Reflection on Open-Access
As scientists we all know that data is a powerful tool. But who has access to data and in what form data is shared or communicated makes a world of difference in the ultimate outcomes of our research. Since the beginning of my graduate degree I’ve wrestled with how to make research results actionable. Reports and presentations for stakeholder groups are an important and effective first step, but open research seems like the ultimate goal. I felt the McKiernan et al. (2016) paper made a strong case for the multitude of benefits associated with open access, showing that open research is a win-win for both researchers and non-researchers. Although the academic journal system as a whole isn’t fully onboard with this idea, McKiernan et al. (2016) presented a number of options for sharing papers with the wider public either within or outside of this system.
While the paper did a great job with discussing how academic articles can be shared, it did not dig into the sharing of raw data. How data is aggregated and what information is shared dramatically impacts what story the data can tell. For example, when I first arrived at UMaine I was working on a project to study small scale fisheries in the US. When I went to the national databases to find information on these fisheries, however, I found that the databases provided no information on vessel size, gear type, or fishing distance from shore (ways to parse out small scale operators). Because these fisheries could not be distinguished from large scale operations, small scale fisheries were in effect ‘invisible’. All that to say, if we are to share our data publicly we should assess what pieces of information are most important or useful to potential data users.