We're sorry but this page doesn't work properly without JavaScript enabled. Please enable it to continue.
Feedback

The value dimensions of open science: from open access to public science

00:00

Formal Metadata

Title
The value dimensions of open science: from open access to public science
Title of Series
Number of Parts
41
Author
License
CC Attribution 3.0 Germany:
You are free to use, adapt and copy, distribute and transmit the work or content in adapted or unchanged form for any legal purpose as long as the work is attributed to the author in the manner specified by the author or licensor.
Identifiers
Publisher
Release Date
Language
Producer
Production Year2022
Production PlaceKyiv, Ukraine

Content Metadata

Subject Area
Genre
Computer animation
Computer animation
Computer animation
Computer animation
Transcript: English(auto-generated)
Dear colleagues, dear ladies and gentlemen, hello. My name is Yuri Milkov. I am a philosopher working at the Institute of Higher Education at the National Academy of Educational Sciences of Ukraine. In fact, our department is engaged in research about the topic of open science,
so I would like to share with you some of my ideas and research results, particularly on the topic of the very dimensions of open science and the perspective of its development, particularly from open access to public science. When we consider the contemporary
state of science, we see that there are some quite difficult problems that hinder the development of science. There are some obstacles for the development of science, which I would
like to single out into two major groups, so-called external obstacles problems and internal problems. However, the main basic general feature of all those problems, in my opinion, is, so to say, the mass nature of the contemporary science, because before the
20th century, especially before the 19th century, science was an activity that only few people from different nations used to develop, mostly in their life activity. They were just enthusiastic. Suddenly, in the 20th century, science has become the occupation of
millions, both the whole army of university teachers and research fellows, and as a compulsory task for the undergraduate students who have to do at least some term papers.
And as we count the external obstacles for such a development, we see that the science now faces the crisis of society, the crisis of its state, the crisis of science as a social impact,
particularly in less developed countries. Science does not have a lot of prestige, and its activity does not get much funds because the government could not allow to support scientists and academic activity. The organizational difficulties I would like to
talk about is the way that due to the contemporary development of science, its high level of its differentiation, it is very difficult for an academic to follow the
research activity on the adequate level of novelty, because especially in some disciplines, it requires a lot of expensive equipment and always an access to academic journals that
have to be paid for the access to their publication. But the most overlooked problem of the contemporary science is its internal obstacle for its development. That is the lack of motivation for scientific search, which now would be attributed not to just
the undergraduate student, but to many professional teachers, university teachers, and research fellows as well. Well, in order to show the problems of that internal nature, I would like to refer to the level of violation of academic integrity,
that is, to the average level of plagiarism in the books by the undergraduate students. I do not list my sources here. There are many sources that show that in most countries of the world, like in the United States, in Ukraine, and in neighboring countries,
the level of plagiarism in the books by undergraduate students is about 75 to 90 percent. It's quite high, and one can say that such a high feature could either surprise or lead to
some pessimistic evaluation. However, as a philosopher, I would rather like to notice that such high feature of plagiarism is the result of the lack of internal intention, internal motivation for scientific search, because students are forced to do some
papers, and instead of following their own research, instead of writing their own papers, when they have no motivation, when they have no ability, no interest in scientific research, they resort to copying papers on the internet. In fact, in fact, it could be surprising that
such behavior is, in my opinion, a direct sequence of the closeness of the scientific community, because society as a general, society as a whole, has no interest in scientific research.
And that's why I see the concept of open science, the movement of open science, is a nice way to solve those obstacles, to overcome those problems. Well, according to the definition of open science that was formulated a few years ago
in the document titled The Amsterdam Call for Action of Open Science. According to this document, science is seen as an agency that is able to perform a whole
redesign, re-enterization of scientific society by the science becoming faster to address social challenges, it becomes inclusive, it becomes even a citizen's time. And in order for the science to become citizen's time, it has to be, there might be some radical
changes in the way how society evaluates, understands, remarks science, because it is The Amsterdam Call for Action on Open Science that assures that when scientists, academics
themselves compete on the number of publication in different respective journals, it is difficult to say about inclusive science under such situation, because the science has to be open to the society as a whole. However, open science is a very complex concept,
and some call it an umbrella term, but I think that it is not quite the correct to call it the umbrella term, because an umbrella term means there are some different opposite, even non-connected aspects of it. However, I would like to say that the structure of open
science presents quite a systematic conflict. I would like to show that there are three levels of the open science we can talk about. The most known one, the lower level, is the level of open access. It is the level of practice, it is the level of behavior of procedure, which
has its goal in providing open access to data, to publication. However, I would like to say that this level is to be complemented by the middle level of methodology and collaboration of scientists.
It is the level of services that enables scientists to conduct some international interdisciplinary collaboration. And the most interesting one, and the most upper level, is the level of knowledge, is the level of theories, the level of ideas, which has its goal
in the most broad form of realizing open science, that is in creating citizen science, in creating public science, in achieving the re-enterization of science into the idea as a whole. Well, if you look at practices of open science, it will be very easy to notice
that while the idea of open access predates the idea of open science as a whole by quite a few years, we now have open access being realized to the most broad extent,
while still not realized in full. Some surveys conducted in Ukraine and some other countries show that many university teachers have no idea about open science. They have not even heard about it. While most of them have heard about open access and even tried some publications in
the open access magazine and journal. However, in my opinion, it is the upper level, the middle level of the open science and its structure, which are currently found to be difficult to be realized in practices because the lack of legal basis and the pressure from academic
community in that form of closeness of academic community, in that form of competition between academics on the number of publications, hinders the development of the upper level, the various level of open science. And that values of open science for now remain mostly in declaration
because some organizations and universities declare that they follow the values of open science or democratization of science, but it is hardly identical to the realization of those values in
practices. Well, the values of science, I think that the values of open science are just the same as the ethos of science, ethos of science formulated by Robert Merkon, the founder of the theology of science already in 1943. And especially open science corresponds to the
history of science, that is the universalism. Universalism means that science has no borders, has no limits, it is virtually open to humanity as a whole. communism means that the result of scientific investigations could be not a private property, they are property of all the humankind.
And disinterestedness refers to that very problem of the motivation for scientific search, that there could be no motivation for scientific search for research, but disinterested search for the truth, something we can hardly see in most of academic staff and the undergraduate students.
So, I would even say that those problems by academic community does not follow the ethos of science, does not follow the ideals of universalism and disinterestness. Then we have what becomes opposite of open science, then we have closeness of academic
community, that closeness is the way when academic community seems to follow not the ideals of science, but some of its particular values instead of universal values of research. That is, the openness of science corresponds to the openness of academic community
itself, to the idea of democratization of academic community, to the idea of inclusive education, because in fact the ideals of contemporary culture like rationality, democracy, ecumenism, academic freedom, they all come from the same source and
it is those of what the open science could rely upon. I think that the development of open science, the historical development of open science, well corresponds to democratization
and humanization of science, because in the old days, as I used to say before the 19th century, before the 20th century in classical science, we have quite a democracy, but it was very limited democracy. It was a republic, the latter as it used to be called, a community of international scientists, but there were very few of them. On the opposite, in the 20th century, the science
became mass science. In the modern age, in the age of standardization, science becomes a debt of millions, the occupation of millions, but on the cost of its anti-democratization,
because the lack of interest, the lack of motivation are the direct result of that mass science of the modern age, and the contemporary science, in my opinion, is human commensurable science, because every person can now follow their own goals, their own values, and it is
what could be called the new enlightenment, when by the famous word of Kant, each human has to have the bravery to follow one's own mind. Well, when we talk about mass science,
we can refer to some critics of the possibility, of the very possibility of mass science, like the famous Spanish philosopher of the first half of the 20th century, used to say that science is a very delicate thing. It implies some core, which is very rare,
which is rarely found in human nature, and a scientist is like a modern monk, and to pretend that every contemporary student, every undergraduate student of today's university could be a scientist is a very funny thought. It's like a utopia. However, when I am talking about the possible
development from that mass science, when students, teachers are forced into the research, but have no ability, have no interest, have no motivation for research, and thus resort to plagiarism, thus resort to closed world, then we can see the way to develop public science
by transforming high education, by providing some holistic personal education. However, the problem is that it is not every student becoming a scientist, but every student forming
the ability to produce new knowledge during his or her whole life, instead of doing formal research work as an undergraduate student. That's what I call the possibility of public science, and it is necessary to consider open science on all levels, as I used to show, not just open
access, because open access is important for academic community, it's important for scientists, but in order for the science to be truly democratized, to be, to achieve through the humanization, through democratization, we have to think about re-institutation of science in society,
and thus we have to develop the ability to do some research in every person, in every member of society, because that's the only way to talk about citizen science, and in order to develop, we have to conduct a different approach to higher education, because it is of no use to
copy books from the internet, but it is of use to get some motivation for your own research, only if you follow your own goals, only if you intend to realize your own world. So that's why I think open science is such a complex and a very interesting and a very promising phenomenon,
which has to be developed alongside all these levels, not just open access, but methodology of servicing the collaboration between scientists, and especially the values of public science,
the values of democratic science. So thanks for your attention, I hope that was of interest to you. Thanks again.