by a community of people who work on it together. Librarians and systems administrators can install complete production-ready versions of open source software to try it out, without having to pay for it or get permission from the people who made it. If they like it, they can use it, or they can add features to it themselves if they know how to code.
Since the source code is accessible for anyone to view and change, anyone can fix it if there’s a problem. Proprietary software on the other hand, is software that only the company who made it can view and change the code for. This can be a problem if the company goes out of business or decides to stop supporting the software. Because of this, open source software usually has more support options than proprietary software
Over the years, Real Vegan Cheese has worked to incorporate open source tools and software into our project, as appropriate, and strongly supports the open source software movement that has inspired and given us the foundation for our own work towards open science.
Open Standards
An Open Standard is a standard that is not encumbered by a patent and can be used and accessed by anyone without cost. Open standards are important because they help us keep track of information and make sure it is available for people to use in the future. But there are some problems with trying to keep track of information digitally.
One such problem is that computers and other technology gets outdated quickly, so the information might not be accessible on new devices after a few years. Another problem is that sometimes the software or formats that are used to store information become unavailable, so people can't read the information anymore. Organizations that keep track of information have to be able to account for these problems so that people can still access the information in the future.
If a file format is open, that means that anyone can look at how it works and create a program to read it. This is good because it means that if the format becomes obsolete, someone can just make a new program to read the old files. Also, open formats are more reliable than proprietary formats. Open standards help systems communicate with each other so that people can use them to access information easily.
There are many organizations that are advocating for open standards. One of the most prominent organizations is The Open Group, which created the Developer Declaration of Independence. The hope is that the Developer Declaration of Independence will help pull together the information technology industry in support of open standards. Some library-centric initiatives, including the Open Archives Institute (OAI), also support open standards. OAI's mission is to develop and promote "interoperability standards that aim to facilitate the efficient dissemination of content" (Open Archives Institute 2005). OAI has created a Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) that provides an application-independent interoperability framework based on metadata harvesting. Other common open standards for information retrieval relevant to libraries include Digital Object Identifier System (DOI), Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI), and OpenURL.
Open standards are rules or guidelines that are set by a group or organization for how something should be done. The use of open standards in librarianship means that there are agreed-upon rules for how things like the card catalog should be organized and formatted. This makes it easier for libraries to share information with each other.
Open Standards in biotechnology are still sorely lacking, especially when many research tools and reagents are bogged down with IP claims. The Real Vegan Cheese project is eager to adopt more open standards and urge for their development.
Putting Open Science, Open Access, Open Source, and Open Standards Together
Open Science, Open access, open source, and open standards offer benefits to communities. Open source and open standards can help libraries provide patrons with easier access to open access materials and other resources. There are literally thousands of open access titles available and without open standards it would be very difficult to find what one is looking for or to view various articles.
Open standards are agreements that allow different types of technology to work together. Open source software is software that anyone can look at and change. When technology changes, it can be hard to move data to the new technology. But if you use open standards and open source software from the beginning, it will be easier to move the data later on.
Conclusion
These benefits of open access, open source, and open standards are numerous. The benefits include lower costs, great accessibility, and better prospects for long-term preservation of scholarly works. Libraries should embrace all three of these concepts now and in the future. By supporting open access, open source, and open standards libraries not only can help ensure that their current and future patrons will have easier and more comprehensive access to scholarly research, they will also be helping other libraries around the world, including those in disadvantaged areas, to have access to important scholarly research.