Grants
Open Science
The Open Science Initiative aims to explore the potential of open approaches to the scientific research process, beyond the publication of final results. It builds on the momentum of the Open Access Initiative, which promotes open access to scholarly research publications. "Open Science" means doing science in the open, making the workflow of every step of the process freely accessible on an ongoing basis, including lab notebooks, datasets, software source code, and drafts of findings. Expanding this openness to the research process itself promises to accelerate the pace of scientific discovery in critical areas such as research on neglected diseases.
Changing Incentives and Metrics
As we promote the adoption of open tools and methods in the research process, we are aware that scientists who use these often do not receive sufficient credit in the scientific community. We seek to work with organizations who aim to develop and promote alternative metrics for academic evaluation, and devise new ways of capturing and assigning value to non-traditional research contributions.
Citizen Science
In some cases open science also means the engagement of non-scientist citizens in the research process itself, for example in data collection and distributed computing. Such "citizen science" may help to build new kinds of networks and institutions bridging science and civil society, and could possibly alleviate polarization around charged issues like climate science. We aim to work with organizations creating promising experiments with citizen engagement in research areas relevant to the open society mission of the Open Society Foundations.
Funding Information
If you would like to be considered for funding under this initiative, please email the relevant program manager (see link, below) with a brief description of your project. They will advise you if your proposal is appropriate for this initiative and for the Open Society Foundations, and will guide you through the application process.
