Authors: VERELST, David (DTU Wind Energy) BERGAMI, Leonardo (DTU Wind Energy) TIBALDI, Carlo (DTU Wind Energy) BLASQUES, José (DTU Wind Energy)
The paper discusses the principles behind the Open Science (OS) movement, and in particular its relation with the wind energy research community. Open Science refers to scientific research that is conducted, reviewed, and disseminated under the principles of transparency and “openness” to the public domain. Under an OS framework, all steps of a scientific research process, from creation to dissemination, evolve in their “open” counterparts: open source software models, open data sets, open peer review, and open access publishing. The paper will define and evaluate critically each of these steps while also relating them to the wind energy research community. Further, the authors will briefly argue why OS could be beneficial from a broader societal perspective.
Modern research often utilizes complex software models and large data sets not disclosed to the public domain. This approach hampers independent review and the reproducibility of research results. By removing such barriers, OS ensures that advancements are achieved through transparent and robustly validated steps. The review of scientific results in an open framework (open peer review) guarantees the quality of the results by enhanced transparency in the review process, and encourages active enduring contributions both from qualified reviewers and members of the research community. Dissemination and publication of scientific knowledge in an open access (OA) format reduces access barriers to published material, and enhances knowledge sharing. OA benefits the scientific community with the availability of a broader knowledge base, and the possibility to reach a wider audience, thus improves knowledge usage, increases citations, and amplifies the impact on society. The advantages of OA publications are recognized by mayor public funding programs, and they encourage actively to distribute the results from their sponsored projects as OA.
The shift towards an OS framework is occurring unevenly among disciplines. While some research fields are embracing more open practices rapidly, wind energy appears to lag behind. The paper aims at raising awareness, and stirring the debate within the wind energy research community about OS and its fundamental methods and tools. It is the authors’ hope that the paper will initiate a collaborative and “open” discussion forum on Open Science using the Torque 2014 conference as its kick-off event.
Thoughts and idea's towards increased collaboration and accelerated research progress for Wind Energy
Authors and collaborators: David Verelst, Leonardo Bergami, Carlo Tibaldi, José Blasques (DTU Wind Energy)
About the conference:
The Science of Making Torque from Wind is one of the most important scientific wind energy conferences. This is the fifth time that this conference is organized, and the second time to be organized at the Technical University of Denmark.
This is an IPython notebook, source available on Github, view using the online notebook viewer
Open data repositories
Open source software and model development
Open peer review process
Open access publishing
Standard practice other fields such as economics, mathematics
Back to the basics of the scientific process
Science 3.0
Reproducibility of research results
Publicly funded, publicly accessible (US, EU partially)
Accelerate progress:
Increase societal impact
For the benefit of all of society: distribute knowledge without discrimination
University top level strategy seems to align perfectly well with Open Science dogma's:
for instance lets look at the recently updated DTU strategy:
Infrastructure: university servers, dropbox, and others
Data retention: duplicate data, commit to keeping data
Accessibility for easy sharing
Documentation
Usage of standard storage formats and protocols: database, compressed archives
Funding
Software implementation of models are open
Usage of version control system: Git, Mercurial (Hg)
Code is an important part of our work, proper review is required
Not Invented/Implemented Here Syndrom: re-doing labours but otherwise not so interesting model implementations slows down progress.
Learn from the (open source) software development community:
But...what if other scientists "steal" my software and compete with me for the same grants?
Different levels: gold, green
Do scientists care about open access?
Is open access relevant?
The review process is open and transparent
Reviewer can chose to remain anonymous or not
Review and discussion can continue after the publication!
Give reviewers incentives:
For a more detailed discussion, see an initiative in computer science here, and here
What Motivates Reviewers? An Experiment in Economics
We should go back to what is the core task of a universities. Are we really creating for knowledge for the benefit of all of mankind, or just targeted industries and interests? What is society expecting from us, beyond the industry lobby groups, and beyond professors wanting to secure the next round of funding to boost a career.
Citing Peter Suber's Open Access book:
Even the wealthiest academic libraries in the world suffer serious access gaps. When the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted unanimously for a strong OA policy in February 2008, Professor Stuart Shieber explained that cumulative price increases had forced the Harvard library to undertake “serious cancellation efforts” for budgetary reasons. Access gaps are worse at other affluent institutions, and worse still in the developing world. In 2008, Harvard subscribed to 98,900 serials and Yale to 73,900. The best-funded research library in India, at the Indian Institute of Science, subscribed to 10,600. Several sub-Saharan African university libraries subscribed to zero, offering their patrons access to no conventional journals except those donated by publishers.
For example, how is it that we publish in the AIAA while DTU does not even have (digital) access to those libraries?
Reduced funding success rates: competing groups can use the same tools we developed and have access to the same data?
Funding: expensive open access journals, small compared to project budget (small projects, institutes?)
Unconftarble working in the public eye
Currently no high impact open access journals for wind energy
IPython (tool for collaborative science) and a data science, open source angle:
EU Horizon 2020 call requires open access publishing (see press release)
EU Open Data agenda
HackYourPhD, collective of young researchers, developers and citizens calling on an open and transparent scientific process
An innovative concept to share open data with collaborators, under development: dat
Tesla (Elon Musk) opens up all its patents: the real competitor is else where, to fight climate change sustainable energy needs to grow much faster than a single company can
NASA is increasingly opening up code, and works actively on engaging with the community
Alternative ways of (crowd) funding research, for example Experiment and SciFund Challange
Preparing the UN climate meeting 2015 in Paris, US, China willing to finally commit to emmission reductions, Finland adopting 80% reduction scheme by 2050, ...
Climate change is our real challenge, in order to maximize renewable energy adoption we must work and share more openly
Establish a network of interested collaborators with an as varied range of backgrounds as possible
Continue under the umbrella of the EAWE?
Funding/support for a course/practical guideline on open science methodologies and practices (version control, data sharing)
Publish only in open access journals
Identify collaborators for open source model development
Documenting data sets
Publically sharing data sets
Convince publishers and editors to experiment with open peer review
What about patents? Do they matter? Pattents are originaly intendet to "promote the progress of science and the useful arts". Is that still the case?