Sorry being late to this forum!
I had a huge trouble setting up my email account, as I was so used to “one click” sign in and did not realize there are quite a bit of works involved.
But I finally managed to figured out! I guess the PhD is not so useful when setting up an email account
Thanks Rebecca for organizing such a wonderful group working on Open Science.
and Thanks to Jonathan who introduced me to IGDORE!
I was once a scientist myself until I hit the pay wall and had no access to my own paper Since then, I am a big fan of Open Science and has been trying to promote it in Taiwan.
So far it has been very difficult! Hence the culture is so different!
Here are the list of things I found in Taiwan;
Open Access = Predatory Journals
Academics are afraid to talk about Open Access, OA has became the “Voldemort”, the name that you can not speak out.
Academics refused to get an ORCID, they worry about privacy issue, at the same time heavy Facebook user
General public don’t understand Open Science and said to my face “I Don’t Care!”
Although there are many difficulties, but I am optimistic and believe there is always light at the end of the tunnel!
If you know what is the best way for me to promote Open Science, please let me know!
Thanks for your time reading this! Let’s work on this together
I replied to @Lisa on Slack, but @rebecca advised to continue the discussion here… apologies for cross-posting.
Hi @Lisa, welcome! I cannot even imagine how frustrating it must be to encounter such difficulties, especially because they typically stem from irrational fear and ignorance. I have recently started a job as Coordinator of the Open Science Community at Erasmus University Rotterdam and I give introductory talks on what open science is and why it is useful. You can find an example here. These talks are tailored for specific audiences (in this case, researchers at the Department of Marketing). As you will see, they do not only focus on open access but touch many other aspects of openness and transparency… perhaps your audience will be receptive to some of them.
@amelia.zein and @Sandy_Onie might have similar experiences from Indonesia, that the term ‘open science’ is not well received by the government and fellow academics.
@Sau-Chin_Chen works in Taiwan and might have thoughts too.
@HarryManley works in Thailand - how are the terms open science and open access received there?
This is an issue that’s been on my mind a lot recently. I’m based at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok and when @rebecca visited last year we delivered a workshop on open science. This was reasonably well attended and I left this enthusiastic for inspiring OS interest in our department. However, I’ve found that it’s been really difficult to sustain momentum and interest from fellow lecturers and grad students and there has been a depressing lack of behaviour change. I’ve regularly scheduled talks / brown bag on open science to try and keep the conversation going but unfortunately it appears to be low down the list of priorities for staff that only a handful (better than none!) from our department will attend.
I think one of the key challenges is getting across the benefits of open science to those who don’t think they need to engage with it and then how to best build a community of people when you do start to find those that share an interest in these issues. It’s not an entirely cultural thing, as when I deliver a lecture on open science to my undergraduate students and it is by far their (and my) favourite lecturer, they tend to leave that lecture brimming with enthusiasm and will drop by my office afterwards to discuss further.
With regard to terminology yes there are some negative associations with open access as being predatory. As an indicator of this, we get a financial incentive for each publication (which is a terrible idea but I take the money and invest it in research assistants) yet when I last checked this doesn’t apply to anything published in open access journals irrespective of their credentials.
I’m trying to recall how it was at my department in Sweden when I was there, 4-8 years ago. I recall a very well-attended (full room) invited seminar with Prof. Gerd Gigerenzer who slashed everything we psychologists did statistics wise. And then we were a couple of PhD students who organised a course in bayesian statistics and meetings on open science. The statistics course was more well-attended than the open science meetings. Maybe research methods and statistics are better to focus on than the term “open science”?
Same here in Indonesia. Which list of accepted journals do you use in Bangkok?
Allow me to copy-paste here what I already wrote on Slack in response to @Lisa’s first inquiry, with the hope that it can be food for thought and discussion (again, apologies for cross-posting)
In my talks I typically use the economic angle. If you are a member of the general public, I provide examples of how closed science has harmed ordinary people (e.g., the Reinhart-Rogoff controversy). If you are a researcher, I show you how implementing open science practices can be beneficial to get more collaborations and citations, and is also becoming a requirement to obtain some grants (at least in Europe).
Other people use ethical arguments (transparency leads to better science, which is good for humankind), which I believe are strong motivators for people who are already convinced of the usefulness of open science practices but risks to alienate others who are doubtful. However, this is just my opinion and surely other IGDORE members may think differently.
Hi Harry;
Thank you for sharing your stories from Bangkok!
Can I ask, as a faculty member, do you get promotion based on the number of papers in high Impact Factor Journals?
Many Universities are still relying on IF scores, and it must be very difficult for faculty members to promote Open Science
@antonio.schettino I agree that presenting these economic and ethical arguments is a great approach.
One thing I will add… in Thailand (and perhaps this is shared across other Asian countries) my sense is that there is a much stronger top-down, hierarchical influence that determines the accepted practices than you perhaps get in the West. You certainly don’t find many/any ECRs rebelling the status quo here. One factor driving this is that many researchers earn their doctorate abroad, and return to Thailand retaining a strong collaborative relationship with their PhD supervisors. There’s nothing wrong with that except that if the ex-supervisors don’t engage in open science practices then it’s tough to convince people of the problems with current approaches or the benefits of alternatives. I’ve seen cases of p-hacking and HARKing here and had long conversations about why this is problematic but these conversations often go around in circles where I get the sense that if that’s how their supervisor does things, that’s how they are going to do things. Note. this is perhaps a slightly cynical take and doesn’t apply to all staff here.
@Lisa I’m not sure of the exact list of accepted journals we use but I think anything indexed in scopus is accepted, and the rankings from scimagojr.com are more relevant than IF for promotion, incentives, etc.
Thank you @Lisa open this thread. Thank you @rebecca invite me here. And hello to @antonio.schettino after SIPS in Rotterdam.
I’m pleased to meet @HarryManley here. @HarryManley is the PSA patterner and helping collect the data. The initial post was right after we started the paywall screening tour in Taiwan. I exchanged my observations in Taiwan with @Lisa. After this tour, I updated two difficulties for promoting Open Science in Taiwan (maybe other Southeast countries too): (1) Many senior and junior scholars like the ideas of open science, but most expect the top-down guide or have no image of the ground networking. At this point, I share the conclusion of @HarryManley based on his observations in Thailand. (2) Librarians in Taiwan have the motivation to promote Open Access. However, few understand OA as the necessary piece of Open Science. In the last screening, some librarians were shocked OS scholars run OA by ourselves.
I’m thinking one project which integrates the online survey and advertises to promote OS in Taiwan. This project may be workable for promotion in the other Asian countries. I’m glad to talk with people here after I finish my latest Stage 2 report submission.
Thanks for these thoughts and best practice examples. As a co-founder of the African preprint repository AfricArXiv and talking to African scientists it’s the same in Africa: Scientists are reluctant to embrace Open Science like everywhere else in the world I suspect mostly since discussions are controversial and decision makers that matter for scientists career advancements are stuck to what they know best which is the status quo. I think this is why things take so much time to change (also re climate change). My approach (also as a trainer and consultant in Open Science based in Europe) is similar to what @antonio.schettino said by tailoring the storytelling to each target group and make it easy for them to embrace the concept based on their needs and realiies.
But I finally managed to figured out! I guess the PhD is not so useful when setting up an email account 
Since then, I am a big fan of Open Science and has been trying to promote it in Taiwan.
