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Many researchers support #OpenScience in principle, but argue they face real barriers when putting it into practice.

In our new paper, we conducted a case study at our institute, the NSCR, to analyze our staff's attitudes toward open science. We surveyed our scientific team on 9 different practices: 1️⃣ publishing open access 2️⃣ publishing preprints 3️⃣ sharing open code 4️⃣ sharing open data 5️⃣ sharing open materials

6️⃣ conducting open peer review 7️⃣ using open-source software 8️⃣ preregistering research 9️⃣ disclosing contribution roles As expected, we found generally positive attitudes. However, colleagues were more cautious about two specific areas: publishing preprints, and conducting open peer review.

While most arguments were positive (58% positive, 12% neutral, 30% negative), we wanted to understand why certain practices faced hesitation. Our qualitative analysis identified an average of 4 barriers per practice, totaling 36 unique ones.

A large portion of these barriers involved a lack of supportive culture, incentives, and training. This was followed by concerns over privacy, security, and proprietary rights, as well as challenges within the current format of academic publishing.

(While we are a criminology institute, we believe researchers in many other scientific fields will recognize these exact same barriers.) This study serves as an initial assessment to help guide organizational change regarding open science.