Digital Science exists at the intersection of publicly and privately funded research, by serving universities, funders and governments on the one hand, and commercial research organizations on the other. While we aim for a world in which research can make the biggest difference to all, these principles help to contextualize the work that Digital Science does to support the publicly funded, open research ecosystem.

1.    Community ownership: We believe that research outcomes are owned by the global community and should be available to all.

We believe that research is the single most powerful transformative force for the positive development of humanity, and as such, knowledge and research outcomes should be shared for common good. Only by making research, and the metadata that describes research, available to all can society derive maximal benefit. Leading innovation is based on knowledge and research – being able to organize, locate, access and share research is critical as a basis for sustainable innovation.  We acknowledge that not all research can be made available straight away due to ethical or practical considerations, but we believe that, consistent with reasonable expectations, the outputs of publicly funded research should be available to all.

At Digital Science, we provide advanced technologies to all that help to locate the right research and provide mechanisms for the community to make research available to the broadest possible audience so that they can discover more and better innovate.

Altmetric and Dimensions are built on a mix of open and licensed data. Dimensions’ free edition and Altmetric free researcher tools ensure that the whole community can benefit from analyses using open and licensed data. Figshare and Symplectic are both key systems for research organizations to collect, enhance and share data from and about their research. Digital Science never asserts ownership of the data added to these systems and always ensures that the community is able to extract their own data from them without friction. Overleaf is a platform for collaborative writing, allowing researchers to express and develop their ideas together, and Writefull brings down barriers between researchers by improving communication through enhancement of language, together helping the community to share and innovate.

2.    Participating in open infrastructure: We commit to support the use of open standards and to build, contribute to, and extend open infrastructures.

Research only works if we can collectively contribute and build – that requires shared trust. The adoption of open standards ensures the most efficient flow of data and information to allow the possibility of maximal benefit from data. The use of well-maintained, stakeholder-led, open infrastructures ensures transparency and clarity of provenance, which provides the trust framework to allow the crystallization of benefit.

At Digital Science, we build on open formats, open standards, open data, and include open identifiers in all our products wherever possible. We enhance data to add value to stakeholders across a diverse, global research landscape, while making the open data on which our products are built available back to the community that created it.

Digital Science has been at the forefront of innovation in research infrastructure since its inception.  We created GRID, the Global Research Identifier Database, and then made these data available to the community in 2015. We made the licence more permissive (changed to CC0) in 2016 to allow the Research Organization Registry (ROR) to be seeded with these data. The ROR dataset now forms a key part of OpenAlex’s infrastructure, and GRID (with a mapping to ROR) continues to power Dimensions.

The next generation of technologies that develop around the scholarly record will ensure that research is both human- and machine-readable. The infrastructures in which we invest must be open and neutral, allowing both human and machine readability.

3.    Stakeholders’ primacy: We believe that stakeholder benefits should be at the forefront.

The aspiration of the global research community has always been the pursuit and sharing of knowledge, with the aim to operate beyond politics and beyond borders. In recent years, it has become clear that, even when global relationships are more strained politically, research relationships transcend artificial barriers.

At Digital Science, we believe that engaging our stakeholders and ensuring that their opinions are represented in our work is critical to creating value as we view research as an ecosystem rather than a “sector” or a “market”. We believe that we can participate positively in the research ecosystem by being innovative and helping stakeholders experiment and increase their level of innovation. Digital Science’s core values:

• Brave in the pursuit of better;
• Always open-minded;
• Collaborative and inclusive;
• From and for the community

are a key articulation of this belief. They are at the centre of everything that we do.

In addition to our ongoing product-feedback processes, regular user days, participation in industry conferences, and direct engagement with the wider research and scientometrics community, Digital Science will be launching a senior advisory board of representatives from different parts of the research ecosystem to help ensure that we continue to listen to, and align with, the goals of the community that we serve.

4.    Establishing trust: We believe that a trusted stakeholder in the research ecosystem must be responsible, transparent and sustainable.

In research, as in our increasingly complex world, context is everything. Understanding the provenance of data, understanding the nature of the processing applied to it, as well as its origin, is critical. Transparency is also important in gaining a shared understanding of the resilience and impact of stakeholders in the research ecosystem.

At Digital Science, we have worked to increase the transparency of data provenance through our publication of research that we carry out. In the spirit of always stretching ourselves, we will start publishing an annual report that increases transparency for Digital Science’s stakeholders.

We also carry our research into prospective ways in which we can help the research community – our recent work on the use of machine learning for research classification was shared as a preprint and published through an open access journal; further work on research integrity and papermill detection has been shared through the same approach.

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Why do scientists publish their findings in scientific journals? Why is it important for scientists to communicate and report their findings? Motivations for authors are complex – involving validation, career ambitions and tradition amongst other things – but another reason is less obvious: for scientists, sharing research outside academic journals is actually very difficult. Here we present an updated article by Canadian scientist Peter J Stogios on why scientists need to be good communicators.

Peter J Stogios works at the University of Toronto and is a PhD Biochemist.

How do scientists share their findings? Why sharing the results of experiments can be as important as the research itself

Every scientist knows that our work is filled with technical jargon, complex ideas and concepts that can be difficult to communicate to other scientists and even more difficult to the general public on the whole. I don’t know many scientists that communicate their work to anyone other than scientists in their field, their students, institutions and funding agencies. Think about that. Hardly anyone doing research discusses their work with anyone outside of the world of science. Most scientist’s work will be published in journals that the public will never even have heard of, let alone have access to, let alone actually understand.

I think this is a total travesty. In my opinion, it is critical for academics to discuss their work with the public and it’s a shame that this does not happen more.

Why should scientists communicate their results with the public?

At a basic level, scientists serve the public interest. We work on society’s biggest problems. The work we do is vital to understanding and treating disease. We create innovations and products that change people’s lives on a day to day basis. We drive economic development. We increase the world’s knowledge gained by scientific research.

When it comes to academic research, scientists should not have a monopoly on knowledge and its possession. If we make a discovery, it is our duty to share it with the world. It is true that academic journals have a central role in disseminating research, but I think it is a shame that the public do not access these journals, nor are there many generalist scientific journals that would be more accessible to the public. Anyway, scientists don’t publish in generalist journals; they only publish in established, rigorous and peer-reviewed journals. This is as it should be, because peer review is an essential component to producing and communicating quality research, but an unintended consequence of this is that the vast majority of research science is isolated to those ‘in the know.’

A further consideration is that it is the public, as tax-payers, that fund research and expect results. We should be obligated to disseminate our work in a form that is accessible to the public. Thankfully, many funding organizations now mandate their research be published in open access journals, so at least the public does not have to pay to gain access. In addition, tools like Dimensions have some free access options as well to help anyone with an interest find out more about scientific publications. 

Why don’t scientists value communication with the public?

I think much of the blame can be placed on scientists: too often we isolate ourselves from connecting with the public. Many colleagues have told me they think it is futile to talk about the details of their work to the public, so rather than making the effort to explain their work in terms understandable to non-scientists, they don’t even try.

I have also heard from scientists that the ‘framing’ of their research by non-technical publications or media outlets distorts from the accuracy and purity of their work. ‘Framing’ can mean presenting the underlying science in a way that is inaccurate or exaggerates the work, or even worse, using science to advance an agenda or to influence others. This is certainly true, as I frequently read articles in newspapers or magazines about science that are amazingly inaccurate or use a scientific study to advance controversial public policy. But I think part of the blame may lie with the scientist themselves: perhaps a tighter engagement between the researcher and the media would allow for stricter oversight of the accuracy and explanation of the science. This is a complex problem and unfortunately instead of engaging to address the problem, most academic scientists disengage themselves from communicating with the public in this way.

Also, the research performance of academic scientists, and therefore their funding, is rarely based on how they connect their work with the public and so the researchers have no incentive to try.

This fundamental communication disconnect has led to a perception of scientists as aloof, and is often taken advantage of by filmmakers to create caricatures of scientists (sometimes humorous, sometimes not), as awkward, misunderstood, socially inept creatures. I think this is a real problem–the public always has preconceptions about scientists that are usually totally inaccurate!

Why bother sharing your science with the public?

Some scientists claim that communicating our science to the public is a distraction from the nitty gritty of doing science and publishing papers. Certainly communicating with the public takes time and effort to perform properly, but there are numerous benefits for a scientist’s career, along with benefits for the public.

Benefits to the scientist:

• Outreach to the public and wider scientific community can lead to unexpected new connections and new ideas that could stimulate your research.
• Sharing your science with the world directly brings attention and respect for your work, which clearly has career advancement benefits.
• The act of communicating itself helps to better organize thoughts, allows for identifying the critical/most important elements of your work, encourages creating better technical and non-technical presentations of your work, and improves overall writing and oral presentation skills.
• The public (taxpayers) gain a better understanding of your science and therefore may be more entitled to support research funding increases in the future.
• It’s fun! Telling others about your work can be very personally gratifying.

Benefits to the public:

• The public gains a personal connection with the people doing the science.
• The public is entitled to access to the science they fund.
• The public actually is interested in your work. Your science is cool! The public is always fascinated by discovery, especially if involves an emotional connection to some aspect of their life. Never underestimate their caring and interest.

Conclusion

There are many ways scientists can communicate more directly with the public. These include writing a personal blog, updating their lab’s or personal website to be less technical and more accessible to non-scientists, popular science forums and message boards, and engaging with your institution’s research communication office. Most organizations publish newsletters or create websites showcasing the work being done, and act as intermediaries between the researchers and the media. Scientists can and should interact more with these communicators.

Most academic scientists are so focused on the technicalities of their work and meeting the requirements of their funding agencies that they lose sight of the larger picture. We serve the public interest, not just our own scientific interest and curiosity, and so we have an obligation and duty to share our results. I think most scientists have not given much thought to the benefit they might receive from such communication, or shy away from the complications involved. I hope that the readers of this blog will give some thought to the points I’ve raised and consider whether their legacy would be better served by confining their research to the closed world of science and the ivory tower or by getting the word out to a larger audience.

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