Benefits of Open Science: An Analytical Framework Illustrated with Case Study Evidence from Argentina

Abstract

Doing open science is to collaborate with others in a scientific endeavor and to share the outcomes of the scientific process. However, there are many dimensions of openness. Thus when analyzing concrete open science initiatives one finds a full lot of hybrid forms of openness. We identify and discuss different elements of open science and their benefits, under the contention that benefits are related to how openness is achieved. We propose a bi-dimensional framework to characterize openness along research stages, which allows anticipating expected benefits. The first dimension accounts for the characteristics of the collaboration, while the second for aspects of access to shared outputs. We illustrate our framework by discussing four Argentinean open science initiatives.