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CREOS

Center for Research on Equitable and Open Scholarship

Mission

Advance knowledge in service of equitable and open scholarship.

Our Work

CREOS seeks evidence about the best ways disparate communities can participate in scholarship with minimal bias or barriers.

  • First, it aims to make research in every field more equitably and openly available to all who could benefit from and/or contribute to it.
  • Second, it aims to accomplish the first goal by conducting and supporting original research and sharing it openly.

We believe in

  • Rigorous, evidence-based research to inform actions
  • Tackling grand challenges
  • Multidisciplinary problem solving and methodologies
  • Leading where appropriate, listening always
  • The power of equitable and open scholarship to accelerate the pace of discovery and create a more robust and comprehensive knowledge base for human understanding, insight, and quality of life.

Who we are

CREOS acts as a catalyst for collaborative research inside and outside of MIT and is part of a growing global community committed to improving scholarly communication for everyone. CREOS is part of the MIT Libraries and leverages MIT’s longstanding emphasis on innovation, entrepreneurship, and open sharing of educational and research materials. CREOS itself consists of a small team that conducts and supports basic research and is also a collaboration of institutional partnerships, interested faculty, visiting researchers, scholarly communication enthusiasts, and financial supporters who are willing to invest in research with a shared vision. Our audience includes anyone who is influencing the future of scholarly communication.

The name

CREOS refers to the Latin “Creo” which is to produce, generate, or make, and also the Spanish word “Creo”, which is “I believe.” We believe in a vision of equitable and open scholarship, and we aspire to produce scholarship that will accelerate that vision.

Projects

  • April 2019: Workshop on Diversity, Accessibility, and Inclusion in Library Systems, presented with Northeastern University Libraries and supported by an IMLS National Leadership Grant. Read more about the workshop.
  • Fall 2018: Visiting Scholar Philip Cohen
    Cohen, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park, and director of SocArXiv, conducted an evaluation of peer review in social sciences and convened a joint meeting on open scholarship in social sciences. Read more about Philip’s experience.
  • March 2018: Grand Challenges Summit
    Experts from across disciplines and sectors worked to identify critical problems in information science that are solvable within 10 years and which have broad implications across the scholarly community. Watch the summit keynotes and read the report.