The Plan includes seven recommendations to improve research
evaluation,[10] explicitly calling universities
and research centres to adhere to principles of the Declaration on
Research Assessment (DORA, 2012).[46] Amid them,
one principle calls to reduce the weight of bibliometric indicators such
as the journal impact factor and the candidate’s h -index) to
include service to society (“third mission”) and contributions to
advance open science.
Developed in 2012 during the Annual Meeting of the American Society for
Cell Biology held that year in San Francisco, the DORA declaration has
become a worldwide initiative all scholarly disciplines signed so far
(late 2022) by 19,531 individuals and 2636 organizations including
research funders, universities, research institutes, professional
societies, and scholarly publishers.
4. Outlook and Conclusions
The history of the uptake of open science practices in Italy in the
first two decades of the 21th century has several
lessons to teach to scholars based in other countries where the
transition to “more open, rigorous and reproducible
research”[26] is also taking place.
First, the case of Italy shows that the adoption of open science can be
actually driven by a small group of pioneering scholars and researchers.
In practice, an active minority comprised of Italy-based scholars and
researchers active in both natural and social and humanistic science
have actively engaged in open science, adopting its practices and
disseminating its value. Examples span from
chemistry[47] and law[48]through the earth[49] and
life[50] sciences, and include virtually all
disciplines.
Furthermore, the public discourse on open science in Italy has seen and
continues to see important and creative contributions such as those of
Caso,[48] Aliprandi,[23]Giglia,[24] Morriello,[51]Töttössy,[52] Gargiulo,[19]Galimberti,[10]Pievatoli,[53] and many others.
Second, the case of Italy where for many years no financial resources
nor personal incentives were actually provided to practitioners of open
science, shows that the uptake of open science can smoothly take place
also in economically developing countries, where financial resources
invested in research and education are a small fraction of those
available in economically developed countries like Italy.
Third, the slow uptake of open science practices in Italy was also due
to a prolonged lack of training to researchers potentially interested in
the shift to opening their scholarship activity. Hence, universities and
research policy makers interested in promoting the adoption of open
science might wish to shape educators capable to effectively educate
undergraduate students and researchers on the principles and tools of
open science.
Fourth, also in Italy researchers owning personal academic websites were
amid the first to use the World Wide Web to openly share the outcomes of
their research and educational work with colleagues from across the
world and with their students. In other words, the delay of Italy’s
researchers to embrace the shift first to OA and then to open science
has been partly due also to the limited use of the World Wide Web by
Italy’s researchers to autonomously disseminate their research,
educational and service to society activities.
As the practice of open science increases, to paraphrase
Watson,[1] all publications will be freely and
openly accessible, raw data and methods well described and reproducible,
software released and peer reviews openly published and no longer
anonymous. The objective of open access, indeed, is to maximize research
impact by maximizing research access,[39] but the
objective of open science is to enhance science credibility by improving
all steps of the scientific research process including the final
dissemination step. This, inter alia , requires to rediscover
intellectual humility in which the limitations of any research work are
explicitly presented by the authors and their consequences incorporated
into the conclusions.[54]
Remarkably, the latter study including five important recommendations on
how to practically increase humility in scientific
articles,[54] is self-archived and openly
accessible at the repository of the University of
Groningen[55] (whereas single access to the
article published in the paywalled journal in which it was published
currently costs $32).
The present succinct analysis of the adoption of open science in Italy
also shows evidence that, as it happens at the CNR where researchers
rely on self-determination to outclass a shrinking research
budget,[56] a small group of researchers and
librarians self-determined to practice and disseminate research carried
out according to the principles of open science, advocated its value for
nearly two decades within a research community showing a prolonged lack
of interest.
Eventually, by late 2022 Italian scholars and researchers may access
increasingly numerous informative and educational resources on open
science. Many universities and research centers have created open
science offices. A national open science plan has been published, and an
intense intellectual debate on open science is taking place in the
specialized literature. Every year, furthermore, the aforementioned
associations and “networks” organize in Italy conferences and meetings
on open science no longer attended solely by open science advocates, but
by researchers finally interested to learn how to adopt the principles
of open science in their research activities.
Much remains to be done in Italy concerning the uptake of open science
in education, especially undergraduate education, that goes much beyond
open educational resources to include a new relationship between
educational and research work,[57] and new
evaluation of scholarship.[7]
Author Information
Rosaria Ciriminna - Istituto per lo Studio dei Materiali
Nanostrutturati, CNR, via U. La Malfa 153, 90146 Palermo, Italy;
orcid.org/0000-0001-6596-1572;
E-mail:
rosaria.ciriminna@cnr.it
Mario Pagliaro - Istituto per lo Studio dei Materiali
Nanostrutturati, CNR, via U. La Malfa 153, 90146 Palermo, Italy;
orcid.org/0000-0002-5096-329X;
E-mail:
mario.pagliaro@cnr.it
Conflict of interest
The Authors declare no conflict of interest.
Acknowledgements
This study is dedicated to Subbiah Arunachalam for all he has done to
promote and disseminate the principles and tools of open science in
India.
Keywords: open science • Italy • open access • open scholarship
• preprint • self-archiving