How open science helps researchers succeed
- National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico
- National Institutes of Health, United States
- University of California, Davis, United States
- Laura and John Arnold Foundation, United States
- BioMed Central, United Kingdom
- CrossRef, United Kingdom
- University of Texas at Austin, United States
- Center for Open Science, United States
- University of California, Berkeley, United States
- Mozilla Foundation, United States
- Gesmer Updegrove LLP, United States
- Washington State University, United States
Abstract
Open access, open data, open source, and other open scholarship practices are growing in popularity and necessity. However, widespread adoption of these practices has not yet been achieved. One reason is that researchers are uncertain about how sharing their work will affect their careers. We review literature demonstrating that open research is associated with increases in citations, media attention, potential collaborators, job opportunities, and funding opportunities. These findings are evidence that open research practices bring significant benefits to researchers relative to more traditional closed practices.
Article and author information
Author details
Reviewing Editor
- Peter Rodgers, eLife, United Kingdom
Publication history
- Received: April 8, 2016
- Accepted: July 4, 2016
- Accepted Manuscript published: July 7, 2016 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: July 29, 2016 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2016, McKiernan et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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How open science helps researchers succeed
eLife 5:e16800.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.16800
Further reading
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Researchers can benefit from making their research findings freely available online.
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Evolution can tinker with multi-protein machines and replace them with simpler single-protein systems performing equivalent functions in an equally efficient manner. It is unclear how, on a molecular level, such simplification can arise. With ancestral reconstruction and biochemical analysis, we have traced the evolution of bacterial small heat shock proteins (sHsp), which help to refold proteins from aggregates using either two proteins with different functions (IbpA and IbpB) or a secondarily single sHsp that performs both functions in an equally efficient way. Secondarily single sHsp evolved from IbpA, an ancestor specialized in strong substrate binding. Evolution of an intermolecular binding site drove the alteration of substrate binding properties, as well as the formation of higher-order oligomers. Upon two mutations in the α-crystallin domain, secondarily single sHsp interacts with aggregated substrates less tightly. Paradoxically, less efficient binding positively influences the ability of sHsp to stimulate substrate refolding, since the dissociation of sHps from aggregates is required to initiate Hsp70-Hsp100-dependent substrate refolding. After the loss of a partner, IbpA took over its role in facilitating the sHsp dissociation from an aggregate by weakening the interaction with the substrate, which became beneficial for the refolding process. We show that the same two amino acids introduced in modern-day systems define whether the IbpA acts as a single sHsp or obligatorily cooperates with an IbpB partner. Our discoveries illuminate how one sequence has evolved to encode functions previously performed by two distinct proteins.
