“La scienza aperta è un approccio al processo scientifico basato su collaborazione, condivisione aperta e tempestiva dei risultati, modalità di diffusione della conoscenza fondate su tecnologie digitali in rete e metodi trasparenti di validazione e valutazione dei prodotti della ricerca.
La scienza aperta accresce l’efficacia della collaborazione e la riproducibilità dei risultati della ricerca. Essa aumenta il potenziale collaborativo, grazie alla possibilità di accesso e riuso dei dati per nuove analisi, anche interdisciplinari, e per la didattica scientifica, migliorando la fruibilità del sapere in modo trasparente e a beneficio della società.”
— Ministero dell’Università e della Ricerca, Piano Nazionale per la Scienza Aperta 2021–2027
“Open Science is defined as an inclusive construct that combines various movements and practices aiming to make multilingual scientific knowledge openly available, accessible and reusable for everyone, to increase scientific collaborations and sharing of information for the benefit of science and society, and to open the processes of scientific knowledge creation, evaluation and communication to societal actors beyond the traditional scientific community. It comprises all scientific disciplines and aspects of scholarly practices, including basic and applied sciences, natural and social sciences and the humanities, and it builds on the following key pillars: open scientific knowledge, open science infrastructures, science communication, open engagement of societal actors and open dialogue with other knowledge systems.”
— UNESCO, Recommendation on Open Science
Open Science is the movement that aims to make all phases of the scientific research process open and accessible.
It includes the transparent sharing of methodologies, knowledge, processes, and tools from the earliest stages of scientific discovery; transparency in experimental methods, observation of phenomena, and data collection; the public reliability and reusability of data and research outputs; open access and transparency in scientific communication processes; and the use and sharing of web-based digital tools to support collaboration among researchers.
The concept of Citizen Science is also part of Open Science. It refers both to outreach activities and to the active participation of citizens in data collection.
Open Science in the European Union
The European Union first promoted Open Science through the Horizon 2020 programme, which requires all beneficiaries to ensure open access to peer-reviewed scientific publications arising from their project results.
With the following Horizon Europe programme, in addition to mandatory open access to publications, the obligation to make research data openly available was introduced. Data must be freely usable, reusable, and redistributable by anyone, provided that sources are credited and shared under the same licence.
To be considered open, data must comply with the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable). Data openness follows the principle “as open as possible, as closed as necessary.”
Under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) of Horizon Europe, researchers are also required to prepare a Data Management Plan, a document describing how data will be handled throughout the entire project life cycle to ensure proper management, storage, and sharing.
For more information on Open Access, please refer to the dedicated FAQ.
SISSA’s Commitment to Open Science
SISSA actively promotes the principles of Open Science. To this end, it has joined CoARA (a coalition of organizations committed to reforming research assessment methods and processes), and has adopted specific Guidelines and a set of institutional repositories through which its community can deposit not only final research outputs but also documents and data generated during the different stages of scientific work:
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IRIS
Repository for theses and published outputs -
Open Data
Repository for research data -
SISSA Open Science
Repository for grey literature (preprints, workshop materials, presentations, etc.)
Further Resources