Science is for everyone- how science can be accessible

Like roller derby, the field of science has also made strides to improve access in recent years. While there are numerous ways this has happened, and future Brains and Bruises blog posts will address some of these, I will focus here on the most basic level, access to scientific knowledge.

There’s a saying in science: “if the work isn’t published, the work didn’t get done”. Indeed, the dissemination of knowledge gained through experimentation is a key part of being a scientist. For decades, that process included posters displayed at grown-up versions of the elementary science fairs we all know and love, invited seminar presentations of experiments like the ones you had to give for your final chemistry class project, and of course, write-ups of lab notebooks in the form of manuscripts. These manuscripts are submitted for publication to journals, like Science or Nature or Brain Research, so that other scientists can consume the knowledge produced and add it to their own understanding of a particular phenomenon. It can be a long process, taking months or even years for an experiment’s outcomes to make it to print. But doing this effectively and regularly is pretty important for a scientist’s career. In fact, it is so important that there is another old saying that still echoes the halls of the ivory tower: “publish or perish”.

Photo credit = Google Image Search

Now a key issue with this system is that while it was no cost for scientists to submit their work to the journals for publication, the publishers charge money to anyone who would like to read that published article, including other scientists. There are some reasons why this system has evolved to be the way that it is today, but a negative consequence is that the general public, the people whose tax dollars paid for the work to get done in the first place, has almost no access to primary scientific literature unless they are somehow independently wealthy or affiliated with university.

This all changed with the advent of open access electronic journals. Open access journals are pretty much what they sound like they would be: electronic journals that make research publications readily available online for free so that anyone who is interested can access the information. The authors foot the bill to have their work published in these journals (often via grant funding). Others have written extensively on the merits and pitfalls of open access journals (see this, this and this for some examples). To summarize a couple of key points here, first and problematically, not all scientists can afford to or feel ethically comfortable with paying for their work to be published and so articles submitted open access journals do not reflect the full breadth and depth of the available body of scientific literature. As well, the tax payers wind up paying twice, funding the execution of the project as well as the publication of the results. While it has its merits, open access, and the journal system of research publication, is not a perfect system.

But, I will let you in on an underutilized option, a trade-secret of sorts. On every published manuscript, there is an author block listing the names of all the contributors to the project. The first author is usually the person who led the project and wrote the text. The authors in the middle contributed intellectual and technical expertise to key aspects of the project. The final author is usually the laboratory leader, or principal investigator. This is the person whose laboratory the work was conducted in, whose ideas and funding supported the work, and whose mentorship guided the team. This is also the person who is usually listed as the corresponding author, the person to whom questions, comments, or concerns should be directed. Their contact information (email, work address, and occasionally a phone number) is almost always listed on any reputable publication on public facing pages that are easily internet searchable and freely available (not behind the paywall). This is a key way scientists get in contact with each other, and you, as a member of the public, can use this information to contact us too. And we want to be contacted; I myself have begun to publish papers as corresponding author, and I would be love it if someone emailed me to talk about my science. Oftentimes, we can even share our personal copies of the document with those who are interested.

The well-known phrases like “Every body is a derby body” and “Science is for everyone” support a commitment to accessibility in both roller derby and in research. And while science and the sport can still continue to improve on these commitments, we are committed to that journey and I look forward to continued progress as more people access these exciting fields.

Update: August 2022

President Biden' has announced a bold and transformative plan to address information accessibility! By 2025, papers published reporting data that was federally funded MUST be freely available to everyone. Though there are a number of details that still need to be worked, this is a HUGE win for transparency and reproducibility, two key features of the scientific enterprise. I am so thrilled to see this step taken and will keep updating here as this program evolves.