A short primer on the academic, societal, and animal welfare benefits of Open Science for animal science

Abstract

A significant proportion of research is directly or indirectly supported through public funding. It is therefore imperative to make obtained scientific findings freely accessible and the way this knowledge is generated as transparently as possible. However, the traditional scientific publication system involves a number of obstacles likely to hinder the process of freely available scientific knowledge and transparency by including delays and restricted access in the proliferation of protocols and results, such as pay-walled journals and articles, long reviewing times, publication biases towards novel positive findings, and personal interests. While many tools are available to improve the transparency and accessibility of the scientific process and the subsequent research findings, the most powerful tool available is likely the implementation of Open Science practices. Open Science covers various aspects of the scholarly process, ranging from e.g. Open Access publishing of research articles, to providing Open Data and Protocols, to Open Science Evaluation (open peer review) and Open Science Tools such as Open Source software – with the primary goal of building on, reusing and openly criticizing the (published) body of scientific knowledge. While in certain research fields such as e.g. psychology or ecology, the application of these practices has been assessed and is growing rapidly, their current state and progress in other fields, such as animal science is, to our knowledge, not systematically assessed and implemented. While general academic and societal benefits of Open Science might be apparent (and more or less generalizable across disciplines), we here will further argue that the implementation of Open Science practices will also benefit the field of animal science by a stronger adherence to the 3R principles, to reduce the number of animals in research, refine protocols and methods and replace animals’ studies by animal-free alternatives.