Open science is becoming all the more accepted approach which advocates for the full opening of the scientific process to the wider community, [i] with the aim to make every step of the scientific process available. This implies an open and free access to the methodology of scientific research, the technologies used (software and hardware), the data obtained and the results, scientific publications and texts, and all additional information generated during the research process. In fact, the concept of open science actually to sharing of all available research resources with other researchers and wider community so that the scientific process is done transparently.
Together with the idea of the open science, the number of online resources related to this topic has been growing. Here is the overview of the most important resources in the domain of open science today:
· Web portals which combine important and useful articles about the open science
· Repositories / databases which include research data available to public
· Programs and projects dealing with the promotion of the open science and through which financial resources are investing in this area
· Tools which facilitate and fasten the process of archiving and opening of research materials
Web-portals in the open science domain
· One of the well-known portals is the Open science portal, a comprehensive guide on the open access for researchers and authors. Although the focus of this portal is on the access to scientific publications, it also serves as an aggregator of information related to open science and open research data.
· Open science portal is a part of the wider web-system De Gruyter Open, which advocates for open access to the entire research content.
· European Commission publishes current activities and plans in the field of open science in European Union countries on its web-site.
· Open science resources portal, working in cooperation with European Union, in addition to access to digital collections of European science centres, also offers educational scientific content and promotes open science.
· Portal FOSTER represents the platform for e-learning with comprehensive materials for the trainings in the field of open science.
· Center for Open Science has the mission to increase openness, integrity and reliability of research.
· SHERPA/RoMEO portal aggregates and analyses open access publishing policies, and provides an overview of rules and conditions for the ability to independently store own research data.
· Open Archives Initiative works with the aim to increase the number of digital research content and communication among researchers.
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· Open Access Directory (OAD) offers an overview of these archives in all areas, and a more detailed view of different disciplines can be found in Disciplinary repositories section. The OAD's goal is to bring existing sources of data closer to the researchers, and encourage the use of repositories and the storage of new data sets.
· OpenDOAR, offers similar possibilities - an open access to catalogue of academic repositories which allows for repositories to be searched and to view the archive content. OpenDOAR is one of the SHERPA/RoMEO portal services.
· Registry of Open Access Repositories has the aim to promote the development of open access by providing timely information on the growth and status of repositories from around the world.
· One of the most comprehensive digital archives is the Kaggle Datasets, which, in addition to data obtained in scientific research, also provides data sets related to the work of public institutions. It also offers free access to prepared scripts for analysis and visualization of data.
· Data.world represent a social network for people who like or deal with data. On this site, one can find databases from the field of health, education, finance, public safety, agriculture and so on.
· Some online archives, such as Dryad, allow the storage of scientific publications together with the data on which analyses have been conducted and conclusions have been drawn.
· Online archive Figshare works similarly and encourages researchers to store, share and discover their research to enable more citations of all research results.
· A comprehensive overview of open access to publications and journals can be found on the DOAJ website.
· Some of the aforementioned digital repositories, such as ICPSR, also perform the data storage preparation, which implies their cleaning (eg. adequate labelling of variables, filling in and defining of missing values, language and technical correction of texts - if qualitative data are concerned, and the like), as well as anonymization - removing and adequately coding of all direct or indirect identifiers of the respondents in order to protect their identity.
· When it comes to the international consortium of services of research data in social sciences, Sociosite is worth mentioning. It offers a comprehensive categorization of online archives of research data in social domains by continents, and then by individual countries within them. In addition to scientific archives in the countries in which it exists, Sociosite also includes external links for various national agencies or institutes dealing with the collection of statistical parameters in different social areas.
· Similarly, IFDO represents an international network of organizations from around the world dealing with archiving data in the field of social sciences. There are currently 35 member organizations working together to improve research in this area.
· The most comprehensive overview of such archives of research data generated by research in European countries is provided by the Consortium of European Research Data Archives CESSDA.
· When it comes to research data from other scientific areas, the re3data archive, which, in addition to social research, also archives data from engineering, natural and so-called life sciences (eg. agriculture, forestry and horticulture, medicine, biology).
· Similarly, Arxiv provides insight into external links for repositories with a large number of research data from natural and technical sciences..
Programs and projects
· One of the programs aimed at promoting open science is OpenAIRE2020, a part of the Horizon2020, the largest European Union research and innovation program. The OpenAIRE project gathered 50 partner organizations from the EU countries with the aim to promote the opening and re-use of research publications and primary data.
· The OpenAIRE2020 project also includes a pilot project Open Research Data Pilot which works with the aim of opening research data from projects that are also part of the Horizon2020 program. In addition to the list of compatible data repositories, the network built through OpenAIRE2020 also includes archive of publications as well as insights into a number of current research topics, for example, in existing research organizations and donors, and by that, creating a space with valuable and useful information in one place.
· A part of the OpenAIRE project that deals exclusively with open science is OpenAIRE-Connect.
· The CERN is currently implementing a large research program is with the same aim of promoting open science, within which management tools for large data have been developed, and the online repository Zenodo has been launched.
· cessda saw is one of the projects within the Consortium of European Research Data Archives, which aims to create conditions for establishment of open data services that will support the further development of research in social sciences in the so-called European research area.
· Numerous other projects dealing with open science or some of its parts in the narrow geographic areas have been implemented, such as the SEEDS project, which dealt with the establishment of national archives in the Western Balkan countries.
Data storage tools
· colectica is the software for documenting statistical data that enables one to the generate and publish metadata, the original statistical code for data analysis, digital codebooks, and prepares all information in accordance with open data standards.
· The Copyright Toolbox contains models of licenses between authors and publishers in the case of storing scientific publications.
· If researchers decide to independently publish their research material, for example on their own website, policies on such a method of archiving are available on the SHERPA/RoMEO portal.
· Useful guides on preparing data for archiving can be found on the ICPSR page, the library of University of Washington, or the literature on this subject.
[i] See, for example: https://opensource.com/resources/open-science (site visited on 24. 5. 2017.).