Open Science Monitoring from Latin America

Abstract

To date, various international organizations have expressed interest in studying and monitoring open science initiatives, seeking to measure their effectiveness and innovation in the face of global challenges. Therefore, the aim of this study is to monitor open science from Latin America based on a set of 10 defined categories. The methodology employed for this study is a bibliographic review and quantitative and qualitative techniques from the social sciences and library science; exploratory, descriptive, explanatory, and predictive research levels are used. The exploratory study is conducted on a sample of 21 Latin American countries. The reference sources defined for the study are official websites of governments, organizations, universities, and libraries, such as: the United Nations; the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization; the World Intellectual Property Organization; the International Federation of Library Associations; as well as the Registry of Research Data Repositories (re3data) and Dataverse Project platforms. The qualitative research technique is carried out based on a descriptive and explanatory content analysis of the findings obtained. The general findings show information from 17 of the 21 countries that make up Latin America; information is unavailable from four countries. In this regard, 17 countries in the region are studied, of which 16 have open science regulations and 6 have open data policies. Likewise, 13 countries have disciplinary and institutional repositories; and 16 countries store observational, experimental, and computational data. Additionally, 9 countries use different software to implement repositories: Dspace (6), dataverse (9), Eprints (2), Fedora (1), and MySQL (1). It was also found that re3data has 92 registered repositories; and Dataverse has 30 registered repositories from Latin American. Likewise, 3 countries link copyright laws and open science. Likewise, 4 countries use open licenses. Two countries promote exceptions and limitations to open science. Finally, 8 countries promote library collaboration for open science. A general conclusion is that open science is an action that requires the collaboration of diverse factors and actors to achieve its principles and empower societies to benefit from data and research outputs like never before. Keywords: Open Science; Scholarly Communication; Latin America; Monitoring; Data; Research Outputs.