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“It’s messy and it’s massive”: How has the open science debate developed in the post-COVID era?

2025· preprint· en· W4410500507 on OpenAlexafffund
Melanie Benson Marshall, Stephen Pinfield, Pamela Abbott, Andrew Cox, Juan Pablo Alperín, Natascha Chtena, Alice Fleerackers

Bibliographic record

VenueF1000Research · 2025
Typepreprint
Languageen
FieldDecision Sciences
Topicscientometrics and bibliometrics research
Canadian institutionsSimon Fraser University
FundersSocial Sciences and Humanities Research Council of CanadaArts and Humanities Research Council
KeywordsOpenness to experienceOpen scienceScope (computer science)IncentivePandemicCoronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)Equity (law)Political sciencePublic relationsOpen dataPublishingEngineering ethicsSociologyMedicinePsychologyEconomicsInfectious disease (medical specialty)LawEngineering

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the global adoption of open science (OS) practices. However, as the pandemic subsides, the debate around OS continues to evolve. This study investigates how the pandemic has shaped the OS discourse and identifies key issues and challenges. Interviews were conducted with influential actors across the research and publishing communities. The findings show that while many areas of debate remained constant, the ways in which they were discussed exposed underlying systemic challenges, which must be addressed if OS is to progress. These issues included the scope and definition of OS; regional variations in its implementation; the relationship between OS and fundamental questions of the purpose and practice of science; and the need to reform incentives and reward structures within research systems. A more complex understanding of OS is required, which takes into account the importance of equity and diversity and the challenges of implementing OS in different cultural and geographical contexts. The study emphasises the importance of shifting scientific culture to prioritise values such as quality, integrity, and openness, and reforming rewards structures to incentivise open practices.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.123
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.194
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesMetaresearch, Open science
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: Reproducibility · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Qualitative · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.998
Threshold uncertainty score0.649

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.1230.194
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.001
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.001
Bibliometrics0.0060.011
Science and technology studies0.0150.066
Scholarly communication0.0430.040
Open science0.0020.013
Research integrity0.0100.014
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0030.001

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.732
GPT teacher head0.618
Teacher spread0.114 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

Study designQualitative
DomainReproducibility
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations1
Published2025
Admission routes2
Has abstractyes

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