December 15, 2021 Presentation Open Access

Leveraging the Power of Community for Open Science

Hussein, Abdullahi Bihi

Abstract

The collaborative networks that make open science possible are made of the people and organizations who actually produce and also consume open science. This is basically the essence of community and it has a far more significant potential than it seems to capitalize on. The continuity of the efforts to boost open science rests on strengthening the sense of community among the scientists and within the institutions.

Three perspectives on the issue are presented in this discussion. The community as the foundation or platform for driving open science adoption perspective calls for the strategic structuring of communities in a hierarchically-organized manner but with less red-tape to not discourage innovation agility; the community as a producer-consumer perspective focuses on putting into effect rules and protocols for exchanging open science artifacts within the community modeling open source licenses; and the community as the incubation grounds for young scientists perspective calls for implementing support group strategies that encourage more young people to engage in science and contribute to the open science efforts.

Exploiting the power of community effectively has the potential of keeping more senior and young scientists engaged in the open science efforts. The research and education networks need to look beyond connectivity and nurture communities from their end-user communities to empower them to create open science and knowledge.