1. Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
Download icon

How open science helps researchers succeed

  1. Erin C McKiernan  Is a corresponding author
  2. Philip E Bourne
  3. C Titus Brown
  4. Stuart Buck
  5. Amye Kenall
  6. Jennifer Lin
  7. Damon McDougall
  8. Brian A Nosek
  9. Karthik Ram
  10. Courtney K Soderberg
  11. Jeffrey R Spies
  12. Kaitlin Thaney
  13. Andrew Updegrove
  14. Kara H Woo
  15. Tal Yarkoni
  1. National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico
  2. National Institutes of Health, United States
  3. University of California, Davis, United States
  4. Laura and John Arnold Foundation, United States
  5. BioMed Central, United Kingdom
  6. CrossRef, United Kingdom
  7. University of Texas at Austin, United States
  8. Center for Open Science, United States
  9. University of California, Berkeley, United States
  10. Mozilla Foundation, United States
  11. Gesmer Updegrove LLP, United States
  12. Washington State University, United States
Feature Article
  • Cited 144
  • Views 23,593
  • Annotations
Cite this article as: eLife 2016;5:e16800 doi: 10.7554/eLife.16800

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

  1. Erin C McKiernan

    Department of Physics, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico City, Mexico
    For correspondence
    emckiernan@ciencias.unam.mx
    Competing interests
    Erin C McKiernan, Founder of the 'Why Open Research?' project, an open research advocacy and educational site funded by the Shuttleworth Foundation. She is also a figshare and PeerJ Preprints advisor, Center for Open Science ambassador, and OpenCon organizing committee member - all volunteer positions.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-9430-5221

  2. Philip E Bourne

    Office of the Director, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, United States
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-7618-7292

  3. C Titus Brown

    Population Health and Reproduction, University of California, Davis, Davis, United States
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.

  4. Stuart Buck

    Laura and John Arnold Foundation, Houston, United States
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.

  5. Amye Kenall

    BioMed Central, London, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    Amye Kenall, Works at the open access publisher BioMed Central, a part of the larger SpringerNature company, where she leads initiatives around open data and research and oversees a portfolio of journals in the health sciences.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-3030-8001

  6. Jennifer Lin

    CrossRef, Oxford, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    Jennifer Lin, Works for CrossRef and is involved in building infrastructure that supports open science research: Principles for Open Scholarly Research, open data initiatives, and open scholarly metadata.

  7. Damon McDougall

    Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, United States
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.

  8. Brian A Nosek

    Center for Open Science, Charlottesville, United States
    Competing interests
    Brian A Nosek, Employed by the non-profit Center for Open Science, which runs the Open Science Framework, and includes in its mission increasing openness.

  9. Karthik Ram

    Berkeley Institute for Data Science, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, United States
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.

  10. Courtney K Soderberg

    Center for Open Science, Charlottesville, United States
    Competing interests
    Courtney K Soderberg, Employed by the non-profit Center for Open Science, which runs the Open Science Framework, and includes in its mission increasing openness.

  11. Jeffrey R Spies

    Center for Open Science, Charlottesville, United States
    Competing interests
    Jeffrey R Spies, Employed by the non-profit Center for Open Science, which runs the Open Science Framework, and includes in its mission increasing openness.

  12. Kaitlin Thaney

    Mozilla Science Lab, Mozilla Foundation, New York, United States
    Competing interests
    Kaitlin Thaney, Employed by the Mozilla Foundation, where she leads the organization's open science program - the Mozilla Science Lab. The Science Lab supports fellowships, training and prototyping, including work on open research badges.

  13. Andrew Updegrove

    Gesmer Updegrove LLP, Boston, United States
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.

  14. Kara H Woo

    Center for Environmental Research, Education, and Outreach, Washington State University, Pullman, United States
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-5125-4188

  15. Tal Yarkoni

    Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, United States
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.

Reviewing Editor

  1. Peter Rodgers, eLife, United Kingdom

Publication history

  1. Received: April 8, 2016
  2. Accepted: July 4, 2016
  3. Accepted Manuscript published: July 7, 2016 (version 1)
  4. 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.

Metrics

  • 23,593
    Page views
  • 4,095
    Downloads
  • 144
    Citations

Article citation count generated by polling the highest count across the following sources: Crossref, Scopus, PubMed Central.

Download links

A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.

Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)

Download citations (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)

Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)

Categories and tags

Further reading

  1. Research Culture: A Selection of Articles

    Edited by Julia Deathridge
    Collection

    Research culture needs to be improved for the benefit of science and scientists.

  2. In the open: Listen to Erin McKiernan talk about open science

    Podcast

    Researchers can benefit from making their research findings freely available online.

    1. Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
    2. Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics

    Divergent Cl- and H+ pathways underlie transport coupling and gating in CLC exchangers and channels

    Lilia Leisle et al.
    Research Article Updated