Washington Update

FASEB Celebrates Year of Open Science

By: Darla P. Henderson
Wednesday, October 11, 2023
This summer, FASEB signed on to support Year of Open Science, a multi-agency celebration announced by the White House, led by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and featuring nine other federal agencies (National Science Foundation, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Department of Energy, General Services Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Standards and Technology, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and U.S. Geological Survey). 

Per the NASA website, Year of Open Science has four goals: 1) Establish strategic approaches for advancing open science; 2) Promote equitable participation in open science through transparency, integrity, and equity of reviews; 3) Account for open science activities in evaluations and incentives; and 4) Engage underrepresented communities in the advancement of open science and research.  

FASEB has already taken steps to celebrate Year of Open Science, including:  
  • Creating a designated webpage celebrating Year of Open Science.
  • Creating a video featuring FASEB Immediate Past President Kevin Kregel discussing the building blocks FASEB sees as necessary for supporting open science.
  • Co-authoring a preprint outlining a new methodology to measure data sharing and reuse in the biological and biomedical community; original datasets are included and provide useful journal-level detail.
  • Piloting a project to integrate open science into awards programs through a series of The FASEB Journal Early Career Researcher Awards given at various 2023 Science Research Conferences; applicants provided a summary of their plans for open science and this response became one of the criteria for evaluation and selection of award winners.
  • Engaging with scientists at conferences throughout the year to support and educate the broader community on the new NIH Data Management and Sharing Policy through DataWorks! Prize, DataWorks! Salon, and DataWorks! Help Desk.

To round out the year, FASEB has the following additional activities planned:   
  • Host two free workshops designed for staff at scholarly biological societies (in-person at Rockville, MD, and virtual). “Open Science: An Update on Emerging U.S. Public Access Policies and How Open Science Can Help Biological and Biomedical Scholarly Societies Achieve Their Mission” will be held October 19 and include moderators from the Center for Open Science. “Open Science: Paths to Transition Journals to Open Access” will be held December 5 with several experienced speakers joining to speak on practicalities of transitioning to open access under different business models.
  • Celebrate International Open Access Week October 23-29, 2023, with the theme “Community over Commercialization.”
  • Serve on the planning committee for the National Academies of Science Engineering and Medicine’s workshop, Enhancing Public Access to the Results of Research Supported by the Department of Health and Human Services – A Workshop, November 30–December 1 at the National Academies. 
If you have questions about our activities, email us.