Drawing on a review of the published research into the societal impact of open science, Nicki Lisa Cole and colleagues find considerable evidence for the benefits of citizen science, but a much thinner evidence base for the impact of other aspects of open science. Their findings suggest that there is a greater need to consider how these impacts are monitored, and an opportunity to address open science as an inclusive practice, rather than simply a method of opening scientific outputs.

Open Science is a collection of practices that aim to open the scientific process and its outputs for the benefit of both science and society. In doing so, Open Science is meant to increase the societal impact of science, relative to the traditionally ‘closed’ nature of it. Proponents believe that Open Science should democratise both the scientific process by fostering societal inclusion in it, and through free, Open Access to published reports and data sets. Proponents also believe that Open Access materials will better enable policymakers to develop evidence-based policies.

However, to date, there is a lack of cohesive evidence to prove that Open Science is achieving its aim of fostering societal impact. There are more and more efforts around the world to measure and monitor the implementation of Open Science practices (often referred to as “uptake”), like the European Commission’s Open Science Monitor, but there is no systematic way of monitoring its societal impact.

In response to this gap, we set out to synthesise and evaluate published evidence of societal impacts stemming from Open Science generally, and its key aspects, including Open Access publications, open/FAIR data, open-source code and software, open evaluation, and Citizen Science. Our scoping review considered more than 14,000 published papers and reports, and identified within these 196 that demonstrated evidence of societal impact.

We found considerable evidence for a multitude of societal impacts stemming from Citizen Science. In fact, as shown in Fig.1, nearly all of the existing published evidence focuses on this aspect of Open Science.

Fig.1: Number of papers by type of Open Science (% of all papers). Figure created by Eva Kormann.

The societal impacts attributed to Open Science within this literature include mostly positive impacts in education and awareness, to the climate and environment, the fostering of social engagement with science and within communities, impacts on policy and governance, equity and empowerment, as well as on health and healthcare, trust in and attitudes toward science, and privacy and ethics.

Fig.2: Number of papers by type of impact (% of all papers). Papers may demonstrate more than one type of impact. Figure created by Eva Kormann.

Because most of the papers included in our society focused on Citizen Science, and other forms of participatory, inclusive research, most of the evidence around types of impact, shown in Fig.2, is attributed to it.

The evidence shows that by opening the scientific process to include the participation of ordinary citizens, of all ages and in communities around the world, a diverse array of beneficial societal impacts can be achieved. Among the largest set of impacts are those that we classified as forms of education and awareness. The evidence shows that Citizen Science leads to increases in both subject and scientific knowledge and skills, and that it fosters an interest in science. Importantly, these benefits are not limited to project participants but extend to their families, social networks, and communities.

There is also considerable evidence that Citizen Science drives positive impacts on our climate and the environment. The literature shows that participating in Citizen Science leads to beneficial changes in awareness of, attitudes toward, and values related to climate and environmental issues, and changes in behaviour that benefit both. There is evidence that these impacts occur in various realms, including conservation, biodiversity, pollution, natural resource management, and in community development and activism.

And, while we found evidence that data generated through Citizen Science projects can fill important gaps that better allow communities and government agencies to monitor the climate and environmental issues, we found rather limited evidence of policy impact stemming from Citizen Science or other aspects of Open Science, with some reporting on the difficulties of achieving this. There is sometimes a lack of respect for Citizen Science data and competing political and corporate interests in the policymaking process.

Evidence of societal impact from other aspects of Open Science is limited. We found some evidence that Open Access publications democratize access to knowledge. Open Access books have more geographically diverse readership than do books for purchase, and Open Access publications typically foster more interaction on social media, on blogs and on Wikipedia. However, these studies are largely based on altmetrics, which are used to measure the reach of a publication and engagement with it, but do not actually measure the societal impact of these publications beyond this.

Notably, we found no published evidence that open/FAIR data creates societal impact. While there is quite some evidence that Open Government Data creates societal impact (out of scope for our study), there was no evidence at the time of our study that open academic data does this. This does not mean that open/FAIR data is not producing societal impact. It very well may. However, no studies have yet to provide evidence that this is happening.

It’s clear that establishing the societal impact of Open Science requires considerably more research effort, particularly around open/FAIR data, open-source code and software, and Open Access publications. Admittedly, we recognise that doing this work is challenging in that it requires first tracing usage of an Open Science resource before evaluating the impact of using that source. On the other hand, the large amount of evidence from Citizen Science is likely due to the fact that there are established methods for evaluating conditions prior to and after a Citizen Science project. It is fairly easy for a Citizen Science research team to build this type of impact evaluation into any given project.

Yet, we can conclude that opening the scientific process leads to a diversity of beneficial societal impacts. This is an important finding because, to date, science policy and funding for Open Science has tended to focus on fostering, and even requiring, open outputs, and providing extensive and expensive infrastructures and platforms to achieve this. Typically, science policy and funding have put far less emphasis on opening the process. We hope that science policymakers and funders will take note of our findings and recognize the immense value of societally inclusive approaches to science.

This post draws on the author’s co-authored article, The societal impact of Open Science: a scoping review, published in Royal Society Open Science. 

The publication on which this blog is based is Funded by the European Union (Grant ID 101058728). The content generated on this blog is for information purposes only. This Article gives the views and opinions of the authors and does not reflect the views and opinions of the Impact of Social Science blog (the blog), nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science, or those of the European Union or European Research Executive Agency (REA). Neither the European Union nor REA can be held responsible for them. Please review our comments policy if you have any concerns on posting a comment below.

Image Credit: Featured image, Sergey Nivens, on Shutterstock, Author headshot: Thomas Klebel