Open science is often reduced to open access: making research publications free to read. That is one part of it, and an important one. UNESCO’s Recommendation on Open Science describes a broader movement — toward transparent, accessible and inclusive research practices, covering publications, data, infrastructure, capacity and engagement with society. Reading openness as a single policy misses most of what makes science usable.
Beyond the paywall
Removing a paywall lets a reader see a paper. It does not let them reproduce the result, check the analysis, or reuse the data. Those require open data, open code and clear methods. A paper that is free to read but built on inaccessible data and undocumented code is only partially open. The distinction matters because the value of research often lies in what others can do with it, not only in what they can read.
Open data and its conditions
Open data is most useful when it is findable, well documented and accompanied by the metadata needed to interpret it. A spreadsheet without units, provenance or context is technically open and practically useless. Genuine openness involves standards, repositories and the labour of curation — work that is essential and frequently unfunded. This is why open-data mandates often disappoint: the obligation to publish data is easier to declare than to support.
Infrastructure and who pays
Open science runs on infrastructure: repositories, preprint servers, persistent identifiers, and the computing needed to store and analyse data. That infrastructure costs money, and how it is funded shapes who can participate. Models that shift costs from readers to authors can exclude researchers without grants, particularly in low-income countries. The equity question is central, not incidental: openness that only wealthy institutions can afford is not open in the sense that matters.
Inclusion and the geography of knowledge
Science is global in aspiration and uneven in practice. Researchers in low- and middle-income countries are under-represented in publishing, in editorial boards and in the setting of research agendas, even when the problems they study are most acute there. Open science can widen participation, by lowering access barriers and by making collaboration easier. It can also entrench existing hierarchies if the new infrastructure reproduces the old gatekeeping. Which happens depends on design choices that are often treated as technical.
Preprints and peer review
Preprint servers have accelerated the sharing of results, especially valuable during public-health emergencies. They also raise questions about quality control when findings circulate before review. The response is not to abandon preprints but to strengthen review, make it more transparent, and help readers distinguish reviewed from unreviewed work. Openness and rigour are not opposites; the challenge is to have both.
Engagement beyond academia
The UNESCO recommendation extends open science to society: involving citizens, policymakers and communities in research, and making results usable outside the university. Citizen-science projects, participatory research and open policy labs are examples. They improve relevance and can build trust, but they require skills and time that are rarely rewarded in academic careers. Changing incentives is as important as changing platforms.
The risk of open-washing
As openness becomes a funder requirement, there is a risk of compliance without substance: papers deposited in repositories with embargoes that defeat the purpose, data released in unusable formats, or licences that permit reading but not reuse. Open-washing satisfies a checkbox while leaving the underlying access unchanged. Guarding against it means assessing whether openness enables the uses it promises, not merely whether a policy was followed.
What genuine openness requires
Several things together: free access to publications, reusable data and code, shared infrastructure that is equitably funded, capacity-building so that researchers everywhere can participate, and engagement with the public. Missing any of these leaves the project incomplete. Open access is the most visible part, and it is a beginning rather than the whole.
Research assessment reform
Open science depends on changing how researchers are evaluated. As long as careers are built on publication in a small number of prestigious journals, researchers face pressure to keep data closed and to prioritise novelty over reuse. Reform efforts, such as the movement toward responsible research assessment, aim to value a wider range of contributions: datasets, code, replication, peer review and public engagement. Without such changes, open-science policies risk asking individual researchers to act against their own interests. Aligning incentives with openness is the structural condition that makes the rest sustainable.
The role of libraries and archives
Open science depends on institutions that preserve and provide access to knowledge, and libraries and archives are central to that role. They curate collections, maintain repositories, help researchers find and cite data, and preserve materials that would otherwise be lost. In low-resource settings, they are often the only point of access to the scholarly record. Investing in these institutions is less visible than funding new research, and it is what makes openness durable: without preservation and curation, open access today can become inaccessible tomorrow as links rot and platforms close.
This report draws on the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science.
Image: Abasaa · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons.