In recent years, there has been a growing effort to make scientific results and other outputs available to the widest possible range of users – as quickly as possible, without unnecessary restrictions and free of charge for the recipients.
This can be achieved in various ways, which are now grouped under the umbrella term “Open Science”.
Open science includes many tools that make use of modern computer and communication technologies. It aims to fundamentally change the way research results are published and even how science is done.
Making it easier to share knowledge should, among other things, make research faster and more efficient, improve its reproducibility, encourage broad collaboration and accelerate the implementation of innovations.
Essential elements of open science are Open Access (to scientific articles and other publications) and Open Data (publicly available research results, e.g. measurements or DNA sequences).
However, a number of other approaches can also be used to share information quickly or to involve other stakeholders in research projects.
Open Science tools are being used by an increasing number of researchers, as shown, for example, by the popularity of publishing preprints and publishing articles in Open Access journals.
The usefulness of open science was strongly demonstrated during the covid-19 pandemic, when biologists were able to quickly share the results of their studies, sequences of new viral variants and other important information to help manage the crisis.
Grant providers are also gradually signing up to the principles of open science. Some are already making it compulsory to publish the scientific outputs of projects they fund in this manner.
The importance of open science will therefore undoubtedly increase in the future. The purpose of this website is to help researchers at the Institute of Experimental Botany of the Czech Academy of Sciences to become familiar with its main principles and tools.
We will also gradually publish open science materials developed at the institute or specific experiences and case studies from the institute‘s scientists.