The future is now for Libre Science
Some years ago as a grade student on Earth Science I wrote a essay about Libre Science comparing it with Libre Software in the Free Software Foundation framework specifically following Richard Stallman(RMS) ideas. For me it was crystal clear that we need a Free (as in freedom, RMS tends to use Libre instead of freedom) Science in order to have a Free Society (see https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/fsfs/rms-essays.pdf ).
Free Software (in English, free software, although this name is also confused
times with “free” because of the ambiguity of the term “free” in the English used for a “free” beer or as in freedom) is the name of the software that respects four fundamental user’s freedom to execute,
copy, distribute, study, modify the software and distribute modified versions.
So, a Libre Science should provide anyone with the following
liberties:
➢ Freedom 0: the freedom to use the results of science for any purpose.
➢ Freedom 1: the freedom to know how the scientific results were obtained,
criticize them, replicate them, to know what their assumptions, scope and limitations are; as well as the freedom to modify the results of science and adapt them to their own needs.
➢ Freedom 2: the freedom to communicate and share un-restrictively the results of of science.
➢ Freedom 3: the freedom to modify and build on the results of third parties, as well as the freedom to publish, disseminate and share un-restrictively the new derived results.
A first point that needs to be clarified is what we mean when we talk about
results, by this term we should understand: databases, scientific articles, technical reports, books, software, hardware, other technological developments, photographs, recordings, videos, etc. That is, we are not
thinking only in articles, it is useless to have free access to an article if we do not have the same access to the data (in the rough, not in the form of tables or graphics) that supports it. Now, of course, providing these Freedoms to the public involve several important changes:
(1) We must categorically say no to patents and copyrights. All the
Scientific results should have a license type GPLv3 18 or equivalent.
(2) Within the current possibilities all the software and hardware used for the
achievement of the results should be Libre software and hardware
(3) Move away from an article-centered evaluation system to one focused not only on the contribution of the researcher to the scholar community but also with similar important the contribution to society.
(4) Finally, we also need a Libre editorial system. In that sense, the proposal would be to create of Free Science Foundation in direct analogy with the FSF that in addition to contributing with the philosophical sustenance and legal for Free Science, would manage a journal that respects the principles of Free Science, the Journal of Free Science; a repository of databases, the DataFree Science Repository; a repository for the laboratory logs, the Bitacory Free Science Repository, a repository of tools for Free Science (codes sources, integrated circuit plans, etc.), the Free Science Utility Repository; between other tools necessary to achieve a truly Free Science.
Is in point (4) where the future has reached us in form of a new journal proposal https://www.researchers.one/ that aim the give back power of decisions to scholars instead of editors. This is a very important issue that RMS once made my realized, scholars needs to have an extra (not software equivalent) freedom: scholars should be self-owned (Nassim Nicholas Taleb term), meaning they should not have ideological, political or economic bonds-restrictions.
ReserchersOne (R1) is key to achieve in addition to (4) this final liberty too. It pretends to become a platform for scholarly publishing and peer review that empowers researchers with the:
Autonomy to pursue their passions,
Authority to develop and disseminate their work, and
Access to engage with the international community of scholars.
I’m convince that its mission (https://www.researchers.one/article/2018-07-1) points in the right direction to construct a truly Libre Science. Of course now R1 is out there we as scholars must take a step forward and start submitting, commenting and reviewing (we have already sent one manuscript: https://www.researchers.one/article/2019-01-1).
