Arcadia and ICOR: Experiments in Open Science

One of the foundational elements of Arcadia is our mission to push the boundaries of open science and to develop new ways of sharing our knowledge and engaging with the broader scientific community. This is a big goal and to achieve it, we need to collaborate with those that are equally committed to open science.

Lots of people are excited by the principles of open science, but transitioning out of the traditional, closed, and restrictive publishing system also requires a ton of hard work. That’s why we are proud to be partnering with the team at Incentivizing Collaborative and Open Research (ICOR). They are actively engaged in an array of open science experiments and initiatives that are moving the needle and are providing the key demonstrations that open science is better science.

With ICOR we will be working on distributed experiments for collective gain. Some of the key areas of alignment between Arcadia and ICOR are in:

• Developing Open Science Best Practices: As we develop our open science program, we will contribute to ICOR’s library of guidelines, sharing our approach, our documentation, and our learnings.
• Creating an IP Toolbox: We believe that open science and commercialization do not have to be mutually exclusive. Establishing a strong and creative IP strategy is essential for proving that open science can support and speed our commercial pursuits. We have already learned from the resources provided by ICOR and are working on developing agreements and means of tracking our progress, which we will share back with the community.
• Building Research Output Management Systems (ROMS) and Using Persistent Identifiers (PIDs): Scientists have traditionally relied on journals and journal articles to house and disseminate their data, but the journal system wasn’t built with today’s diverse and ever-expanding datasets in mind. New systems are needed to share and organize scientific research. Arcadia is committed to using PIDs to facilitate discoverability and to depositing data in repositories that meet FAIR (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reuse) principles. Working towards shared data schemas for all research outputs will help facilitate discussion, review, and reuse.
• Facilitated Collaboration: Collaboration is central to Arcadia’s success, and we aim to collaborate widely while maintaining our commitment to open science. We are in the process of developing our Collaborator Agreement, and will work with ICOR to share it, to track its success and any necessary revisions.
• Modular Data and Review: It is current standard practice to release data and solicit peer review at the end of a project. We believe that releasing data more frequently and gathering and integrating community feedback more often and earlier in a project’s lifespan will accelerate science and produce better results.
• Tracking Nano-Contributions: Author lists on journal articles do not accurately reflect a scientist’s contribution to a project and can promote territorialism and competition, rather than collaboration. Arcadia will be developing new methods for mapping contributions. These methods will provide a richer, more substantive picture of a person’s contribution, and ICOR will aid in measuring and tracking the success of these methods.
• Metrics of Utilization: Knowing if and how people are using the data you produce is key to providing a valuable resource for the community. As we develop our ROMS, we will incorporate meaningful metrics to track utilization and will learn how to improve our data products to increase accessibility and reuse.

In many ways, Arcadia is a full scale implementation of the ICOR initiative, with the exception of their laudable work to develop new rewards and incentives to promote open science practices within academia. At Arcadia, we have the opportunity to focus our science and our open science efforts more on maximizing utility, and less on personal career advancement as a metric of scientific contribution. We are excited to partner with ICOR to organize our experiments in open science to make them broadly useful outside of Arcadia.