This open access week, we have talked about ways to identify the right open access journal for your manuscript, how the FAIR principles contribute to making your data more openly available, and how the ASU Research Data Repository helps meet the requirements that will be part of the upcoming NIH Data Sharing policy - a key component of a more open approach to research. For our last Open Access Week post, I want to reflect on this year’s theme, Open for Climate Justice, and suggest some actions you can take.
Climate change poses the most significant crisis that we as a people have ever faced. We are already witnessing some of the early effects with more unpredictable weather patterns, more severe hurricane and fire seasons, flooding and drought than ever before in human history. These impacts disproportionately harm communities worldwide who are less wealthy, less privileged and less powerful. This imbalance of power also means that not everyone who is most affected has access to the knowledge and resources they need to protect their communities and contribute to the global effort to solve these problems.
In previous health crises, most recently with the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen that making the research process more open leads to more innovation and more rapidly developed solutions. If we apply this strategy to climate change, perhaps we can make meaningful changes before it is too late for our children and theirs. This pre-Open Access Week webcast “What is Climate Justice?” provides an introduction to the concept and what it was selected for this year’s theme.
The Open Climate Campaign has just launched a 4-year effort, working with researchers, governments, research funders and climate organizations to develop policies, strategies and incentives to make the open sharing of research outputs the norm in climate science. While their efforts are at a vast scale, they recommend this list of actions that are within the ability of every researcher:
- Deposit a preprint or a postprint (or accepted manuscript) in an OA repository (such as our KEEP Institutional Repository)
- Publish your papers open access.
- Deposit your data openly with the CC0 public domain dedication to a data repository (such as the ASU Research Data Repository).
- Upload your scientific code/scripts/models openly in a code repository.
- Join the Open Climate Campaign newsletter.
- Tell other researchers about the campaign.
Contributing to this effort is consistent with ASU’s values of equity, inclusion and social justice. The ASU Library’s Research Support team is here to support and guide you. This Open Access Week, identify one action item you can do to make your research more open.
