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Concept
Open research
Summary
Open research is research that is openly accessible by others. Those who publish research in this way are often concerned with making research more transparent, more collaborative, more wide-reaching, and more efficient. Open research aims to make both research methods and the resulting data freely available, often via the internet, in order to support reproducibility and, potentially, massively distributed research collaboration. In this regard, it is related to both open source software and citizen science.
Especially for research that is scientific in nature, open research may be referred to as open science. However, the term can also implicate research done in fields as varied as the social sciences, the humanities, mathematics, engineering and medicine.
Important distinctions exist between different types of open projects.
Projects that provide open data but don't offer open collaboration are referred to as "open access" rather than open research. Providing open data is a necessary but not sufficient condition for open research, because although the data may be used by anyone, there is no requirement for subsequent research to take place openly. For example, though there have been many calls for more open collaborative research in drug discovery and the open deposition of large amounts of data, there are very few active, openly collaborative projects in this area.
Crowdsourcing projects that recruit large numbers of participants to carry out small tasks which are then assembled into a larger project outcome have delivered significant research outcomes, but these projects are distinct from those in which participants are able to influence the overall direction of the research, or in which participants are expected to have creative input into the science behind the project.
Most open research is conducted within existing research groups. Primary research data are posted which can be added to, or interpreted by, anyone who has the necessary expertise and who can therefore join the collaborative effort.
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