Openness in geoscience - a quantitative assessment

There is growing consensus that making our research process and outputs more open is necessary to increase transparency, efficiency, reproducibility and relevance of research. With that we should be better able to contribute to answering important questions and overcoming grand challenges. Despite considerable attention for open science, including citizen science, there is no overall baseline showing the current state of openness in our field. This presentation shows results from research that quantitatively charts the adoption of open practices across the geosciences, mostly globally and across the full research workflow. They range from setting research priorities, collaboration with global south researchers and researchers in other disciplines, sharing code and data, sharing posters online, sharing early versions of papers as preprints, publishing open access, opening up peer review, using open licenses when sharing, to engaging with potential stakeholders of research outcomes and reaching out to the wider public. The assessment uses scientometric data, publication data, data from sharing platforms and journals, altmetrics data, and mining of abstracts and other outputs, aiming to address the breadth of open science practices. The resulting images show that open science application is not marginal anymore, but at the same time certainly not mainstream. It also shows that limited sharing, limited use of open licenses and limited use of permanent IDs makes this type of assessment very hard. Insights derived from the study are relevant inputs in science policy discussions on data requirements, open access, researcher training and involvement of societal partners.