(F)actually inevitable: 6 frames popular media use when writing about the mystery of Open Science

Opening up “openness”

There is generally a lot of fuss made about the notion of “openness”. Everything should be open. Not only beers and bars, but above all our minds. However, some 15 years ago, also science jumped on the bandwagon of becoming “open”, starting the movement of Open Science, that basically wants every single scientific thing produced made accessible for everyone, everywhere, everytime. Sounds pretty good, right?

Sure, it sounds good, because these days “open” seems to always be the better option than “closed”. But what is it that we are actually talking about when we use the term Open Science? Frankly, nobody knows. Or at least nobody has an answer that everybody would agree on, regardless of how many tried to construct a proper definition. A study conducted in 2016 scientifically showed that even scientists, more precisely biomedicists, are not quite sure about what this openness in science is and/or ought to be. It has many facets and characteristics, however all of them somehow pointing to one idea: that everybody should be able to know what he or she wants to know. 

So we gave it a name, we found out that it is difficult to define, but how is this somewhat strange thing behaving  in the real world? Well, it is ambiguous. There has been lots of debates going on in scientific circles about how to implement this probably really not so bad idea of openness in the scientific world. But unfortunately, there is still no masterplan available that will definitely lead to a world with/of Open Science.

Framing “openness”

That being said… no, I do not dare to now attempt defining “Open Science” (or Open Access, or Open Scource or…) once and for all. But after all, not having a clear definition of something does not keep people from talking, writing and reading about it, be they of scientific or of non-scientific heritage.
I am now following a simple, yet scientifically reasonable logic: Firstly, a bulk of every research that is being conducted is publicly funded. Secondly, the public opinion on a topic is to some degree dependent on media coverage of that very topic. Hence, thirdly, public media do have a certain influence on the general acceptance of Open Science. So, what I do dare to do is a short observation of how the very notion of Open Science is being framed in popular media. To that end, I combed through the archives of some newspapers and magazines, eventually deciding to focus on three media, namely on the anglophone media of The Atlantic (this article, this and this) and The New York Times (used articles here and here) as well as a big german newspaper called the Süddeutsche Zeitung (article one, two and three).

Closely reading the aricles, I tried detecting certain formulations or words that put Open Science in a certain context, lading it with whatever notion. I then categorised those little traces I found, eventually coming up with six frameworks that all the different media use in one way or another. That said, the articles seemed to frame Open Science as a question of…

1. ... money vs. moral

Source: Imgur

This frame shows a crucial conflict that today’s scientist often find themselves in when considering to make their material accessible. Alan Leshner, executive publisher of Science, in the Atlantic gets quoted with “Open Access is what I call doing the right thing”. But that stands in stark oppostion to another interviewee who would rather “pay a person” than “publish 10 papers open access”. Some scientists want to, but cannot open up their material.

2. ... insufficient elaboration

The framework of Open Science simply being not completely thought through as an idea is used in virtually all articles. It goes hand in hand with the first frame, and is often tried to be proven with examples, such as the EU making big plans about having every EU-funded research accessible by 2020 without actually explaining how this is supposed to work out.

3. Logic, necessity and (f)actual inevitability

Within this frame, Open Science as such is rendered logic (“Open is better than closed”), necessary (say, pulling up the so called reproducibility crisis as something that Open Science could prevent) and eventually as plain inevitable (“They [the Nature journal] know it’s happening”).

4. ... generations

Source: neurosculptinginstitute.com

Another common frame is that of what I call the clash not only of cultures, but of generations. It connects to some extent with the third frame, especially with the inivitability. No matter if it is the Atlantic, the New York Times or the Süddeutsche, the idea that “culture change is […] often done by the younger generation” comes up at several places, at one point also accusing the current scientific world to be “conservative”. Concomitant, the idea of a personal decision for or against Open Science that scientists at some point have to made, is constructed particularly in the Süddeutsche. 

5. ... competitiveness vs. ‘togetherness’

The fifth frame is about the quandary between working against other scientists or in loose collaboration. Data immediately opened up can be misused, which, according to the articles, leaves researchers with the decision to keep their data for themselves, not risking others to benefit of the data to the creators disadvantages, or opening it up anyway, having to “rely on fairness of the others”.

6. ... political effort

Lastly, the role (inter)national politics plays pops up more than once, yet mostly with regard to where the publisher is based. The Atlantic mentions the Trump presidency as a possible threat to American science, whereas the Süddeutsche mentions the EU several times, even in two of three headlines of the articles that I have had a look at.

These frameworks do not claim to be to perfect and/or the only solution to this question and naturally tend to blend into each other, but they nevertheless already can tell us something about how Open Science might be framed in popular, non-scientific media. Apart of that, I shall add that from the endless number of possible frames it is not only important what frames I could observe, but also what I could not observe, simply because they are not used in the articles. An article can hardly explain and convey the entire discourse around Open Science, so it is unavoidable for any journalist to disregard some aspects while presenting other.

Now... what?

Source: Imgur

This is just a blogpost based on a rough analysis of eight articles from three different media. But yet, this is still more than nothing and I think already this small analysis could reveal some of the major discourses swirling around when people talk about the notion of Open Science. A lot has already been done, even more is on the way, but much more still lies ahead of the scientific community if Open Science is to be made reality. How Open Science is constructed and perceived in/through (public) media is only a small part, and even though many people might be convinced of the general idea through media coverage, a lot more and much more practical solutions will have to be found in order to make Open Science work. This only leaves me with proposing much more research to be done. Research on the comparison between public and scientific media, research about the the framing in different countries as well as research about framings, opinions and practical considerations of different scientific disciplines, which would shed light on where and maybe also how to start if we are to make Open Science the standard way of how science works. Open Science might be a good thing in a perfect world, but this world unfortunately is far from being perfect, including the science world. It is on us to make the world as perfect as we can to give Open Science the space it needs so that its advantages at some point exceed its current disadvantages.