[open-science] Tinkering knowledge sharing, or why we need to hack science (op-ed for Al-Jazeera English)

Tue Mar 26 11:32:55 UTC 2013

I'd like to further commend Rayna's excellent article in Al Jazeera

Tinkering knowledge sharing, or why we need to hack science (25th March,
2013)
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/03/2013325182246584689.html

It includes a lot of interesting projects I have to confess I wasn't aware
of before
e.g.
http://www.wikikids.nl/
http://fr.vikidia.org/wiki/Accueil
http://nestwatch.org/

Here's an extract (but do go and read the whole piece and watch the videos
too!):

"The cliche of the lonely scholar with an unhealthy look and asocial
behaviour is still widespread, but gets more and more pervasive as
communication technologies advance. What remains true, however, is the
conservatism and rigidity of research institutions. Science is built upon
data collection, analysis, critique and reuse, yet the ordinary
science-doing as imposed by research institutions requires secrecy, thus
working against the maximisation of knowledge dissemination. Before one
screams about paranoia, think of paywalls locking studies from access,
publication of datasets as PDFs or even images.

The reluctance to publish data and share knowledge openly has, however,
started to attract people's attention. A general move towards openness
generally referred to as "open
science<http://science.okfn.org/2012/11/28/making-open-science-possible-global-young-academy-statement-on-open-science/>
" has emerged, inspired from the spirit of the free and open source
software (FOSS) movement. Similarly to FOSS ethics, promoting software
source code to be made public, reusable and modifiable by anyone, the
central theme of open science is to clearly account for methods, generated
data and obtained results thus enabling a massively distributed
collaboration that speeds up the pace at which science is done.

A very powerful concept - "citizen science" - has naturally emerged along
the lines of open science. Countless professional researchers blog about
their work and discuss online results obtained by their peers. Such open
discussion permits non-professionals to participate as well. The surge of
the hacker/maker/do-it-yourself movement has tremendously contributed to
engage non-professional scientists in science."

Best,

Ross

--
Open Knowledge Foundation
Community Coordinator, Open Science
www.okfn.org
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