What is the value of open science?
Research findings from the transnational VOICES project
Photo: Timo Wilke
How open are scientific results actually to the general public? Who decides which research results are published and who can read them? How can we benefit from scientific discoveries if they are hidden behind paywalls or in subject-specific databases? And above all: can open science, i.e. the idea of open, transparent science that is accessible to all, really change the way research is conducted? These questions are not only important for experts in the scientific community, but affect society as a whole, especially in times of global crises such as the recent COVID-19 pandemic.
The VOICES project – Value of Openness, Inclusion, Communication, and Engagement for Science in a Post-Pandemic World – addressed precisely these questions. It examined how open access practices developed during the pandemic and to what extent this development contributed to a more equitable and inclusive science. The focus was not only on access to scientific results, but also on the communication of science in times of crisis and the impact of this openness on society.
A transnational team of experts, including members of the ZBW’s Web Science Working Group led by Prof. Dr. Isabella Peters, collaborated within the framework of VOICES to understand, document and measure how the new interaction between researchers, decision-makers, science communicators and the general public influenced research and its role in society. The project pursued research questions across national borders and took into account the contexts of the four participating countries: Brazil, Germany, Canada and the United Kingdom.
The rapid introduction of open access: a double-edged sword
The COVID-19 pandemic led to a rapid expansion of open science practices, such as preprints and open data sharing. However, this development was shaped by national and institutional circumstances and was therefore unevenly distributed. In some countries and disciplines, access to open scientific content was more widespread than in others, emphasising the need to design open access strategies that are flexible and context-sensitive.
A key finding of the project was that although open access was promoted as a public good, it often lacked genuine integration of equity and inclusion. While openness and transparency were widely recognised as positive goals, the question of who specifically benefits from this openness remained largely unanswered. Open access was often used as a tool to accelerate the dissemination of scientific knowledge, but not to the extent that would have been necessary for broader participation in scientific production.
Preprints and the media: a balancing act between speed and credibility
Preprints, scientific papers made publicly available prior to peer-reviewed publication, played a central role during the COVID-19 pandemic. They enabled faster dissemination of research results and supported the global response to the crisis. However, the media’s handling of preprints was problematic . Journalists faced the challenge of accessing preprints quickly, but the lack of a peer review process raised concerns about the reliability and credibility of these sources. These uncertainties led to declining media attention for preprints as the pandemic progressed.
The challenge of treating preprints with scientific rigour and responsibility remains unresolved. While some journalists immediately called for a critical examination of preprints, there was a lack of adequate tools and supporting frameworks to properly classify these sources and evaluate their quality.
Openness in science communication – missing bridges to the general public
The VOICES project also drew attention to the existing gap between open access and science communication. Despite the increase in open scientific content, much of this content remained inaccessible to the general public because it was incomprehensible. Scientific institutions and journalists who attempted to disseminate open research often did so in technical language that was only understandable to a scientific audience. The importance of open access for society at large was often not sufficiently emphasised.
This highlights a clear need for closer cooperation between science communication and open access. Scientific content must not only be open, but also provided in a form that is understandable and applicable to the general public. Without this bridge between the scientific community and society, the impact of open access remains limited.
The end of the crisis and the return to old structures
Despite the positive developments in the area of open access at the beginning of the pandemic, it quickly became apparent that much of this progress was temporary. As the urgency of the crisis subsided, many scientific articles returned behind paywalls – the focus was no longer on solving the global crisis, but on the economic orientation of the publishers whose infrastructures were used to publish the articles in a quality-assured manner. This return to the norm underscores the fragility of the temporary measures taken during the pandemic and the need to establish open access as a permanent public good. A sustainable open access business model is still a desideratum.
The pandemic has shown that open access can play an important role in times of crisis, but without a long-term and inclusive infrastructure, the benefits of open access will remain limited to these short-term responses. For the future, strategies must be developed that view openness not only as a technical or political goal, but as a long-term social mission that also encompasses justice, diversity and inclusion.
Long-term and sustainable openness requires structural reforms
The VOICES project has provided valuable insights into how open access can work during a global crisis and what structural challenges remain to be overcome. The rapid but uneven expansion of open practices during the pandemic, the tensions between openness and credibility, and the discrepancy between scientific openness and broad accessibility of results show that open access needs more than just technological solutions. In order to realise the full potential of open access , structural reforms and a stronger focus on inclusion and equitable participation are necessary.
Prof. Dr. Isabella Peters from the ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics explains: “For the future, I recommend that we take a closer look at the political and social dimensions of open access and further strengthen cooperation between research, the media and the general public. Only in this way can open access become a real instrument for greater transparency, fairness and inclusion – not only in times of crisis, but also in the long term and sustainably.”
Project partners
Juan Pablo Alperin (PI), Germana Barata (Co-PI), Isabella Peters (Co-PI), Stephen Pinfield (Co-PI), Alice Fleerackers (Postdoctoral Fellow), Natascha Chtena (Postdoctoral Fellow), Monique Oliveira (Postdoctoral Fellow), Isabelle Dorsch (Postdoctoral Fellow), Melanie Benson Marshall (Postdoctoral Fellow)
Project website:https://www.scholcommlab.ca/research/equity-and-inclusion-in-open-science/
Project funding
The project was funded by the Trans-Atlantic Platform Recovery, Renewal and Resilience in a Post-Pandemic World (RRR) Award, to which the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) in Canada, the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) in Brazil, the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) in the United Kingdom and the German Research Foundation (DFG) in Germany also contribute.
Project results:
Chtena, N., Alperin, J. P., Pinfield, S., Fleerackers, A., & Pasquetto, I. V. (2025). Preprint servers and journals: rivals or allies? Journal of Documentation,81(4). https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-09-2024-0215
Chtena, N., Pasquetto, I., Fleerackers, A., Pinfield, S., Marshall, M. B., & Alperin, J. P. (2024). “Does it feel like a scientific paper?”: A qualitative analysis of preprint servers’ moderation and quality assurance processes. MetaArXiv Preprints.https://doi.org/10.31222/osf.io/mp6ky
Marshall, M. B., Pinfield, S., Abbott, P., Cox, A., Alperin, J. P., Barata, G., Chtena, N., Dorsch, I., Fleerackers, A., Oliveira, M., & Peters, I. (2024). The impact of COVID-19 on the debate on open science: An analysis of expert opinion. SocArXiv Papers.https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/xy874
Fleerackers, A., Shores, K., Chtena, N., & Alperin, J. P. (2024). Unreviewed science in the news: The evolution of preprint media coverage from 2014-2021. Quantitative Science Studies, 1–40. https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00282
Fleerackers, A., Chtena, N., Pinfield, S., Alperin, J. P., Barata, G., Oliveira, M., & Peters, I. (2024). Making science public: a review of journalists’ use of Open Access research. F1000Research. https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.133710.2
Dorsch, I., Lemke, S., & Peters, I. (2023). Analysis of “open access publishing characteristics” for COVID-19 and cancer publications in web of science. In W. Semar (Ed.), Sustainable information – Information for sustainability. Conference proceedings of the 17 (pp. 387–392). Glückstadt: Verlag Werner Hülsbusch. https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10009338
Lemke, S., Dorsch, I., & Peters, I. (2023, October 27). Post-pandemic changes in the adoption of OA models – a case study on Covid-19 and cancer research. Workshop on Informetric, Scientometric, and Scientific and Technical Information Research (METSTI 2023), London, UK. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10555358
Fleerackers, A., Chtena, N., Oliveira, M., Dorsch, I., Pinfield, S., & Alperin, J. P. (2023). Open data journalism: A narrative synthesis of how, when, and why data journalists use open data sources. SocArXiv.https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/wh8jx
This text was translated on 17 December 2025 using DeeplPro.