Open science, also referred to as open scholarship, is a movement that promotes collaboration, transparency, accessibility and inclusivity in research inputs, processes and outputs. It includes all disciplines and aspects of scholarly practices, including basic and applied sciences, natural and social sciences and the humanities.

Open Science has been widely accepted as critical to advancing science and society. The reproducibility and replicability crises demonstrated the importance of being able to duplicate and verify scientific results. Pandemics and other emergencies showed the urgent need for equitable and open sharing of scientific knowledge and global collaboration.

For scholarship to advance and address society’s complex problems, it also needs to engage with citizens, policymakers and other community members who are directly impacted by the research.

Canadian and international funders recognize the importance of Open Science, and expectations for Research Data Management, Open Access, and other relevant areas are evolving. 

What is (and isn’t) Open Science?

According to the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science, open science is a set of principles and practices that aims to...

• increase collaborations and sharing of information
• make multilingual research from all fields openly available, accessible and reusable, and
• benefit researchers and society as a whole.

Open science aims to ensure that research knowledge is accessible and also that the production of that knowledge itself is inclusive, equitable, sustainable.

Open Science - Values and Principles

Open science doesn’t intend to make all research indiscriminately open. “As open as possible” means aiming to be true to UNESCO’s principles and values for Open Science while being thoughtful about protecting the researcher’s legitimate interests and, for example, confidentiality, human rights, research security and Indigenous knowledge.

Because of its complexity, scholarly work may be somewhere along the path to "openness.” Open Science may be incorporated to different extents in the overall research process (collaboration, inclusivity, etc.) as well as the research outputs (open data, open access publication, etc.).

Image provided by UNESCO

Pillars and Components of Open Science

Open science builds on four key pillars: open scientific knowledge, open science infrastructures, open engagement of societal actors and open dialogue with other knowledge systems, each with a number of components.

Image adapted from UNESCO