Open science and the new economy of knowledge

During the OuiShare Fest may the 3rd we facilitated a round table on Open science and the new economy of knowledge with actors from crowdfunding, open access and open science.

Le Vision Wall au OuiShare Fest 2013, photo prise par Carole Leclerc, CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 FR

What is at stake ?

With the growth of open science and open access movement, Ecosystem of knowledge evolve and is living a kind of revolution. New actors emerge with the rise of open data and open knowledge in general. New business models has to be found based on service and no more on production.

• Which are this new actors and initiatives?
• How do they insert and deal with the traditional models?
• Which are the new use and practice that we could we see happening with open science?

 Who was at the table ?

• Laurence Bianchini (MyScienceWork)
• Julien Hering (Tree of Science)
• Jean-Christophe Peyssard (Open Edition)
• Vincent Ricordeau (KissKissBankBank)

Bios & details available Here

Main points raised during the discussion

Limits to scale up open science

The main limits for scaling open science identified were located at three levels : public, researchers and institutions :

• Science is not as popular as it should/ could be. We are surrounded and should be amazed everyday by the scientific progresses. Mobile technologies are an example. If open science means more access to science, a greater attention by the public would be necessary.
• Researchers are trained to meet the academics standards and not always to be opened to the society. They find difficulties in communicating to a non-expert audience their researh.
• Institutions establish norms and standards that are not favorable to open approaches

Business models of open access : freemium + service

J.C. Peyssard explained the business model of open edition which opens access to a large number of scientific publication in Human Science : free for readers and premium services for libraries.

Mobilize the Crowd : crowdsourcing & crowdfunding

Among the possibilities to alleviate the cost of research, examples of crowdsourced researches were discussed.

Beyond the funding opportunity crowdfunding represents, the campaign pocess itself  is a way for researcher to have their work better known and understood.

Some crowdfunding plateforms offer specific services for funding research. Beyond this opportunity, the ability of researchers to leverage it was discussed. Are reasearchers trained and willing to « market » their research in order to get individuals funding ?

We are surrounded in our every day life by major scientific progresses (mobile technologies is the perfect example), let’s all acknowledge that and say : WE LOVE SCIENCE

illustration en une : Logo by Greg Emmerich / CC-BY-SA