Africa-Europe Science and Innovation Summit

Open Science may seem like a “new" approach to Science, but in fact it is a fundamental principle of the Scientific Method, which was established in the 17th Century. The ability of Open Science to enhance scientific collaboration and knowledge interchange in a transparent way has put it in the spotlight in this era of Big Data and data intensive research. However, Open Science is not only an indispensable element of high-quality science: it comes with a wider impact in other areas.

In this talk we will show how Open Science encourages the democratisation of science, accelerates the transfer of knowledge to society, promotes equity and inclusiveness, as well as other actions that contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. Furthermore, we will emphasise how it is key in maximising the scientific impact of the SKA Observatory: the SKA is a Big data infrastructure with a multidisciplinary worldwide community of users who have already started collaborating to prepare for the challenge, whose core will be at the SKA Regional Centres, where SKA science will be carried out.

We will also describe the existing barriers to embrace Open Science and the FAIR principles as seen from individual scientists, data centres, KSP teams, publishers or even funding agencies, and how the community building the SRCs is addressing these challenges. The effort seems worthwhile, both for better science and to maximise social impact. We will argue that for the SKAO, adoption of Open Science is both a need and a duty, and we will show that the SKAO and its community are already flying this flag.