EGU21-605, updated on 01 Dec 2022
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-605
EGU General Assembly 2021
© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

A Hydrologist’s Guide to Open Science

Caitlyn Hall1, Sheila Saia2, Andrea Popp3, Stan Schymanski4, Niels Drost5, Nilay Dogulu6, Tim van Emmerik7, Rolf Hut8, and Lieke Melsen9
Caitlyn Hall et al.
  • 1School for Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, Arizona State University, Tempe, United States of America (caitlyn.hall@asu.edu)
  • 2Biological and Agricultural Engineering Department, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, United States of America (sheila.saia@gmail.com)
  • 3Department of Geosciences, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway (andrea.popp@geo.uio.no)
  • 4Catchment and Eco-Hydrology, ERIN, Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg (stanislaus.schymanski@list.lu)
  • 5Netherlands eScience Center, Amsterdam, the Netherlands (n.drost@esciencecenter.nl)
  • 6Independent Scholar, Ankara, Turkey (nilay.dogulu@gmail.com)
  • 7Hydrology and Quantitative Water Management Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands (tim.vanemmerik@wur.nl)
  • 8Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geoscience, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands (r.w.hut@tudelft.nl)
  • 9Hydrology and Quantitative Water Management Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands (lieke.melsen@wur.nl)

To have lasting impact on the scientific community and broader society, hydrologic research must be open, accessible, reusable, and reproducible. With so many different perspectives on and constant evolution of open science approaches and technologies, it can be overwhelming for hydrologists to start down the path towards or grow one’s own push for open research. Open hydrology practices are becoming more widely embraced by members of the community and key organizations, yet, technical (e.g., limited coding experience), resource (e.g., open access fees), and social barriers (e.g., fear of being scooped) still exist. These barriers may seem insurmountable without practical suggestions on how to proceed. Here, we propose the Open Hydrology Principles to guide individual and community progress toward open science. To increase accessibility and make the Open Hydrology Principles more tangible and actionable, we also present the Open Hydrology Practical Guidelines. Our aim is to help hydrologists transition from closed, inaccessible, not reusable, and not reproducible ways of conducting scientific work to open hydrology and empower researchers by providing information and resources to equitably grow the openness of hydrological sciences. We provide the first version of a practical open hydrology resource that may evolve with open science infrastructures, workflows, and research experiences. We discuss some of the benefits of open science and common reservations to open science, and how hydrologists can pursue an appropriate level of openness in the presence of barriers. Further, we highlight how the practice of open hydrology can be expanded. The Open Hydrology Principles, Practical Guide, and additional resources reflect our knowledge of the current state of open hydrology and we recognize that recommendations and suggestions will evolve. Therefore, we encourage hydrologists all over the globe to join the open science conversation by contributing to the living version of this document and sharing open hydrology resources at the community-supported repository at open-hydrology.github.io.

How to cite: Hall, C., Saia, S., Popp, A., Schymanski, S., Drost, N., Dogulu, N., van Emmerik, T., Hut, R., and Melsen, L.: A Hydrologist’s Guide to Open Science, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-605, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-605, 2021.

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