Yang Wei Photo provided by the interviewee Visual China Photo provided by [Academician Interview] ◎ Intern Reporter Sun Yu Open Science is an inclusive architecture that integrates various thinking processes and practices such as open scientific knowledge, open scientific infrast

[Academician Interview]

◎Intern reporter Sun Yu

Open Science is an inclusive architecture that integrates various thinking processes and practices such as open scientific knowledge, open scientific infrastructure, scientific communication, and open participation of social actors. Openness is one of the essential attributes of science, and global open scientific governance requires China to join.

"Open science is an inclusive architecture that integrates various thinking processes and practices such as open scientific knowledge, open scientific infrastructure, scientific communication, and open participation of social actors." Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and an academician of the developing countries Yang Wei emphasized at the 17th China Science and Technology Journal Development Forum held recently that openness is one of the essential attributes of science, and global open scientific governance requires China to join.

Open access is part of open science. science and technology journal adopting this model generally does not charge readers fees, and people can more conveniently obtain papers in journals.

In recent years, my country's science and technology journals have promoted open sharing and shared research results with the world. For example, the sister journal "Cell Discovery" of the internationally renowned academic journal "Cell Research" independently founded by my country, and the "Photoelectric Science (English)" sponsored and published by "Handel 10 Institute of Optoelectronic Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences" and other publications currently adopt an open access journal publishing model.

At present, the trend of open science development has been formed, and my country is actively promoting international open cooperation in science and technology and implementing a more open, inclusive, mutually beneficial and shared international science and technology cooperation strategy. Regarding the issues of how open science affects the development of science and technology journals in my country, how to resolve the contradiction between data security and openness, and how my country's science and technology journals can more actively participate in global open science, Science and Technology Daily reporter recently interviewed Academician Yang Wei.

my country's science and technology journals are in the transition period

Reporter: At the end of the 20th century, the scientific community launched a series of open science movements that embody the concept of "participation, inclusiveness, sharing, cooperation, openness and transparency". In recent years, the outbreak of the new crown pneumonia epidemic has accelerated the process of open scientific development. How do you think my country's scientific and technological journals perform in global open scientific governance?

Yang Wei: The open science movement was first promoted by European researchers, and was formed by the combination of three development waves: Open Access (OA), Open Data (OD) and Global Open Science Governance (OP).

UNESCO believes that open science is a general concept, aiming to achieve the free provision of scientific knowledge, methods, data and evidence and access to everyone, and to enhance scientific collaboration and information sharing to benefit society.

Although my country is not the initiator of the open science movement, it is actively participating in the wave of open science. At present, China is already the country with the most OA scientific and technological papers published. Since the outbreak of the new coronavirus pneumonia epidemic, my country's medical science and technology journals have publicly shared all research papers related to the new coronavirus pneumonia to the world through various important domestic and foreign databases in an open-access manner.

Open Science has received a critical boost in 2021.

On November 23, 2021, 193 UNESCO member states adopted the Open Science Recommendation, and China is one of them. In the same year, the World Top Scientists Forum held in Shanghai released the "Open Science: Building an Open Innovation Ecology" initiative to the world, advocating open science and encouraging and supporting open science; at the third World Science and Technology Forum hosted by China Association for Science and Technology (hereinafter referred to as China Association for Science and Technology), Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Engineering, and supported by UNESCO, International Science Council, and World Federation of Engineering Organizations, 260 domestic and foreign scientific and technological communities issued the "Open, Trust, and Cooperation" initiative.

Reporter: In your opinion, what is the significance of the global open science wave to the development of my country's science and technology journals?

Yang Wei: The wave of open science has promoted the transformation of the academic publishing ecology. Now, the publishing industry believes that three changes are being carried out around the world: the first change is from paper to electronic version, and this process has been completed by about 90% from a global perspective; the second change is from subscription to open access, and this change has been completed by about 35% from a global perspective; the third change is from content to service, that is, from providing content to providing data and other related services. This change has begun.

2021, scientific literature published in the form of open access worldwide only accounted for 35% of the published documents that year, and the global open science process is still in a rapid evolution stage. At present, my country already has the foundation of open science, and Chinese science and technology journals are transforming towards open science and can make their own contributions to global open science.

focuses on intellectual property protection in development

Reporter: There is a certain contradiction between data security and openness. How should we view this contradiction?

Yang Wei: Emphasizing the importance of open science does not mean that open science has no intellectual property rights. If the author chooses to publish his/her results in a journal, it can be considered that the results will not affect national security and can be shared with the public. If the papers and related data are closely related to national development interests, they should be published in other forms such as internal materials and patents.

has two functions for publicly sharing data in scientific and technological journals: one is that the reviewer can examine the professionalism of the research work through these data, thereby deciding whether to publish relevant papers; the other is that these data can provide reference for subsequent researchers, and data is an important support for ensuring the reliability of paper research. If data is not provided, it will be difficult for others to perform repeated verification, and repeatable verification is an important feature of scientific research.

Sometimes, due to limited pages, the journal will not publish all research data, but if the author chooses to publish a paper in the journal, the relevant data will generally be provided to the journal and prepared to share the data. Of course, the author has the right to decide whether to publicly study the data. It should be clear that once published in a public journal, the author has the right to sign in the intellectual property rights, and the work will no longer be confidential.

reporter: In recent years, the development of OA journals (Open Access Journals) has attracted many people's attention. On the one hand, it has promoted knowledge sharing, and on the other hand, it has also aroused people's concerns about "water journals". How do you think science and technology journals should view the OA development route?

Yang Wei: In my country, concerns about "water magazines" have decreased, and the relevant situation has also changed a lot. In 2018, the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council issued the "Handle-level Opinions on Further Strengthening the Construction of Scientific Research Integrity ", which blacklisted academic journals that ignore academic quality, management chaos, commercial interests first, and have bad impacts. In recent years, "water magazines" have been blacklisted, and many of the newly established journals have relatively high quality. For example, the China Association for Science and Technology implemented the " Excellence Action Plan for China Science and Technology Journals ", among which the "High Starting Point New Journal Project" supports many newly established scientific and technological journals. These new publications are basically of good quality, and more than half of them have adopted the open access form from the beginning.

Of course, the overall quality of papers in OA journals is still improving. From a global perspective, the quality of papers in OA journals is still slightly lower than that of journals that adopt subscription-based systems, but many world-class journals are changing from hybrid to conversion and joining the "camp" of open science.

needs to further improve the maturity of open science

Reporter: At present, what problems have my country's science and technology journals encountered in open access?

Yang Wei: The fourth topic of "Research on the Trends and Impacts of Open Science" of the key consulting project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Department, "Research on my country's Open Science Roadmap and Policy System", has constructed an open science maturity index system and described the open access situation of my country's scientific and technological journals.

At present, my country's scientific and technological journals have a lot of academic output, but journal platforms and data platforms do not yet have international competitiveness, nor have they formed an open scientific policy with global influence.

Reporter: What suggestions do you have for our scientific and technological journals to participate more actively in global open science?

Yang Wei: The maturity index system of open science consists of maturity in three aspects: open access, open data and open policy.

For my country, if we want to effectively increase the open access maturity index, it is necessary to increase the share and volume of open access papers and increase international cooperation. If you want to improve the maturity of open data, you need to develop a high-level machine translation system for barrier-free conversion of Chinese and foreign languages ​​to further promote the construction of academic style. In terms of improving the maturity of open policies, it is recommended that my country provide preliminary institutional guarantees for data security (including free data and purchased data) by formulating relevant laws and regulations; at the same time, it is recommended to form a platform that can carry high-quality data and form a policy system that can be integrated into open and scientific global governance to improve the quality of current Chinese journals and make them more internationally competitive.

Overall, in order to further improve the maturity of open science, we should increase the share and volume of academic achievements in open access and international cooperation, and improve the academic quality, information quality and reliability of shared data.

Source: Science and Technology Daily

Editor: Liu Jing