This article briefly describes the Open Science movement and how it used Web 2.0 tools to try to democratize science. Then we compare it to Web3 and explain how DeSci can achieve some of Open Science’s unfulfilled goals. Let’s dive in!

• Open Science began some decades ago as a movement that tried to make scientific knowledge an open, transparent, and community-based endeavor.

• Open Science uses centralized web tools to make science more democratic.

• With the arrival of Web3, new scenarios and tools emerge that potentially fulfill the principles of Open Science.

Open Science is a movement led by scientists and academics that seeks to offer alternatives to the traditional, hegemonic way of producing and publishing science.

The main motivation behind the movement is that the current way of knowledge production has several shortcomings such as anonymous peer reviews and pay-to-publish business models; these shortcomings hinder scientific progress.

The Open Science movement uses Web 2.0 tools to contribute to the democratization of scientific knowledge.

Open science aims to democratize scientific activity within a certain ethical framework. This framework’s pillars can are synthesized as follows:

1. Promote open access

2. Build open infrastructures

3. Create open evaluation machines

4. Provide open educational resources

Let’s take a closer look….

Promote open access

Users should have access to scientific inputs and results (data, publications, computer programs, source codes, and scientific protocols) and be open to use and re-use.

Build open infrastructures

This movement emphasizes the development and availability of community-focused infrastructures for knowledge sharing— open repositories, for instance.

Create open evaluation mechanisms

Open peer reviews and lab notebooks are considered democratic and transparent alternatives to anonymous peer reviews.

Provide open educational resources

Open Science is based on the idea that learning, teaching, and research materials can be adapted by anyone. But, for that to be possible, these have to be available in the public domain or through an open license.

The Open Science project identified some problems in how scientists conduct research and publish their findings. A number of traditional science's most well-known problems are described below.

Anonymous peer review

The current mode of peer review involves processes that make it deficient. On the one hand, there’s a lack of transparency. It is well known that the anonymity of reviewers leads to poor quality and unethical evaluations. On the other hand, the lack of incentives. Apart from the prestige, reviewers receive no benefit from evaluating articles.

OpenScience promotes open review mechanisms for reviewers to be more constructive and honest. These mechanisms can potentially lead to the detection of biased reviewers and encourage reviewers to produce higher-quality reviews.

Some publications have adopted Open Science mechanisms for their reviews, such as BioMed Central or iLife. Both are open-access scientific publishers that open at least part of their reviews.

Paid publication

Researchers receive government funding for their investigation, produce research papers, and publish them in indexed journals. Then, the research rights are donated to publishers, which are often for-profit companies.

To access these articles, readers need a journal subscription. In this loop, taxpayers who paid for the research through their taxes would have to pay again. Do you know someone who’s not a researcher, subscribed to a scientific journal? Is there a gap between taxpayers financing research and those with access to the research results?

ScienceHub and ResearchHub are two of the most popular projects committed to providing an answer to this problem with OpenScience tools and principles.

Web 2.0 is the prevailing architecture of the internet. Over the last few years, it has provided centralized tools so that users can access and share information and create content. But, in 2014, Web3 entered the picture.

Web3 uses blockchain technology to bring transparency and distributed ownership to community projects. That's why Open Science projects can take the form of Web3 such as DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations) that govern themselves with tokenized memberships.

Thanks to blockchain technology, communities can now work as virtual organizations with:

• Immutable & publically accessible records

• Smart contracts that automate and guarantee fair resource management

• Governance structures agnostic to geographic and regulatory boundaries

Many sectors of society are benefitting from Web3: artists, investors, gamers, content creators, and also researchers. DeSci is a movement that takes the principles of open science but with Web3 tools betting on the decentralization of science.

In this sense, DeSci promotes tools to decentralize financing, publication, and scientific research in general.

Decentralizing science may sound bold to the scientific community. However, there are prominent voices in science that are beginning to bring the subject up for discussion.

This burgeoning movement can also be an excellent opportunity to democratize and improve science. It may even be reminiscent of early discussions of Ethereum and blockchain. DeSci is probably a movement that will be talked about for years to come, and it’s worth keeping an eye on its development.

At ViralCure, we’re envisioning a Web3 platform that connects scientists, investors, and communities. Our goal is to free science by democratizing funding. Curious? Join the conversation on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/apFBJ5Kwer

This article briefly describes the Open Science movement and how it used Web 2.0 tools to try to democratize science. Then we compare it to Web3 and explain how DeSci can achieve some of Open Science’s unfulfilled goals. Let’s dive in!

• Open Science began some decades ago as a movement that tried to make scientific knowledge an open, transparent, and community-based endeavor.

• Open Science uses centralized web tools to make science more democratic.

• With the arrival of Web3, new scenarios and tools emerge that potentially fulfill the principles of Open Science.

Open Science is a movement led by scientists and academics that seeks to offer alternatives to the traditional, hegemonic way of producing and publishing science.

The main motivation behind the movement is that the current way of knowledge production has several shortcomings such as anonymous peer reviews and pay-to-publish business models; these shortcomings hinder scientific progress.

The Open Science movement uses Web 2.0 tools to contribute to the democratization of scientific knowledge.

Open science aims to democratize scientific activity within a certain ethical framework. This framework’s pillars can are synthesized as follows:

1. Promote open access

2. Build open infrastructures

3. Create open evaluation machines

4. Provide open educational resources

Let’s take a closer look….

Promote open access

Users should have access to scientific inputs and results (data, publications, computer programs, source codes, and scientific protocols) and be open to use and re-use.

Build open infrastructures

This movement emphasizes the development and availability of community-focused infrastructures for knowledge sharing— open repositories, for instance.

Create open evaluation mechanisms

Open peer reviews and lab notebooks are considered democratic and transparent alternatives to anonymous peer reviews.

Provide open educational resources

Open Science is based on the idea that learning, teaching, and research materials can be adapted by anyone. But, for that to be possible, these have to be available in the public domain or through an open license.

The Open Science project identified some problems in how scientists conduct research and publish their findings. A number of traditional science's most well-known problems are described below.

Anonymous peer review

The current mode of peer review involves processes that make it deficient. On the one hand, there’s a lack of transparency. It is well known that the anonymity of reviewers leads to poor quality and unethical evaluations. On the other hand, the lack of incentives. Apart from the prestige, reviewers receive no benefit from evaluating articles.

OpenScience promotes open review mechanisms for reviewers to be more constructive and honest. These mechanisms can potentially lead to the detection of biased reviewers and encourage reviewers to produce higher-quality reviews.

Some publications have adopted Open Science mechanisms for their reviews, such as BioMed Central or iLife. Both are open-access scientific publishers that open at least part of their reviews.

Paid publication

Researchers receive government funding for their investigation, produce research papers, and publish them in indexed journals. Then, the research rights are donated to publishers, which are often for-profit companies.

To access these articles, readers need a journal subscription. In this loop, taxpayers who paid for the research through their taxes would have to pay again. Do you know someone who’s not a researcher, subscribed to a scientific journal? Is there a gap between taxpayers financing research and those with access to the research results?

ScienceHub and ResearchHub are two of the most popular projects committed to providing an answer to this problem with OpenScience tools and principles.

Web 2.0 is the prevailing architecture of the internet. Over the last few years, it has provided centralized tools so that users can access and share information and create content. But, in 2014, Web3 entered the picture.

Web3 uses blockchain technology to bring transparency and distributed ownership to community projects. That's why Open Science projects can take the form of Web3 such as DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations) that govern themselves with tokenized memberships.

Thanks to blockchain technology, communities can now work as virtual organizations with:

• Immutable & publically accessible records

• Smart contracts that automate and guarantee fair resource management

• Governance structures agnostic to geographic and regulatory boundaries

Many sectors of society are benefitting from Web3: artists, investors, gamers, content creators, and also researchers. DeSci is a movement that takes the principles of open science but with Web3 tools betting on the decentralization of science.

In this sense, DeSci promotes tools to decentralize financing, publication, and scientific research in general.

Decentralizing science may sound bold to the scientific community. However, there are prominent voices in science that are beginning to bring the subject up for discussion.

This burgeoning movement can also be an excellent opportunity to democratize and improve science. It may even be reminiscent of early discussions of Ethereum and blockchain. DeSci is probably a movement that will be talked about for years to come, and it’s worth keeping an eye on its development.

At ViralCure, we’re envisioning a Web3 platform that connects scientists, investors, and communities. Our goal is to free science by democratizing funding. Curious? Join the conversation on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/apFBJ5Kwer