Second challenge: Sharing resources

This is the second challenge at the DDA Winter School for postdocs. In addition to theory and experimentation, a third aspect of science, namely the vast amount of data being produced and available to researchers especially for collaboration, has significantly changed the way science is done in recent years. You may have heard and thought carefully about open access publication, but have you thought about the more comprehensive concepts in open science, the “movement to make scientific research, data and their dissemination available to any member of an inquiring society, from professionals to citizens.” Despite the conspicuous benefits of open science, such as creating trust in the scientific community, sharing of resources and increasing data re-usability, many scientists are still reluctant to open up their knowledge and discoveries to the community, especially at an early stage. Major challenges to open science are restrictions such as data ownership, intellectual right properties, other political and economic reasons as well as lack of a clear reward system that promotes open science practices. In the most recent decade, novel communication technologies and platforms have emerged to facilitate information sharing, such as ResearchGate Q&A (to share lab experiences and help fellow scientists with specific protocols), BioArchives (to pre-publish your manuscripts), Addgene (for sharing detailed information about genetic constructs), Open Science Framework (OSF; to share your unpublished research concepts and enable collaborations) - to mention a few. However, there is still a wide range of opportunities to support and ease researchers' workflows to transit to a culture of openness.

Indeed, sharing information about recent discoveries can be viewed as risky for researchers, as the fear of ‘being scooped’ is tangible, jeopardising a publication in a high impact journal or falling short on securing further funding. Therefore, scientists often prefer to follow the traditional path and wait until their research/protocols are published in peer-reviewed journals. However, the road from manuscript submission to a publication is a long and tedious one that often leads to delays in contributing one’s discoveries to the body of scientific knowledge and making use of new discoveries in applied, translational and clinical science.