OSI 2020 Annual Report

The summary, which I’m copying here largely verbatim over the next three pages, is that we need to seek common ground in our collective effort to bring about the future of open research, and that we need to do this for three main reasons: to understand the full scope of the challenges in this space; to identify the best possible, most effective, most sustainable solutions; and to avoid unintended. [...] Our default position in OSI is that we need to be more willing to embrace the diversity of thought, evidence and practice in this space— there’s a lot of it—and embrace all efforts that help create a more open world (at least to the extent they don’t squash this diversity in the process). [...] The proper question to ask is “how can we improve the quality of scientific research by improving research communication and access”? This is a much harder question to answer, and one that needs to work forward from first developing a better understanding of what researchers actually need, what systems and processes they will accept, and what these systems and process will contribute to research. [...] What are the barriers to and opportunities for change? Many barriers exist, including the inertia of the existing culture of communication in academia; an utter lack of trust between key stakeholder groups in the scholarly communication space; a lack of meaningful engagement by researchers in reform efforts; confusion about what “open” means; and a persistent preference of researchers to prioritiz. [...] If we can start there instead of from the position that we are right and others are wrong---if we can approach this task from the perspective of wanting to learn from each other and do what’s best for science---then the sky is truly the limit, and together, building on our common ground with facts and an open mind, we will surely achieve great things.