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Center for Research on Equitable and Open Scholarship
Center for Research on Equitable and Open Scholarship

Incentives, barriers, and impacts of open scholarship

CREOS researches the conditions in which universities, scholarly societies, research funders, and individual scholars are likely to support open science policies and practices.

A blue and orange scatter plot depicting researcher attitudes towards open science where researchers believe their peers are motivated by institutional pressure and prestige, while they are motivated by public good and collaboration.

Click to enlarge the image. From Beliefs about social dynamics and open science by Ashley Thomas, Chris Bourg, and Rebecca Saxe.

Selected publications

Potential research questions

  • How do demographic and disciplinary differences impact individual scholar’s attitudes and behaviors in open scholarship?
  • Under what conditions are institutional actors (universities, scholarly societies, research funders) likely to support open science policies and practices?
  • What are the barriers to ensuring global equity in the scholarly community and the scholarly record?

Projects

Generative AI and Research Integrity (2023-2024)

Generative AI is changing how we ensure science is trustworthy. The paper “Generative AI and Research Integrity” explores its roles in science policy and information systems, identifying key questions related to the use of GenAI for open and reliable research. The Libraries received competitive MIT funding for this research.

Community Tracking Indicators for Open and Inclusive Scholarship (2021-2025)

There is increasing evidence that scholarly processes have bias and create barriers to inclusion — more openness in scholarly communication is needed. This project produced standardized indicators of who participates in open science and scholarly communications over time. The project was funded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services  (grant #LG-250130-OLS-21)

Designing Review and Evaluation for Open Scholarship (2019 – ongoing)

The broad objective of this area of research is to inform the design and application of review and evaluation in open scholarship and meta-research.