The core of my frustration with #OpenScience practices:
We cannot have a true Open Science until we dispel the myth that papers contain usable descriptions of scientific processes.
This cannot happen until researchers are trained, using evidence-based pedagogy, to read scientific articles for USE, not citation, not argument support, but USE!!!
In my seminars, all learners leave convinced we need a documentation system grounded in usability, & that papers are NOT fit for purpose. >>
This happens by positioning researchers as users of scientific information, instead of as producers. Instead of focusing on putting a paper out, researchers begin to see what information they need from others, and what information others need from them, to apply & use knowledge.
This simple, yet indispensable mind-shift, is crucial to creating and strengthening scientific knowledge creation networks where that knowledge is reconcieved as part of the commons, ergo, a true #OpenScience >>
This means the goal of my work on teaching to read scientific journal articles is NOT to rescue them, but to guide researchers in seeing with their own eyes, through their own experience, that we need to:
1. get rid of papers
2. create usable scientific documentation systems grounded in how human minds work and understand information.
@aeryn_thrace The fact that papers are used to measure researchers against each other for career advancement seems like a big obstacle to the necessary changes you describe, unfortunately.
I agree with you that an actionable and collective "knowledge system" is better than a pile of PDFs, but a bigger reform of how academia functions might be required first.
@Guillawme No doubt it's required.
2 points about the current system:
1. It hasn't been around for that long. It's easy to thing that this is the way things have always been but they haven't. I went to school with people who got tenure track positions with one paper (early 2000s).
2. It's not sustainable, and is already showing cracks: exponential growth of predatory publishers and A.I. generated papers. And that's not even considering the reproducibility crisis. >>
Researchers are public servants, and our service is to create usable knowledge. We can't keep publishing extremely expensive papers that are virtually unusable without contact with the original authors without expecting the societies funding us to not notice.
@melisgl True though the reason we write papers is presumably to contribute to the scientific record such that our science can be understood, potentially reproduced and built upon.
That can't happen with the inconsistently incomplete info available in papers. You may argue that science does build on past discoveries but it does so by reading between the lines and educated guessing, which produces exorbitant amounts of research waste, e.g. the file-drawer problem.
But returning to users >>
If say a policy maker is going to use some piece of scientific information, it should be well documented enough so that a science advisor can evaluate the reliability of that science. Without accurate and complete documentation, that assessment cannot happen, thus creating a situation where the policy maker may support actions that are not scientifically sound, with dire social repercussions.
No matter who is using the science, sound foundational documentation is essential.
@aeryn_thrace When I argue for more reproducibility, meaningful review or more quality control in general, I get this pushback:
"The individual paper is not a complete product. The overall knowledge of the field is. Science is a noisy process that time smooths. If you want quality and filtering, you have to wait."
I think relying on time to such extent is inefficient, but it's hard to know how much quality control leads to the most efficient science. You seem to be arguing that we need more.
Monica Gonzalez-Marquez
Guillaume Gaullier
Gábor Melis