Open Science: Removing Barriers to Knowledge
By Amanda Steger & Ella Hantho
What is Open Science?
Scientific research is uniquely situated at the intersection of numerous areas of law: health, technology, contract, property, business, etc. An emerging and fascinating movement in of scientific research is “open science”. Open science is the umbrella term for the progressions to remove barriers to sharing resources during the research process. The movement aims to make scientific research freely accessible to society, through open access to the underlying data, publications, and peer review work (Foster Open Science). The research is shared through collaborative networks in hopes of making it easier to communicate knowledge for the benefit of third parties requiring the research.
Open science itself is not a new concept, but embracing a consistent definition is still an unsettled and novel task. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) defines Open Science as: “[making] the primary outputs of publicly funded research results – publications and the research data – publicly accessible in digital format with no or minimal restriction”. Foster, an e-learning platform, wants to extend openness to the entire research cycle. The Government of Canada maintains their commitment to open science, through sending letters to all Ministers and departments to reiterate the commitment to allowing government scientists to speak publicly about their work in order to engage with each other and with Canadians. Elsevier, an information analytics company, has partnered with the research community to promote open science through a more inclusive, collaborative, and transparent world of research. The Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital was the first Open Science Institute in the world. They define open science as “a no-barrier approach to scientific research that is gaining ground within the academic community. Its principles are simple: allow research data and materials to move freely from one research team to another, between disciplines and toward the creation of innovative businesses”.
Working Models
The Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC) is a global non-profit organization that follows an open science model of biomedical research. It is a public-private partnership with the pharmaceutical industry, which accelerates research and discovery by making all outputs publicly available. A key example of the benefit of SGC is in research of proteins of therapeutic interest, and the release of results into the public domain to enable downstream drug discovery. SGC has helped shape a host of success stories including driving publications, finding new potential treatments for cancer, and increasing local economic benefit in supplying clinical work. Promoting public knowledge through organizations like SGC, as opposed to private sector, can disrupt or challenge the way science and technology is currently performed.
Open science is an innovative approach to maintaining property in research, through routes outside of patents. Typically research is kept secret until it is patentable; open science distributes the information, practically in real time, to enable new analysis, generate hypotheses, create public knowledge and decrease barriers to collaboration. One of the concerns about using patent-less open science is a lack of boundaries to prevent parasitic use of the information. Regulatory approval, however, creates exclusivity while still maintaining open access. There are a host of myths that need to be dispelled about open access publishing. One such myth is that preprints will get research “scooped” by predatory publishers. This is deceptive, as preprints get time-stamped with a DOI, which establishes a priority of discovery in open publishing.
The SCG was considered in depth in the November 2018 Report of the Standing Committee of Health (“The Report”). The Report examined the role of the federal government in fostering pharmaceutical research and development both in Canada and globally to ensure the affordability of pharmaceutical drugs and mitigate the strain on healthcare budgets.
The success of the SGC initiative mentioned earlier led to the foundation of M4K Pharma Inc. (“M4K”). M4K is an open science drug company that develops medicines for rare paediatric diseases, particularly those where the market is too small for the traditional business model to be effective. This is accomplished through funding from a variety of contributors, including non-profit organizations and pharmaceutical companies. M4K has successfully developed a candidate drug for a deadly childhood brain cancer.
Doctors without Borders embarked on similar initiative in collaboration called the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (“DNDi”) by partnering with five public research institutions to develop treatments for diseases in neglected populations. Through public and private funding, DNDi developed new treatments for malaria, sleeping sickness, viral leischmaniasis, Chagas disease and paediatric HIV. DNDi then licenses its discoveries to pharmaceutical companies, with certain conditions regarding accessibility and affordability, in populations where the diseases are endemic. DNDi then uses the royalties to fund further research.
The Report recommends that CIHR’s current research funding programs be adjusted to permit applications from public-private partnerships that follow an open model of drug discovery not based on intellectual property driven business models.
Towards Open Science
The benefit of open science is especially impactful in certain areas of healthcare, such as drug discovery and development. Accessible results and data dissemination has proven to expedite finding cures for diseases. Open science has the advantage of being a pre-competitive strategy to performing research. It also reduces research redundancy and enables the investigation of more opportunities by bringing together networks of different expertise and resources for greater influence on research priorities. It accelerates research, enhances the quality of results, and reinvents discovery itself.
In order for open science to flourish in the research community, a culture change is likely required amongst academic institutions, funders, and regulatory bodies. Universities are in a good position to initiate this shift to broaden access to information. Although a disruption to the way research has been traditionally performed, and some concerns remain regarding ownership and information, the benefits of open science have promising impacts on society.
For more information on open science, check out:
Globe and Mail: For Innovation, Open Science Means Open for Business
