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Introduction

The movement toward open science has facilitated the dissemination of new information and insights and has spurred innovation. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine defines that open science “aims to ensure the free availability and usability of scholarly publications, the data that result from scholarly research, and the methodologies, including code or algorithms that were used to generate those data” (NASEM, 2018). While open science has the potential to close knowledge gaps and level the playing field for researchers in the United States and globally, there are barriers to bringing it to scale for broader use, particularly for those who carry out the research. Universities, funding agencies, societies, philanthropies, and industry all face varying challenges in implementing open science practices supportive of a rigorous, transparent, and effective research culture.

The National Academies Roundtable on Aligning Incentives for Open Science, established in 2019, has taken on an important role in addressing issues with open science. The roundtable convenes critical stakeholders to discuss the effectiveness of current incentives for adopting open science practices, current barriers of all types, and ways to move forward in order to align reward structures and institutional values. The roundtable convenes two times per year and creates a venue for the exchange of ideas and joint strategic planning among key stakeholders including universities, funding

agencies, societies, philanthropies, and industry whose organizations have ambitious missions. The roundtable aims to improve coordination among stakeholders and increase awareness of current and future efforts in the broader open science community, in an attempt to properly incentivize a more rigorous, transparent, and effective research culture.

An important focus of the roundtable’s work to date has been defining resources that can help key stakeholders discuss, develop, and deploy open science incentivization plans that are both consistent with common norms and appropriate for their specific communities. Given the points of leverage that these stakeholders manage (e.g., hiring, review, tenure and promotion, and funding), how can they be activated to create better alignment across research values, practices, and incentives? Put succinctly, incentives are the tools we use to ensure that research practices are consistent with the organizational values we espouse (see Figure 1-1).

WORKSHOP INTRODUCTION, CONTEXT, AND ORGANIZATION

To further elucidate some of these issues, a virtual public workshop on fostering open science practices was convened on November 5, 2020, in conjunction with the fall 2020 meeting of the roundtable. The broad goal of the workshop was to identify paths to growing the nascent coalition of

stakeholders committed to reenvisioning credit/reward systems (e.g., academic hiring, tenure and promotion, and grants) to fully incentivize open science practices. The workshop explored the information and resource needs of researchers, research institutions, government agencies, philanthropies, professional societies, and other stakeholders interested in further supporting and implementing open science practices (described further below).

The workshop also included a broad group of thought leaders and researchers to share perspectives on adopting and utilizing information resources compiled in the form of a toolkit. As background for the discussion, several toolkit elements developed by expert authors were circulated in advance of the workshop to stimulate discussion among the community about how such a toolkit might be used, what additional materials are needed, and how such a toolkit should be disseminated for broad adoption. The toolkit is primarily intended to assist university leadership, academic department chairs, research funders, learned societies, and government agencies; revised toolkit elements are included in Appendix C.

After framing remarks (summarized below), the agenda was organized in several sessions; this workshop proceedings follows the organization of the workshop. Chapter 2 summarizes presentations from various perspectives (university, disciplinary, and research funder) on adopting and utilizing the toolkit for open science. The session that followed included breakout discussions where participants were asked to identify priorities for the roundtable to bring incentive structures into alignment with open science practices. These discussions are summarized in Chapter 3 along with closing remarks. The appendixes include the agenda and biographical sketches of committee members and presenters (Appendixes A and B, respectively). The draft toolkit is in Appendix C.

INTRODUCTORY AND FRAMING REMARKS

Keith Yamamoto, co-chair of the Roundtable on Aligning Incentives for Open Science and vice chancellor for science policy and strategy of the University of California, San Francisco, opened the workshop with an introduction and framing remarks. He summarized the goal and purpose of the workshop, which is to bring together a wide range of stakeholders to discuss, develop, and deploy open science tools appropriate for specific stakeholder communities (i.e., university, disciplinary, and researcher funder) and to develop effective points of leverage for each of the stakeholder groups.

Yamamoto stated that workshop participants will discuss how best to identify and nurture an environment to support, encourage, recognize, and reward open science practices.

As described above, Yamamoto noted that the workshop will inform the development of a toolkit to promote open science practices. As part of this discussion, he noted that consideration of incentives is an important focus, including, for example, adopting and adapting signaling language to highlight an organization’s interest in open science activities and specific leverage points, such as grant applications or job postings.

Loretta Parham, chair of the workshop planning committee and chief executive officer and library director of the Robert W. Woodruff Library of the Atlanta University Center, offered introductory and welcome remarks to participants, adding that the goal of the workshop is to advance the movement to make open science the norm.

Thomas Kalil, co-chair of the Roundtable on Aligning Incentives for Open Science and chief innovation officer of Schmidt Futures, discussed the goal of the breakout sessions, which is to build a coalition of stakeholders engaged and invested in creating powerful incentives for open science. Breakout session participants will identify actions they can individually take to create these incentives, and they will identify gaps where more work is needed.

Kalil highlighted the importance of professional societies in this issue, describing the example of the Council of Graduate Departments of Psychology, which has been moving the field forward by creating resources for department chairs to encourage open science, such as research training methods and draft tenure and promotion language. Similarly, the provost of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology issued a call for each department laboratory and center to create local plans to encourage and support open sharing.

Kalil added that while these examples are encouraging, given the many types of data and publications that are produced across different disciplines, efforts to support open science across these disciplines will require an all-hands approach. Breakout sessions provide an opportunity for participants to reflect and share actions they can take as part of a larger effort to move this area forward.