Essay: Transforming the world through open science: the role of libraries in progressing sustainable development goals - an academic library perspective

Introduction

The open science movement is motivated by the idea that ‘scientific knowledge of all kinds should be openly shared as early as it is practical in the research process’ (Mayer, 2020, p. 134). The adoption of open science practices and policies has the potential to provide solutions to the challenges facing society, such as disease, hunger, migration and climate change. This is because sharing of knowledge by providing access to information has the capacity to achieve the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs), which is necessary in advancing the contemporary information society to the more advanced state of a knowledge society. As providers of information, it is the raison d’être of libraries to champion the need for access to information, which is a fundamental human right. In 2014, the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) was pivotal in advocating for the inclusion of the importance of access to information, and positioned libraries as having a crucial role, in achieving the SDGs set forth in the UN’s 2030 agenda (UN, 2015). This is because ‘increasing access to information and knowledge across society, assisted by the availability of information and communication technologies (ICTs), supports sustainable development and improves people’s lives’ (IFLA, 2014). 

This essay will respond to the question: “how can information practitioners/professionals contribute to the progress of sustainable development goals in the contemporary information society?” This will be achieved by discussing the role of libraries and librarians in supporting the open science movement from an academic library perspective. Academic libraries play a significant role in the research process through mediating the cycle of knowledge production, sharing and dissemination (Tapfuma & Hoskins, 2019, p. 406). Ultimately, the role of academic librarians will need to transform to take advantage of the opportunities and meet the challenges presented by open science, which has the potential to achieve the objectives of the SDGs.

Discussion

Transforming science through openness

Open science is an international movement that ‘helps to improve the accessibility and reusability of research practices and outputs’ (Chigwada, 2020, p. 101). It has the aim of ‘transforming science through digital tools and networks, to make research more open, global, collaborative, creative and closer to society’ (European Commission, 2019). As an umbrella term, open science is concerned with the practices and policies across a number of key dimensions including ‘open access to publications, open research data and methods, open source software, open infrastructures, open educational resources, open evaluation, and citizen science’ (Mayer, 2020, p. 134). Open science is also characterised by the principals and practices that makes research data FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable) (Barbour and Borchert, 2020). According to Chigwada (2020, p. 99), open science has been ‘affecting how research is done and how knowledge is produced, shared, circulated, reused and preserved in all disciplines’ – not just science.

Open science and sustainable development

There has been a struggle to define the concept of sustainable development, which has suffered from a plethora of definitions, interpretations and variations of the term as it has been applied in practice (Jennifer, 2012, p. 16). The universally cited definition, and perhaps also the most succinct, defines sustainable development as a development that ‘meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (WCED, 1987, p. 43). There are three popular models of sustainable development, and whilst each is different in the organisation and relationship of the parts, each of the models agrees on the three constitutive areas; these include: economy, society and environment, with some more recently suggesting the need for cultural diversity as a fourth domain (Jennifer, 2012, p. 21).

The transformative potential for open science and sustainable development for the contemporary information society is evident in the mission of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco), which is ‘to build knowledge societies by fostering universal access to information and knowledge through [ICTs]’ (Unesco, 2012). In order to achieve the UN’s sustainable development goals, open science will be necessary for success, because 10 out of the 17 goals requires scientific input (Unesco, 2017). Importantly, in mapping each of the 17 goals to the contribution that open access can make, Mamtora and Pandey (2018) demonstrate that open access has the potential to provide contributions to all of the SDGs. 

According to Smith and Velds (2015), open data initiatives through open science also help drive sustainable development, therefore, achieving the UN’s goals will only be possible if ‘research and data are open and democratised so that all can have equal access.’ The role of education in underpinning sustainable development is highlighted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD, 2017), which critically notes that failure to achieve SDG 4, “Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote” – ‘puts at risk the achievements of the 17 SDGs as a whole. Jhangiani (2018) suggests, open education resources are a powerful tool that can help meet the objectives of SDG4. OER are teaching and learning resources that are published with an open license; for example, these can include textbooks, instructional videos, interactive simulations, lesson plans, plus more. Braddlee and VanScoy (2019), provide an exhaustive range of suggestions as to how academic librarians can support OER; for example: adoption, advocacy, curation, preservation and repositories, content development, metadata and discovery, funding, information literacy and, licensing and copyright. Furthermore, they highlight how academic librarians have historically been  important collaborators with faculty, which provides opportunities in supporting OER initiatives. 

Defining the information society

There has been much debate over the last fifty years in attempting to define the concept of information society – ‘a concept with no single agreed definition’ (Bawden & Robinson, 2012, p. 256). Looking at the history of the concept, the idea of the information society first appeared in the early 1960s and was closely related to the notion of the ‘information industry’ (Duff, 2000, p. 2). Another interpretation, which came earlier in 1959, suggested the closely related term ‘post-industrial society’, which described a society that had ‘passed from a goods producing stage to a service society’ (Zelazny, 2015, p. 8). From an economic perspective, Zelazny (2015, p. 13), posits that the information society is a step towards the progressive goals of a knowledge economy, whereby, through a transitional process information is translated into knowledge (Zelazny, 2015, p. 13). In this way, when new knowledge is produced through the implementation of innovation, the information society can fully develop into its ultimate state of a knowledge society. This form of society is characterised by the key role of knowledge sharing and is ‘the most advanced stage of a social and economic development’ (Zelazny, 2015, p. 15). 

Nath (2017, p. 20) suggests that the information society should be interpreted as ‘an organising principle’ to describe and analyse the rapid changes that took place in the last fifty years of the twentieth century and of the future in the twenty-first century.’ These developments are related to the rapid deployment of (ICTs), which have ‘transformed societies in both developed and developing countries’ and have expanded into all areas of daily life (Nath, 2017, p. 20). In this regard, ICT can be regarded as ‘a set of technologies gathering, processing and transmitting information in electronic form’ (Zelazny, 2015, p. 10). It is the hardware and software, which performs ‘the various functions of information creation, storing, processing, preservation, and delivery, in a growing set of ways’ (Ziemba, 2015, p. 117). 

Through the enabling influences of ICT, the information society ‘is at the core of growth, human progress, and well-being, along with sustainable development’ (Ziemba, 2019, p. 116). However, whilst offering many benefits, the proliferation of ICTs has also introduced problems and divides within the information society; for example, information poverty and digital divide. According to Bawden & Robinson (2012, p. 244), this divide is often expressed as that between the ‘information rich and the information poor’ – and may be economic (rich versus poor); national (developed world versus developing world); or regional (city versus regional). The digital divide refers to the gap that exists between individuals with ready access to the tools of ICTs, and the knowledge that they provide access to, and those without such access or skills (Cullen, 2001). However, in its adoption of ICTs, open science has the potential to help bridge the digital divide, so that developing countries can catch up to the rest of the developed world.

The role of libraries and access to information

In the Lyon Declaration of 2014, IFLA urged the member states of the UN to acknowledge that ‘increasing access to information and knowledge across society, assisted by the availability of [ICTs], supports sustainable development and improves people’s lives’ (IFLA, 2014). Furthermore, it argued that ‘increased access to information and knowledge, underpinned by universal literacy, is an essential pillar of sustainable development’ (IFLA, 2014). According to Mamtora and Pandey (2018, p. 2), having access to the right information makes ‘an enormous difference as to whether a particular goal is successfully realised or not.’ Therefore, libraries can be regarded as enablers in progressing sustainable development goals. 

Following the release of the UN’s agenda, IFLA (2015) produced the report Access and Opportunity for All: How Libraries Contribute to the United Nations 2030 Agenda. In particular, it noted that when communities have access to ‘timely and relevant information’ they are ‘better positioned to eradicate poverty and inequality, improve agriculture, provide quality education, and support people’s health, culture, research, and innovation’ (IFLA, 2015). Perhaps most importantly, the report provided a pathway to practical solutions for the sustainable development goals by mapping the many ways that libraries and access to information can positively contribute to the UN’s agenda (IFLA, 2015). Locally, the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA), produced a SDG toolkit with a call to action to its community, including a range of resources that encourage information practitioners and professionals to be part of the SDGs movement (ALIA, 2020).

Libraries as enablers of open science

Libraries are important stakeholders of open science, so can play an important role in achieving the SDGs. In its report, Making Open Science a Reality, the OECD (2015) specifically cites libraries, repositories and data centres as ‘key actors for and fundamental enablers of open science.’ In particular, it notes how libraries have adapted their roles to support the preservation, curation, publication and dissemination of digital scientific materials, and in providing the physical infrastructure that allows researchers to share and reuse their work, libraries ‘have been essential in the creation of the open science movement’ (OECD, 2015). 

According to Bueno de la Fuente (2016), there are a number of ways that academic libraries can fulfil their roles as enablers of open science; these include: advocating and raising awareness (for example, open access policies, OER adoption); providing support through infrastructures (for example, institutional repositories); contributing to the development of research data management policies and strategies; and by training and supporting researchers to adopt the practices of open science. However, supporting researchers and open science in this way demands new skills and requires the role of academic librarianship to evolve from the traditional liaison librarian role to a more strategically-aligned research support librarian role (Sewell and Kinglsey, 2016). In order to fulfil the skills gap for this new breed of academic librarian, there will also need to be a shift away from the requirement of LIS qualifications to make academic libraries ‘multi-professional working communities’, so that other professionals who already have the necessary data-related skillsets can join the organisation and contribute to progressing the benefits of open science (Silvennionen-Kuikka, 2018). 

Conclusion

This essay has provided a discussion on how information practitioners/professionals contribute to the progress of sustainable development goals in the contemporary information society. Due to the transformational potential between libraries and open science for the contemporary information society, academic librarians have an important role in enabling practices and policies that are critical for progressing sustainable development goals. However, if academic libraries are to fulfil their roles as enablers of open science, the profession must look internally at the skills required to provide these new services; and also look externally by providing opportunities for non-LIS professionals to join the organisation. Finally, libraries around the world, and the information practitioners and professionals that work in them, play a key role in ensuring that all individuals in the contemporary information society have access to information, which is a human right, and indisputably necessary for the global community to achieve the UN’s goals, and ultimately, transform the world so that no one is left behind.

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