[open-science] Open Science Sweden

Mon Sep 30 10:37:34 UTC 2013

Hi All

I'd like to introduce you to Simone, who is reigniting activity over at the
Stockholm Open Science group (founded by Egon Willighagen) and hopes to get
local open science meetups and discussions taking place in Sweden.

http://science.okfn.org/2013/09/30/stockholm-open-science/

It's really useful to speak with like minded people locally and also look
at what can be done on a local level to facilitate open science activities
and policies so if you are based in Sweden and would like to get in touch -
head over to https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/stkhmos and introduce
yourself!

Please do spread this around your networks!

Jenny

Hi
I am Simone, senior post-doc at the department of medical biochemistry and
biophysics at Karolinska Institutet.
I decided to join this group in order to promote awareness toward OPEN
ACCESS. This concept has been pioneered in the computer community and
resulted in amazing progresses that affected not only the computer
community itself but the all world. In science open access found his way in
astronomy, particle physics and genomics.
I believe that a similar approach should be taken in many more branches of
science, especially in the medical field.

I know is not a simple task and in order to have such a big change, we need
to develop a new "scientific method" and slowly start a scientific
revolution. In order to be effectively able to share information we need to
change our way to do science, the way through which scientist are evaluated
and also how funding are distributed. I know it is a complex issue but we
need to start somewhere. I believe that we need to work on it from the
'inside' and start to build from the ground up a new way to do science.
Data generation, data crunching and even the classical "wet bench" science
changed a lot in the past few decades, however the way we are judged, we
get grants and communicate our research to the outside world is stacked in
the past. Now it is time to roll up our sleeves and start to do something.

Even if in many countries the economical crisis is hitting science really
hard, here in Sweden there is still the opportunity to be founded and do
science. The government has been pouring money in rich data projects such
as Scilife labs. VR is offering quite a few start-up grants and many
private foundations are investing in research. So I believe that this is a
good time to start to work in changing the way "we do science", to make
founding agencies aware that is "ok" to have full access to the data
generated with their founding and that by sharing we can do bigger jumps
and progress faster. Because I am a scientist I know that not everything we
do generate a figure in a final report, much of the work is saved in some
external HD for "who knows how long". We should be able to open up this HD,
share the negative data (of course getting credit for them) so if another
scientist will decide to follow a similar path, he or she will not have to
"re-invent" the wheel and deal with the same issues we previously
encountered.

Sorry for this long, long post. There is a lot that need to be fixed and
polished and I strongly believe that we as scientist have to start this new
scientific revolution.

Cheers,

Simone
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