Introducing Project Free Our Knowledge, the collective action platform for researchers
By Cooper Smout, Institute for Globally Distributed Open Research and Education
- Theme: Past, Present and Future of Open Science
- Format: Emergent session
Abstract
Neuroscientists are faced with a ‘tragedy of the commons’ dilemma: Open Science practices have the potential to benefit the collective neuroscience community (and beyond), but their adoption is limited by incentive structures that reward sloppy science and high-impact publications at the individual level. ‘Crowd-acting’ platforms (e.g., Kickstarter, Collaction) overcome such conflicting incentives by organising a critical mass of support for the intended action, prior to its adoption. Similarly, Free Our Knowledge is a new collective action problem for the research community. Researchers can pledge to support a new behaviour, but only act on that pledge if and when there is a sufficient level of community support to protect their interests. Free Our Knowledge launched last year with a number of open access campaigns, but is designed to accommodate any number of behavioural change campaigns created by the researcher community (e.g., publish open access, post data to a repository). In this session, I'll introduce the project, talk about some campaign ideas that I think could benefit the neuroimaging community, and answer any questions that arise from the crowd.
Useful Links
https://www.freeourknowledge.org/
https://github.com/freeourknowledge
Tagging @CooperSmout