The Challenge: Researchers are incentivized to be first, not right. Agencies, such as the NIH and NSF, evaluated scholars on their publication records. This system incentivized researchers to exaggerate their individual contributions, and in the interest of competition, potentially hoard data and hide their mistakes. It might also have incentivized individual labs and researchers to work alone, even when collaborations could be better for scientific progress. How can we fix the incentives?
The Tool: Badges, transparency audits, openness metrics.
- Here is the job description for the open tenure-track position in BCS and Picower. In response to input from last year’s class, the language has been updated. What do you think of the current nod to open science? What changes would you recommend?
- Look at the BCS and School of Science websites. How could these organizations express commitments to open science that would fulfill e.g. the Wellcome Trust “guidance?” Suggest language, and where it would go on the website.
- Find a journal that uses Open Science badges, and find a paper that has badges. Do the authors include the corresponding badge on their CV or website?
- Find an author in a discipline close to yours who advertises their open science practices on their CV or personal website.
Critical evaluation of the tool. What is the promise of these tools in addressing this challenge? What are the biggest obstacles?
This response paper should be about 1-page long, single-spaced. Total points: 3.
