---
title: "Open science"
chunk: 3/8
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_science"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:48:21.258734+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== Before journals ===
Before the advent of scientific journals, scientists had little to gain and much to lose by publicizing scientific discoveries. Many scientists, including Galileo, Kepler, Isaac Newton, Christiaan Huygens, and Robert Hooke, made claim to their discoveries by describing them in papers coded in anagrams or cyphers and then distributing the coded text. Their intent was to develop their discovery into something off which they could profit, then reveal their discovery to prove ownership when they were prepared to make a claim on it.
The system of not publicizing discoveries caused problems because discoveries were not shared quickly and because it sometimes was difficult for the discoverer to prove priority. Newton and Gottfried Leibniz both claimed priority in discovering calculus. Newton said that he wrote about calculus in the 1660s and 1670s, but did not publish until 1693. Leibniz published "Nova Methodus pro Maximis et Minimis", a treatise on calculus, in 1684. Debates over priority are inherent in systems where science is not published openly, and this was problematic for scientists who wanted to benefit from priority.
Under aristocratic patronage, scientists received funding to develop useful innovations or provide entertainment, creating pressure to satisfy patrons' desires and limiting open research that might benefit others.

=== Emergence of academies and journals ===
Eventually the individual patronage system ceased to provide the scientific output which society began to demand. Single patrons could not sufficiently fund scientists, who had unstable careers and needed consistent funding. The development which changed this was a trend to pool research by multiple scientists into an academy funded by multiple patrons. In 1660 England established the Royal Society and in 1666 the French established the French Academy of Sciences. Between the 1660s and 1793, governments gave official recognition to 70 other scientific organizations modeled after those two academies. In 1665, Henry Oldenburg became the editor of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, the first academic journal devoted to science, and the foundation for the growth of scientific publishing. By 1699 there were 30 scientific journals; by 1790 there were 1052. Since then publishing has expanded at even greater rates.

=== Popular Science Writing ===
The first popular science periodical of its kind was published in 1872, under a suggestive name that is still a modern portal for the offering science journalism: Popular Science. The magazine claims to have documented the invention of the telephone, the phonograph, the electric light and the onset of automobile technology. The magazine goes so far as to claim that the "history of Popular Science is a true reflection of humankind's progress over the past 129+ years". Scholarly discussions of popular science frequently reference the concept of a 'science boom,' a period of rapid public interest in scientific topics. A recent historiographic account of popular science traces mentions of the term "science boom" to Daniel Greenberg's Science and Government Reports in 1979 which posited that "Scientific magazines are bursting out all over. Similarly, this account discusses the publication Time, and its cover story of Carl Sagan in 1980 as propagating the claim that popular science has "turned into enthusiasm". Crucially, this secondary account asks the important question as to what was considered as popular "science" to begin with. Historians must first clarify what constituted scientific expertise before analyzing how popular writing bridged the gap between scientists and general audiences.

=== Collaboration among academies ===
In modern times many academies have pressured researchers at publicly funded universities and research institutions to engage in a mix of sharing research and making some technological developments proprietary. Some research has commercial potential. Hoping to capitalize on it, many institutions restrict access to information and technology, thereby slowing scientific progress that might otherwise benefit from wider collaboration. While predicting the commercial value of research is difficult, there is consensus that the benefits to a single institution of proprietary control are outweighed by the collective costs to the broader research enterprise.

=== Coining of term "Open Science" ===
Steve Mann claimed to have coined the term "Open Science" in 1998.  He also registered the domain names openscience.com and openscience.org in 1998, which he sold to degruyter.com in 2011.  The term was previously used in a manner that refers to today's 'open science' norms by Daryl E. Chubin in his 1985 essay "Open Science and Closed Science: Tradeoffs in a Democracy". Chubin's essay cited Robert K. Merton's 1942 proposal of what we now refer to as Mertonian Norms for ideal science practices and scientific modes of communication. The term appeared intermittently throughout 1970s and 1980s academic literature, where it was applied to a diverse range of concepts.