---
title: "Uses of open science"
chunk: 3/9
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uses_of_open_science"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:50:26.910892+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

I turn our attention to these alternative, public forms of research impact and reach by examining the Latin American case. In this study, impact will be assessed through evidence of the research literature being saved, discussed, forwarded, recommended, mentioned, or cited, both within and beyond the academic community (…) Reach refers, in this study, to the extent to which the research literature is viewed or downloaded by members of various audiences, beginning with the traditional academic readership and extending outward through related professions, and perhaps journalists, teachers, enthusiasts, and members of the public (…) By looking at a broad range of indicators of impact and reach, far beyond the typical measures of one article citing another, I argue, it is possible to gain a sense of the people that are using Latin American research, thereby opening the door for others to see the ways in which it has touched those individuals and communities.
The unprecedented focus on the social impact of science fits with alternative models of scientific popularization. In 2009, Alesia Zuccala introduced a radiant model of open science dissemination with a variety of mediated and unmediated connections between non-academic audience and academic production: "Sometimes [research] engages the lay public—this is the co-production model of science communication—and sometimes self-selected intermediaries tell members of the public what they should know—the education model of science communication".

== Methods ==
While open science has been largely theorized to have a significant impact on academic and non-academic access to literature, research investigation in this area has proven challenging: it has "the subject of many discussions and indeed was the basis for a lot of the advocacy work and many funding agencies' OA policies, but rarely so in formal published studies" By definition, open science productions are non-transactional and as such their use leave much less traces than the distribution of commercialized scientific outputs. Overall, it is very difficult to retrieve "data on user demographics from currently available information sources (e.g., repositories and publisher platforms)".
The classic methods of bibliometric studies, including citation analysis, are largely unable to capture the new forms of reception created by open science. Alternative approaches had to be developed in the 2000s and the 2010s, and for a long time, open science advocates and policy-makers had to rely on limited evidence.

=== Survey ===
Surveys have been the primary method of analyzing scientific reception before the development of bibliometrics.
After the development of electronic publishing and open access, survey methods have also migrated online. Pop-up surveys were introduced for academic publications in the early 2000s: they made it possible to query the user at the exact moment when the resource was retrieved and could be correlated with log data. Yet, "response rates of pop-up surveys tend to be low", which may ultimately distort the representativeness of the survey.
Since 2002, large international surveys of the uses of academic resources have been conducted by Simon Inger and Tracy Gardner with the support of several major scientific organizations and publishers. While not specifically focused on open science, the survey strived to include a more diverse subset of potential users beyond academic authors.