Open science reading list

Science has its problems, but many early career researchers (myself included) can often struggle when it comes to knowing how we can improve systems that we still very much have to operate within on a daily basis.

That said, I am a firm believer that making research readily available to others is something that we should all work towards where possible. This applies to publications, data, computer code/software and the peer review process.

The references below are taken from my own reading, but this list certainly isn't exhaustive.

All of these papers pull in the same direction. Specifically, they provide convincing evidence that open access research practices help science as well as the individual researcher. 

Early career researchers, who are typically gifted very little time to get ideas off the ground and demonstrate that they have societal importance, will help their own cause by ensuring that work is readily available across multiple disciplines and beyond.

Moving forward, the next major issue for open access is no longer whether it should be at the centre of the mainstream scholarly communication system, but how it will work effectively. 

Antelman, K. (2004). Do open-access articles have a greater research impact?. College & research libraries, 65(5), 372-382.

Atchison, A., & Bull, J. (2015). Will open access get me cited? An analysis of the efficacy of open access publishing in political science. PS: Political Science & Politics, 48(01), 129-137.

Bohannon, J. (2013). Who’s afraid of peer review. Science, 342(6154).

Davis, P. M. (2011). Open access, readership, citations: a randomized controlled trial of scientific journal publishing. The FASEB Journal, 25(7), 2129-2134.

Donovan, J. M., Watson, C. A., & Osborne, C. (2014). The open access advantage for American law reviews. Edison: Law+ Technology (JPTOS's Open Access Journal), Forthcoming.

Eysenbach, G. (2006). Citation advantage of open access articles. PLoS Biol,4(5), e157.

Gargouri, Y., Hajjem, C., Larivière, V., Gingras, Y., Carr, L., Brody, T., & Harnad, S. (2010). Self-selected or mandated, open access increases citation impact for higher quality research. PloS one, 5(10), e13636.

Gaule, P., & Maystre, N. (2011). Getting cited: does open access help?.Research Policy, 40(10), 1332-1338.

Gorgolewski, K. J., & Poldrack, R. (2016). A practical guide for improving transparency and reproducibility in neuroimaging research. bioRxiv, 039354.

Hajjem, C., Harnad, S., & Gingras, Y. (2006). Ten-year cross-disciplinary comparison of the growth of open access and how it increases research citation impact. arXiv preprint cs/0606079.

Harnad, S., & Brody, T. (2004). Comparing the impact of open access (OA) vs. non-OA articles in the same journals. D-lib Magazine, 10(6).

Kousha, K., & Abdoli, M. (2010). The citation impact of Open Access agricultural research: A comparison between OA and non-OA publications.Online Information Review, 34(5), 772-785.

Lawrence, P. A. (2008). Lost in publication: how measurement harms science. Ethics in science and environmental politics, 8(1), 9-11.

McKiernan, E. C., Bourne, P. E., Brown, C. T., Buck, S., Kenall, A., Lin, J., ... & Spies, J. R. (2016). How open science helps researchers succeed. eLife, 5, e16800.

PLoS Medicine Editors. (2006). The impact factor game. PLoS Med, 3(6), e291.

Piwowar, H. A., & Vision, T. J. (2013). Data reuse and the open data citation advantage. PeerJ, 1, e175.

Sandve, G. K., Nekrutenko, A., Taylor, J., & Hovig, E. (2013). Ten simple rules for reproducible computational research. PLoS Comput Biol, 9(10), e1003285.

Siebert, S., Machesky, L. M., & Insall, R. H. (2015). Overflow in science and its implications for trust. Elife, 4, e10825.

Walsh, E., Rooney, M., Appleby, L., & Wilkinson, G. (2000). Open peer review: a randomised controlled trial. The British Journal of Psychiatry,176(1), 47-51. 

Wang, X., Liu, C., Mao, W., & Fang, Z. (2015). The open access advantage considering citation, article usage and social media attention. scientometrics,103(2), 555-564.

Wicherts, J. M. (2016). Peer review quality and transparency of the peer-review process in open access and subscription journals. PloS one, 11(1), e0147913.

Van Rooyen, S., Godlee, F., Evans, S., Black, N., & Smith, R. (1999). Effect of open peer review on quality of reviews and on reviewers' recommendations: a randomised trial. Bmj, 318(7175), 23-27.

van Rooyen, S., Delamothe, T., & Evans, S. J. (2010). Effect on peer review of telling reviewers that their signed reviews might be posted on the web: randomised controlled trial. BMJ, 341, c5729.