“Open science is the idea that scientific knowledge of all kinds should be openly shared as early as is practical in the discovery process.” Michael Nielsen
The term Open Science began to appear in the scientific community at the end of the last century. From this time it became an essential part of worldwide scientific communication.
Open Science does not have a fixed definition, it is a movement striving for a comprehensive change in established scientific procedures. It comprises a number of practices, which lead to sharing all the steps of a research cycle free and with the general public.
The main pillars are Open Access a Open Data, but an integral part is also the effort to make review procedure courses (Open Peer Review), laboratory notebooks (Open Notebooks), source codes (Open Source) et al. public.
The main benefits of the open science are:
1. Availability of scientific results, which are reusable.
2. Transparency, which is in all the phases of the scientific process a huge contribution to scientific integrity.
3. Reproducibility and thus more robust scientific results.
4. Cooperation, which deepens very much.
5. Results dissemination, which is more effective and faster. It increases visibility for the scientists themselves and also for institutions.
(source: Eva Hnátková: Open Science - zbožné přání nebo reálná budoucnost vědy? , 2020)
In 2018 providers of financial funds for research from 12 European countries launched the initiative “Plan S”. Its purpose is to ensure that all the scientific publications financed from public funds will be made public from the year 2021 in the open access mode. Open Science is a priority also for the European Commission, which in the newly prepared framework programme for research and innovations for the period 2021-2027, Horizon Europe, implements mandatory policy for open access to publications and research data.
In the Czech Republic, transition to the open science system is supported by the Czech Republic National Strategy of Open Access to Scientific Information for the years 2017 - 2020 and the follow-up National Strategy Implementation Action Plan. It can be expected that in the coming years the open access to scientific information will become a part of the research, development and innovations national policy.