Radboud Open Science Inspirator: Anita Eerland

"During my PhD, sometime in 2010, I first began thinking about Open Science. At the time, several fraud cases surfaced in social psychology, involving the manipulation of research data. That led to discussion about so-called Questionable Research Practices - and how to avoid them - within my lab group. Years later, in 2016, a meeting was organised at a hotel in Charlottesville, US, by Brian Nosek and Simine Vazire for researchers who wanted to change science. Together with about 80 researchers, we worked in small groups to explore ways to make science more reliable and transparent. It was a super inspiring experience, and several valuable initiatives emerged from this meeting.

This meeting marked the start of my more active involvement in Open Science. After being involved internationally for several years, I wanted to set up something local. Changing the research culture requires reaching a broad group of people. That means you have to attract people who are not yet involved in Open Science, in particular. This is how the idea for a local Open Science Community was finally born in 2017 with Loek Brinkman. There are now 13 of them in the Netherlands and more than 40 worldwide. I'm pretty proud of that. 

In the Netherlands, the Open Science movement is doing quite well. However, this leading position also presents a challenge, particularly for young researchers: what if they aspire to work in countries that still place great emphasis on publishing in top journals that are not open access? Researchers rightly ask themselves: should I spend my budget on the open access fee, or would I rather use it for an additional study or to pay subjects? In a world where not all players are equal, I understand that people might make different trade-offs.

But again, you can only do that if you are well informed about Open Science and its practices. Ultimately, I think most people are in science because they are curious and want to know how the world works. Open Science helps you do research more efficiently and better. Your work is easier to find. You can collaborate more easily. Results are achieved faster. That's how it should really be, of course. More collaboration, less competition. And if you can't do certain aspects of your work openly, there are still plenty of open science practices left that you might be able to try. Open Science is not an all-or-nothing story."

Anita's Open Science tip!

Join the Open Science Community Nijmegen. It is not a club of experts where we spend all our time telling each other how good it is to do open science. Instead, there is room for doubts, discussion and other voices, so that we can all steer and shape the Open Science movement together.