How can open access research help achieve climate justice?
| 24 October, 2022 | Abbie Nicholson |
This week marks the fifteenth year of International Open Access Week – dedicated to raising awareness of the benefits of open access research; sharing open access guidance and learnings; and encouraging collaboration among researchers, policymakers, and wider stakeholders to make open access the default in research. And this year’s theme, Open for Climate Justice, spotlights the link between open access and climate justice.
Climate justice is a movement that seeks to place human and civil rights at the heart of climate action to rectify the inequality of the climate crisis, by working towards solutions that are fair and just for all.
“Climate justice means finding solutions to the climate crisis that not only reduce emissions or protect the natural world, but that do so in a way which creates a fairer, more just and more equal world in the process”
Climate Action UK
Read on to learn some of the ways open access can help with global climate justice, and some of the cutting-edge climate research published on Gates Open Research.
Three ways open access can help achieve climate justice
Removing barriers to scientific knowledge
Removing barriers to accessing and sharing scientific knowledge is at the heart of open access, and this applies especially when considering the climate crisis.
With a real, lived experience of the impacts of climate change, researchers and wider stakeholders in climate-vulnerable, developing regions are likely to hold a significant piece of the puzzle as we continue to understand and mitigate the risk.
Yet, those who may be able to contribute the most to the conversation are often the most excluded, whether it’s through financial costs of APCs and journal subscriptions, technology and infrastructure barriers, or editorial bias.
Striving for open access is key to opening doors to those who can not only help create solutions to the climate crisis, but use their experience to ensure those solutions are fair and equitable for all.
“Open science is not only about fostering enhanced sharing of scientific knowledge and outcomes. We also need to promote the inclusion of scholarship by people whose contributions and needs are too often overlooked […] Only then will research fully address all communities”
Michelle Bachelet, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
Enabling rapid and efficient research advances
Open publishing models also helps to advance climate research more rapidly and efficiently.
By providing full transparency in research, from final outputs to the data and software used, open access improves the reproducibility of results, allowing others to build on research more easily and quickly in ever-evolving studies.
Similarly, by publishing all research without restriction, including null or negative results, open publishing models enable more efficiency by avoiding unnecessary repetition of previous studies or methods, and instead places focus on conducting new, value-driven research.
Increasing collaboration
Publishing research open access can significantly improve visibility, as open access research can be found, used, and built upon more easily by others outside the immediate research community.
As a result, this enables deeper collaboration between researchers and wider stakeholders, such as policymakers, public officials, and NGOs – all of whom can contribute to creating fair and just climate solutions.
An open access case study: climate change and agriculture
One of the key elements of any climate crisis response is the recognition that climate change is no longer just a future issue. Solutions are needed to help vulnerable communities adapt to changes already happening today, which is the primary climate focus of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
“We can no longer afford to pretend that climate change is a problem for the future. Its impacts are being felt right now all over the planet, and they will only grow worse if the world does not begin reducing emissions and helping people adapt to the new normal.”
Mark Suzman, CEO, Board Member, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
One area of climate focus is the impact of climate change on agriculture, with open access playing a role in understanding this issue.
Agriculture Adaptation Atlas
Gates Foundation grantee, CGIAR, has developed the Agriculture Adaptation Atlas – a data visualization tool designed to help understand the impact of climate change on agricultural output, and a significant example of the power of open access in climate action.
Covering different crops, livestock, climate hazards, climate scenarios, and more, the Atlas has been built using rich datasets and is underpinned by open and FAIR data principles. As a result, the open access, web-based infrastructure of the Atlas ensures maximum usability by the research community and beyond to help understand the link between the climate crisis and agriculture.
Livestock vaccines against infectious diseases
A major climate-related issue expected to increase is the frequency of livestock diseases, which will require significant mitigation strategies.
One such mitigation strategy is the introduction of new vaccines to help provide livestock immunity to these diseases, and a study published on Gates Open Research explored the efficacy of the Newcastle disease vaccine 1-2.
Publishing these findings open access continues to help our understanding of how livestock diseases work and the role that vaccines can play in mitigating the risk in the future.
Identifying new crop variants
Genetically improving traditional crops to withstand new climates plays a major role in managing potential food security issues, but part of this challenge relies on mapping and cataloging existing variants to enable successful research into genetic modifications.
The ability to publish diverse research outputs helps improve the visibility of results at any stage of the research project, including genome data. For example, Gates Open Research supports a range of article types, including Data Notes like this one cataloging two transformable cowpea varieties, which supports vital work in recording genomic and transcriptomic data and subsequently understanding how crops can be improved to combat potential food insecurity.
Accelerating climate research with Gates Open Research
Publishing open access climate findings can help accelerate the real-world impact of your research and contribute to combatting the climate crisis.
If you’re a Gates-funded researcher conducting cutting-edge research in your field, you can publish your findings for free with Gates Open Research.
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