Open science - Enabling discovery in the digital age

Data-driven innovation and data-intensive science hold immense promise to address grand societal challenges. Open science initiatives, which facilitate open access to publications, data, algorithms, software and workflows, play an essential role in accelerating needed scientific research and the innovation process itself. This Going Digital Toolkit note provides an overview of the open science movement, highlights achievements of open science including that in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, identifies challenges to achieving all of the benefits that open science has to offer, and sheds light on the evolution of open science policies in a range of economies. The note also advocates a way forward that involves the seven pillars of the revised OECD Recommendation of the Council concerning Access to Research Data from Public Funding: (1) Data governance for trust; (2) Technical standards and practices; (3) Incentives and rewards; (4) Responsibility, ownership and stewardship; (5) Sustainable infrastructures; (6) Human capital; and (7) International co-operation for access to research data.