COMMON GROUND IN THE GLOBAL QUEST FOR OPEN RESEARCH

It's hard to envision a system more global and more integrated than research. Many stakeholders affect and are affected by changes in the research ecosystem; the ecosystem differs in significant ways across the globe and between researchers, institutions and fields of study; and there are many questions that exclusive action can't address. There are also broad ecosystem-level questions that need answering. For these reasons alone, global approaches to reform are needed.
The first step in this exploration isn't to start looking for “solutions”, but to develop a better understanding of how our needs and interests overlap. By identifying the broad contours of common ground in this conversation, we can build the guardrails and mileposts for our collaborative efforts and then allow the finer-grained details of community-developed plans more flexibility and guidance to evolve over time.
What are these overlapping interests? First, the people in this community share a common motive – idealism – to make research better able to serve the public good. We also share a common desire to unleash the power of open to improve research and accelerate discovery; we are all willing to fix issues now instead of waiting for market forces or government intervention to do this for us; and we want to ensure that everyone everywhere has equitable access to knowledge.
There is also very broad agreement in this community about which specific problems in scholarly communication need to be fixed and why, and well as many overlapping beliefs in this community. OSI participants have concluded that four such beliefs best define our common ground: (1) research and society will benefit from open done right; (2) successful solutions will require broad collaboration; (3) connected issues need to be addressed, and (4) open isn't a single outcome, but a spectrum.
OSI has been observing and debating the activity in scholarly communication since late 2014 with regard to understanding possible global approaches and solutions for improving the future of open research. While the COVID-19 pandemic has made the importance of open science abundantly clear, the struggle to achieve this goal (not just for science but for all research) has been mired in a lack of clarity and urgency for over 20 years now, mostly stalling on the tension between wanting more openness but lacking realistic solutions for making this happen on a large scale with so many different stakeholders, needs and perspectives involved.
Underlying this tension is a fundamental difference in philosophy: whether the entire scholarly communication marketplace, driven by the needs and desires of researchers, should determine what kind of open it wants and needs; or whether this marketplace should be compelled to adopt open reform measures developed primarily by the scholarly communication system's main billpayers-funders and libraries. There is no widespread difference of opinion in the community whether open is worth pursuing. The debate is mostly over what specific open solutions are best, and at what pace open reforms should occur.
OSI has proposed a plan of action for working together to rebuild the future of scholarly communication on strong, common ground foundation. This plan – which we're referring to as Plan A – calls for joint action on studies, scholarly communication infrastructure improvement, and open outreach/education. Plan A also calls for working together with UNESCO to develop a unified global roadmap for the future of open, and for striving to ensure the community's work in this space is researcher-focused, collaborative, connected (addressing connected issues like peer review), diverse and flexible (no one-size-fits-all solutions), and beneficial to research. UNESCO's goal is to finish its roadmap proposal by early 2022.
For a full discussion of OSI's common ground recommendations, please see the Plan A website at http://plan-a.world.


COMMON GROUND IN THE GLOBAL QUEST FOR OPEN RESEARCH
Scholarly communication is incredibly important to modern research-a vast field, where many different organizations, interest groups and experts tackle a dizzying array of issues related to how research gets communicated.These organizations, interests and issues overlap and intersect in important ways, but they most often exert separate and distinct forces on the function and evolution of the scholarly communication ecosystem. 1s an ecosystem, therefore, several weaknesses have become apparent in scholarly communication over the years, such as: 1. Diagnostic: The diversity of this system makes it difficult to describe, diagnose and reform in any collaborative and coherent way.Reform measures that works for one stakeholder, issue or region may not work for another.

Ripple effects:
Changing the scholarly communication ecosystem is difficult because changes that happen in one part of the system will ripple to other parts, sometimes with unintended consequences.
1.The businesses and skills involved in scholarly communication range from publishing, journalism, marketing and teaching, to policy development, grant writing, technical writing, editing, informatics, copyright oversight, institutional repository management, tech transfer and research design.Interests and concerns run the gamut from interdisciplinary discovery to outreach, advocacy, education, peer review, collaboration, open access, open data, predatory publishing, public faith in science, impact assessment, academia's publish-or-perish culture, journal indexing, citations, standards, curation, preservation, embargo policy, funder mandate compliance, research analysis, research transparency, replicability, and beyond.And all of this multitude varies widely by region, institution, clients, audience, career stage and field of study when it comes to perspectives, goals, strategies, and best practices.

ABOUT OSI
The Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI) is a diverse, inclusive, global network of high-level experts and stakeholder representatives working together in partnership with UNESCO to develop broadly accepted, comprehensive, sustainable solutions to the future of open scholarship that work for everyone everywhere.This document reflects the input of the individuals listed here as well as contributions from other OSI participants who are not listed.The findings and recommendations expressed do not necessarily reflect the opinions of these individuals, OSI participants, OSI participant institutions, or the agencies, trustees, officers, or staff of these institutions.3. Hyper-advocacy: Despite the diagnostic/reform barrier and ripple effects (or arguably because of these) a diverse array of specialized actors in this system are attempting to create system-wide change anyway.Many of these advocacy efforts, predictably, are very focused on just one part of the scholarly communication puzzle or one particular perspective.A wide variety of efforts-along with a variety of goals, agendas and definitions-have emerged which are sometimes incompatible, even conflicting.

4.
Tail wagging the dog: Scholarly communication can't speak with one clear voice to funders about the field's needs and goals for the future, which has resulted in relatively poor visibility and funding.It has also resulted in funders themselves setting scholarly communication agendas based on their own understanding, vision for the future, and sense of priorities.The evolution of this philosophical gap is complex and fascinating, but unfortunately beyond the scope of this paper to explore in detail. 4Fast-forwarding to today and summarizing the history of the open movement over the last 20 years, these are the most salient points for our discussion here: 1. Open is growing strongly.How strongly depends on which indexes we're measuring, which time periods, which disciplines, and what we mean by "open."As Figure 1 shows, not all open is doing equally well-especially not the kind of open we may be rooting for-and lots of information is still closed.But in aggregate, the growth of open is robust.
2. The Science Communication Institute (SCI), which is the parent body of OSI, attempted to create a Science Communication Network for several years but the response was lackluster.Everyone in science communication recognizes common elements across the field, but they are also more focused on their current strategies and constituencies than looking for commonalities.The teaching of science communication is similarly hamstrung-different course and degree programs around the world focus on widely differing offerings (some, for instance, just teach writing whereas others delve into issue like public policy, and still others focus just on helping scientists communicate more effectively).Robust funding for this type of field unification effort will go a long way, however.As with any "movement," it's important to build up a core of participants, benefits, and results before the movement really begins to build-for the community to see this alliance as real before they commit to joining it.For a deeper discussion the challenges of uniting the science communication field, see the SCI website at sci.institute.
3. The terms "open" and "open access" are often used interchangeably.There is no universal agreement on what either of these terms mean.Also, please note that the word "open" is used in this paper as an adjective, a verb and a noun.When we use this word we can be speaking of a condition of information (an adjective), the act of freeing information (a verb), and/or the name of the movement that embraces both (a noun).4. Richard Poynder's recent essay on this topic does a very thorough job of this-see Poynder 2019.2. Open has evolved considerably since its earliest years, as has the Internet and the information environment, and the truths about information we once thought immutable.We can still be passionate, for instance, about our belief that information should be free, but we have a better understanding today of how this dynamic can create and has created unanticipated side-effects, such as the rise of disinformation and fraud, and putting subscription content providers like newspapers out of business.The most visible fault lines separate the producers of information (publishers and researchers) from the main financers and consumers of this information (government funders and university libraries), but the actual fault lines are more nuanced, with many groups on the outside looking in, unable to influence the trajectory of this debate.

OSI POLICY PERSPECTIVE (SUMMARY)
Can we reconcile the competing perceptions in this space (why we might want to try doing this is discussed in the next section)?Our strong opinions about right and wrong, our different needs and perspectives, and the general factionalism that has pervaded this conversation for most of the last 20 years have erected roadblocks that stand in the way of global progress on this issue: 1. Trust: Different factions in the open space don't trust each other.The rhetoric is heated, and often dismissive and disrespectful.

Frustration:
Boiling over from this lack of trust, this space is plagued by frustration, acrimony (see also, Twitter) and hyperbole, all of which prevents us from working together effectively.

Lack of engagement:
Researchers aren't involved in these reform conversations in any meaningful way.6

Ignorance:
We're missing key pieces of the puzzle (for instance, what kind of open is most effective, how necessary are embargoes, how big is predatory publishing, and so on).

Lack of funding:
We need funding to develop new systems and structures but this is a poorly funded space (or a mostly funder-driven space, as noted previously).

Inertia:
The culture of communication in academia is highly resistant to change.There's also the inertia of our own long-held positions and courses of action (of publishers, open advocates, universities, funders, governments, and other groups).

Tunnel vision:
We have tended to focus on narrow, prescriptive solutions that fit just one perspective (as noted previously) instead of developing general frameworks for progress that will allow for adaptation, competition and creativity.

Unilateralism:
The scholarly communication community has grown accustomed to reacting to unilateral policy initiatives and proclamations.The result has been a lurching, divisive sort of progress-or at least attempts at progress.

FINDING COMMON GROUND
It's hard to envision a system more global and more integrated than research.Many stakeholders affect and are affected by changes in the ecosystem; the scholarly communication ecosystem differs in significant ways across the globe and between researchers, institutions and fields of study; and there are many questions that exclusive action can't address.There are also broad ecosystem-level questions that need answering.For these reasons alone, global approaches are needed.
The first step in this exploration isn't to start looking for "open solutions," but to develop a better understanding of how our research communication needs and interests overlap.By identifying the broad contours of common ground in this conversation, we can build the guardrails and mileposts for our collaborative efforts and then allow the finer-grained details of community-developed plans more flexibility and guidance to evolve over time.
What are these overlapping interests?First, the people in this community share a common motiveidealism-to make research better able to serve the public good.We also share a common desire to unleash the power of open to improve research and accelerate discovery; we are all willing to fix issues now instead of waiting for market forces or government intervention to do this for us; and we want to ensure that everyone everywhere has equitable access to knowledge.
There is also very broad agreement in this community about which specific problems in scholarly communication need to be fixed and why.The most salient problems are:7 1. Culture of communication in academia: We need to clarify messages about open and break down barriers, simplifying the pathways to more open adoption.We also need to engage universities and scholarly societies in a conversation to encourage new advancement pathways that include more use of open, and that can help untangle publish or perish attitudes and metrics like the impact factor from promotion and tenure considerations.

Funding:
We need to stop aligning our limited funding primarily behind one-size-fits-all solutions and instead fund a wider variety of approaches for a variety of actors and audiences.

Studies:
There are many gaps in our understanding of scholarly communication, from predatory publishing to the global flip to embargos, citation advantages, the economic benefits of open, and more.We should work as a community to fund and conduct studies to fill in these information gaps.

HSS & Science:
The fact there are no one-size-fits-all solutions is nowhere more apparent than when comparing the different needs of HSS disciplines (like history) with disciplines in the natural sciences.This said, while we can develop better tailored solutions (or disciplines can develop their own), we should also continue to promote areas of mutual interest and benefit.

Impact factors:
Impact factors are loved by some stakeholders, despised by others.They are a net positive for some, and a terrible scourge for others.We need to reform the use of impact factors-this much is clear.Exactly how is another matter.7. Peer review: We need to work as a community to develop new global standards for journals.
We also need to study the effectiveness of different models and support the community as it experiments.
8. Institutional repositories: Repositories are a crucial tool in the custody chain of research preservation.We need to better understand the challenges ahead and ensure we're asking the right questions and pursuing the best solutions.8. See the OSI2017 report for more detail.9. DISCOVERABLE: Can this information be found online?Is it indexed by search engines and databases, and hosted on servers open to the public?Does it contain adequate identifiers (such as DOIs)?ACCESSIBLE: Once discovered, can this information be read by anyone free of charge?Is it available in a timely, complete, and easy-to-access manner (for instance, is it downloadable or machine-readable, with a dataset included)?REUSABLE: Can this information be modified?Disseminated?What conditions (both legal and technical) prevent it from being repurposed or shared at will?TRANSPARENT: What do we know about the provenance of this information?Is it peer reviewed?Do we know the funding source (are conflicts of interested identified)?What do we know about the study design and analysis?SUSTAINABLE: Is the open solution for this information artifact sustainable?This may be hard to know-the sustainability of larger, more established solutions may evoke more confidence than new, small, or one-off solutions.
2. Open isn't free.The focus of open cannot be only about cost-savings.Open is going to cost money-the jury is still out on exactly how much.

Open isn't easy.
Achieving open outcomes can be complicated.The easy solution isn't necessarily going to be the correct solution.
4. Publishing is critical.Without publishing, there is no modern, reliable scientific record.This isn't to say that publishing as-is is infallible or indispensable, just that we need to make changes with care and respect for the vital role that publishing plays in research.
5. We're more alike than unalike.There are wide differences of opinion in this community but also significant overlap in our perspectives.
6. Convergent needs are everywhere.Convergent needs and aspirations are everywhere in this community.This can be difficult to recognize when we spend most our time arguing about what color of open access is best.From a 10,000 foot level, however, this convergence is obvious.
7. We need more information.There are significant gaps in our community's understanding of many key issues in scholarly communication.More study is needed.

8.
Accountability.We all have a stake in the outcome.

9.
Trust.This conversation needs trust to move forward.There is a lot of mistrust in the scholarly communication system which has been so polarized for so long.

ALL ABOARD
What's stopping all the world's researchers from jumping on board the open research train today?The biggest reason may be uncertainty.Many researchers appear to be interested and willing to get on board (enthusiasm varies widely by region, field and institution), but for others, their altruism is often tempered by self-interest-a significant dislike of the complexity and/or requirements pushed by most open plans (such as CC-BY licensing, or requirements that ban hybrid journals; see AAP 2019, AHA 2018), for instance, or a sense they are getting what they need from the system as is, so why fix what isn't broken? 10 Let's assume for a moment, though, that we want all open trains to head in generally the same direction-an outcome that working with each other on the future of open might help produce.In such a world, we could offer more compelling "destinations" instead of our current "take it or leave it" ones.While we're at it, we could even throw in more comfortable accommodations.Our new, common ground approach to open can then be one where we all: 3. Work together to immediately improve access where it's most needed.What kind of outcomes are wanted by researchers and where?Where are improvements needed and why?Let's be focused and thoughtful and not grasp for easy one-size-fits-all explanations and solutions.What if we don't work together on the challenges ahead?Continuing with our go-it-alone approach may eventually result in competing and increasingly unequal haves versus have-nots regional solutions where we end up with one open future for China, another for the EU, and still other futures for South America, Africa, and other regions, each working to solve its own unique concerns and perspectives. 14his approach may also force changes across diverse disciplines that may not work well (for example, open solutions that work in physics generally don't work at all in history), causing researchers in some fields to lose interest in an open future.Or by not working together now to defeat predatory publishing, we may see a situation in the not so distant future where we can no longer tell real science from junkan outcome which will damage both science and society.

Work
11.There are international conventions in this space with regard to copyright law, universal digital object identifiers, and so on, but no international standards describing, for instance, how journals should conduct peer review, or what constitutes a legitimate and credible journal.Not all emerging open formats are created equal; standards can help ensure a baseline of quality and reliability.COPE and other organizations have created strong first drafts of this kind of work (see COPE 2018).The next step is for the international community to review (and modify as needed) these proposals and build the capacity of publishers worldwide.
12.There are already programs and procedures, both at the publisher level and the international level to help researchers respond to global health emergencies like Ebola, Zika and the Coronavirus.See, for example, NIH's Emergency Access Initiative, or Elsevier's information resource centers (Reller 2020).It's important to note here that we're not suggesting daylighting private health information from studies or discounting studies where this information can't be publicly evaluated.These are both bad ideas, and don't do anything to help science or science policy.13.This section is verbatim from Hampson 2018 14.One example here is that if we replace subscription paywalls with "play-walls" where authors need to pay to have their articles published, this is arguably a worse outcome for authors from lower-resource regions and institutions since we're now dealing not just with research that's hard to access, but with research that doesn't get published in the first place.
Considering what's at stake-what we can achieve by working together, and what we risk by not working together-it is critically important that we put our differences aside in this community and summon the will to look thoughtfully and carefully at how we are approaching the common challenges we face.Exactly how we do this is the question.
OSI has proposed a plan of action for working together to rebuild the future of scholarly communication on strong, common ground foundation.This plan-which we're referring to as Plan A-calls for joint action on studies, scholarly communication infrastructure improvement, and open outreach/education. 15Plan A also calls for working together with UNESCO to develop a unified global roadmap for the future of open, and for striving to ensure the community's work in this space is researcher-focused, collaborative, connected (addressing connected issues like peer review), diverse and flexible (no onesize-fits-all solutions), and beneficial to research.UNESCO's goal is to finish its roadmap proposal by early 2022.

CONCLUSION
The scholarly communication community needs to come together on common ground to help build the future of open research.Every phase of this work needs to be done together, from the decision to unite to the search for common interests to the development of options.
This work isn't going to be easy.To be clear, however, this work is also very achievable and doesn't need to start from square one.OSI participants, alumni and observers have already been working together since 2014 to develop a foundation for building the future of scholarly communication on common ground.These individuals -over 400 high-level scholarly communication leaders in all, representing 18 different stakeholder groups from 250 institutions and 28 countries -share many common interests and perspectives, but often disagree on the details of solutions.These disagreements are embraced as learning opportunities, and have helped this group achieve a broad and deep understanding of the scholarly communication landscape.The group's continued engagement has also demonstrated that there are indeed many people, insitutions and stakeholder groups who remain interested in working together in this effort.UNESCO also remains a key partner and is working to help OSI succeed, and vice versa.
It is also important to remember that many people, institutions and organizations in this space have long been engaged in limited and exclusive ways to reform the future of scholarly communication.
Many common needs and interests already exist in this community and have been acted upon for years.
Building a common ground foundation is a necessary next step in the evolution of this engagement, beginning with OSI's Plan A. This approach and the solutions that eventually flow from it will support a future for open that aligns the full potential of all stakeholders in this community, and will lead to open outcomes that are far more robust, exciting, creative, and sustainable than any other outcomes could possibly be.
Step one is to reach across the aisle and allow for the possibility that we are all allies, and that we will be stronger in our common quest by working together.
15. See Plan-A.world for details.There are some in OSI who lament that Plan A doesn't call for more aggressive action.Finding a suitable, common ground starting point for action is key, however.Assessing the wealth of recommendations from OSI2016 and OSI2017 workgroup participants (see the OSI2017 report for details), the most frequently mentioned crosscutting issues were the need for more studies and the need to reform the culture of communication in academia.The most frequently mentioned approaches for reforming scholarly communication were studies, coordination and collaboration, outreach, new tools and programs, improved standards, pilots, resource development, and policy leadership.Plan A's focus is derived from these recommendations, overlaid with what the OSI group learned and observed in 2018 and 2019 about our internal strengths and about the environment for global reform.
Science Communication Institute (SCI), a US-based 501c3 nonprofit charity.OSI serves as the Network for Open Access to Scientific Information and Research (NOASIR) for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).For more information about OSI, please visit osiglobal.org.

Figure 1 :
Figure 1: Growth of various types of open 5

Figure 2 :
Figure 2: Amount of open research in the world, by journal index

3.
We haven't controlled the evolution of open.Different stakeholders and institutions in the scholarly communication community have appropriated this concept-from education to software to scholarly publishing -meaning that over time the evolutionary tree of open terms and practices has branched considerably.And finally, 4. The open movement has fractured.Different groups are now advocating different solutions and policies, valuing different outcomes, and even disparaging each other's right to be part of the open community.

6.
Open IP: The global community should work with WIPO, NISO, and other relevant organizations to establish new global standards for open IP and create IP literacy materials for the research community.

9.
Rogue solutions: Our community must take a stand against Sci-Hub types of solutions that violate copyright laws and are off the open spectrum, while also supporting new and entrepreneurial approaches to open.10.Standards: There are many issues in this space that would benefit from a standards-based approach-from what we consider to be "open" to what publishers should do, what best practices researchers should follow (beyond DORA), and much more.11.Underserved: There is much work we can do as a community to encourage more openness in universities and public sector institutions, better address the wide variety of research-related needs and concerns that emanate from the vast diversity and asymmetries of the scholarly communication environment (such as indexing, standards, and promotion and tenure practices), and narrowing the affordability gap.In addition, there are many overlapping beliefs in this community.OSI participants have concluded that four such beliefs best define our common ground: (1) Research and society will benefit from open done right; (2) Successful solutions will require broad collaboration; (3) Connected issues need to be addressed, and (4) Open isn't a single outcome, but a spectrum.These four beliefs are a summation of the nine common beliefs that OSI2017 participants identified: 8 1. Open isn't binary.The terms "open" or "open access" (OA) are used in a wide variety of ways.For instance, some open advocates see open access as an optimal, singular state meeting specific conditions.Others (including many researchers in this field) will call any kind of open information "open access," as long as it is free to read.This flexibility is a natural outcome of how open has evolved in the scholarly communication community.Therefore, we have concluded that instead of being a rigid, binary concept, open actually exists along a spectrum of outcomes, with wide variation according to discoverability, accessibility, reusability, transparency, and sustainability (DARTS). 9Keeping the DARTS spectrum in mind can help the community recognize that open and open access are highly variable terms-that when two groups advocate for more open, they may actually be supporting entirely different outcomes.

2
In OSI, we have been observing and debating the activity in scholarly communication since late 2014 with regard to understanding possible global approaches and solultions for improving the future of open research.While the COVID-19 pandemic has made the importance of open science adbundantly clear, the struggle to achieve this goal (not just for science but for all research) has been mired in a lack of clarity and urgency for over 20 years now, mostly stalling on the tension between wanting more openness but lacking realistic solutions for making this happen on a large scale with so many different stakeholders, needs and perspectives involved.ing.The debate is mostly over what specific open solutions are best, and at what pace open reforms should occur.
3Underlying this tension is a fundamental difference in philosophy: whether the entire scholarly communication marketplace, driven by the needs and desires of researchers, should determine what kind of open it wants and needs; or whether this marketplace should be compelled to adopt open reform measures developed primarily by the scholarly communication system's main billpayers-funders and libraries.There is no widespread difference of opinion in the community whether open is worth pursu-

together to improve open clarity and standards
. What's the simplest way to participate in the future of open research?We need solutions that are easier for researchers to understand and value, and easier for universities to implement.Creating global open standards can help. 11.Work together to address urgent needs.There are many such needs to choose from, but none are more urgent and global than climate change.Let's bring the international open community together to open not only climate-related research, but to actively integrate this work, make connections, and facilitate discovery. 12.Pilot open solutions.Let's build things with open-combine, curate and standardize data, make new connections, bridge the gaps between disciplines, see new fields, make new discoveriesin short, do work that proves open is the future.7.Look beyond.As a community, let's look beyond the journal article and figure out what we really need.What tools and systems should we build?To what end (specifically)?After a few years of working together, we should be able to reach an "Open Renaissance" where open is clearly defined and supported, open solutions are robust, inclusive, broad, scalable and sustainable, almost all knowledge is discoverable, the global access gap disappears, global standards are clear, the marketplace remains competitive so open products remain cutting edge, repositories are integrated, and data standardization is widespread and robust.Flowing from this Renaissance, the social impacts of research will surpass today (including improved literacy, public engagement, and public policy impact), knowledge will become more of a global public good, and society will reap the benefits. 13