Name: Creating and Aligning Individual-Level Incentives for Open Science Practices
Start: 2026-10-07T17:30:00-0400
End: 2026-10-07T18:00:00-0400

All sessions are available online except round tables, special activities, and workshops.

Creating and Aligning Individual-Level Incentives for Open Science Practices

Wednesday October 7, 2026 5:30pm - 6:00pm EDT

4 Room T

ID: 33963

The open science movement has advanced a set of reforms aimed at making research more transparent, reliable, and trustworthy. This movement has developed a range of practices – such as open-access publishing – which promotes transparency; data sharing – which promotes reliability, preregistration – which promotes honest communication of uncertainty and error. As well as a range of other practices intended to strengthen the availability, accessibility, transparency, reliability, reusability, impacts, and trustworthiness of scientific claims, education, publications, and outputs.While the general benefits of open science to the scientific community are often lauded, the career benefits and risks of engaging in open science for individual researchers are not well understood. The aim of this round table discussion is to identify and discuss the strategies that organizations sizes can employ to support their communities of researchers in engaging with open science practices.A growing number of meta-science studies have examined the impacts of Open Science at the system level. These focus, for example, on broader effects such as citation rates and research quality; societal impacts, such as public engagement, trust, and inclusivity; and institutional impacts such as innovation and efficiency gains. These each have identified important benefits and consequences of Open Science, but primarily at the systems level -not the individual level.This session draws on these studies, along with research we have conducted that systematically summarizes perceived versus empirically observed career-related incentives and risks of engaging in open science practice and the potential causal mechanisms proposed to explain the underlying incentive mechanisms. The research systematizes evidence for the relationship between a broad range of OS practices (including sharing and producing open data and resources) and a comprehensive spectrum of individual–level direct benefits (e.g. collaborations, dissemination) and costs (e.g. time, skill acquisition) and longer-term rewards ( e.g. citation, promotion ) and risks (e.g. trusts, reputation) . During the roundtable we will: Summarize what rewards, costs, and benefits for individual researchers are known to be associated with participation in different open practices -- based on best-of-class systematic reviewsElicit from participants the current approaches that are used by their organizations to support and incent open practices; and their relationship to organizational goals. Facilitate discussion and analysis of strategies to align organizational approaches and goals with individual-level professional development rewards. In addition, a lighting-talk version of the summary presented in #1 will be made available as a pre-recorded five-minute online presentation. And participants will be provided with an annotated bibliography of resources for selecting, aligning and evaluating open practices.

Speakers

Micah Altman

Research Scientist, Center for Research on Equitable and Open Scholarship, MIT

Dr Micah Altman is a social and information scientist at MIT’s Center for Research on Equitable and Open Scholarship. Dr. Altman conducts research, provides public commentary, and collaborates in initiatives related to how information technologies change politics, society, and science... Read More →

Wednesday October 7, 2026 5:30pm - 6:00pm EDT
4 Room T MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

Round Table

Speaker Modality In-person
Track Hacking the Open Ecosystem and Praxis for the Public Good

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OEGlobal 2026

Micah Altman

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OEGlobal 2026

Micah Altman

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