Research culture and practice is changing, as technologies, institutions, and funder requirements change. We think open research practice is the best approach for doing better, more useful, more powerful research. But like any change, it’s controversial.
Many senior researchers came up in and succeeded the old system, and are skeptical of anything new. Many publishers rely on a business model that is predicated on closed, paywalled content. And the fact that many researchers feel they must “publish or perish” can discourage collaboration and the open sharing of useful data and methods.
Have you heard some other challenges? Got your own great arguments for open research practice? Tell us about them here.
Finally, as noted at the start of this section, it may not be possible or be practical for you to run out and make all your research open and reproducible immediately. Start at a pace that makes sense for you: think about your own particular research situation and your institution, find an open practice or two that makes sense for your work, try them out and see how things go. Christie’s Bahlai’s blog post on “Baby Steps for the Open Curious” discusses how you can get started.