Open science and scientific data

Abstract

Citizen science initiatives such as Galaxy Zoo and eBird allowed general citizens to make direct contributions to effective data collection and knowledge production in basic science. "Open science" traces its roots to the late 17th century when science academies and scholarly journals were established, and formulated the basic principles of today's scientific research: (1) recognition of pioneers, (2) innovation to scale, (3) justification by third parties, and (4) authors' accountabilities. Science 2.0 transformed these principles and diversified scholarly communication: preprint, open peer review, open data repository, socialization of science, and network-based innovation. Research papers and their citations are no longer the only way to measure research impact at the dawn of altmetrics, which quantify online attentions. As governments mandate open research data policy, scientific community faces an urgent need of scientific data infrastructure.