Case Studies for Open Science Q & A

As the first in a series of discussions about Librarians & the Changing Scholarly Environment, sponsored by Sage, we explored the Open Science initiative with Jill Emery, Collection Development Librarian, Portland State University, OR, and Robin Champieux, School of Communication Librarian, Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU). Readers will get a better understanding of how open our literature is today, the perspective of senior scientists, and how open science applies to aggregated databases.
SAGE_Publishing_logoAs the first in a series of discussions about Librarians & the Changing Scholarly Environment, sponsored by SAGE, we explored the Open Science initiative with Jill Emery, Collection Development Librarian, Portland State University, OR, and Robin Champieux, School of Communication Librarian, Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU). Readers will get a better understanding of how open our literature is today, the perspective of senior scientists, and how open science applies to aggregated databases. Q: How open is our literature? Are we really doing enough to make our scholarly record open? A: We can do a great service to library science students and the new generation of librarians by opening up our data. The data within libraries, the data that exists within nonprofits, and the various vendors that exist to serve libraries can be adapted and turned into open educational resources. As I talk to researchers and research support units like our data management team at our Clinical and Translational Research Institute, or with our Research Integrity Office, I bring up real life examples of open science. Do they see it as a good thing? They begin to see that the library has a perspective in this conversation, and that we have expertise and service to offer. The other thing we’re doing, at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis, is to plan a data boot camp that will bring the community together along with campus experts, students and faculty researchers, and library staff to talk about the resources and the expertise that we have available. —Jill Emery, Collection Development Librarian, Portland State University Q: You speak of students and early career researchers as the main drivers. What kind of reception do you receive from your established researchers? A. We’re positive, very active and intense, and very much goal and solution focused. We’re about projects that recognize the library’s expertise and ability to add value to the research process and scientific communication. A great example of that from our perspectives is the work we’ve been doing on thinking through a solution and workflows for biomedical imaging data sets. People are mining metadata and it’s so surprising, but it makes them (established researchers) want to do it better. They’re still fired up around the big issues as well. I don’t want to convey that we’ve won, and that I feel confident that the senior scientists and students on campus are fully engaged or even aware of the issues, but what we’re seeing is a sea change in terms of a few years ago, when these issues weren’t even discussed on campus, and now they are, in a high-profile way, and we’re really pleased by that trend. —Robin Champieux, School of Communication Librarian, Oregon Health & Science University Q: What are your thoughts on integration of open science and open access across institutions and availability in aggregated databases? A: What I would emphasize in terms of leveraging open content is not necessarily aggregation, but interoperability. If I think through data on my campus, very often for the structural proteomic data that researchers at OHSU are producing and creating, the best home for that is the protein database, which is immensely sophisticated and has robust support from the NIH [National Institutes of Health]. What I do want to see is that data more interoperable, more discoverable, and attributable as it relates to other kinds of data. —Robin Champieux, School of Communication Librarian, Oregon Health & Science University. As the open science conversation develops and evolves, we must continue to put forward the idea that research and data need to be accessible to and reusable by the broadest possible audience.
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