Research and development in non-profit and academic organizations are embracing a shift toward transparency and reproducibility, and this shift is also being embraced by some corporate and private R&D departments. ExxonMobil Biomedical Sciences (EMBSI) is a research group with a mission to understand, research, and develop health, environmental, and product safety options and solutions for ExxonMobil and the communities they impact. Last year, EMBSI affirmed its commitment to scientific integrity and rigor by launching an OSF Collection to promote open practices and share research findings.
“The OSF Collection provides us with a simple-to-use public repository for our research projects. Our scientists have created projects on the OSF since 2019,” said Robert A. Barter, Chief Scientist of Health and Environmental Sciences, EMBSI. “Creating a branded OSF Collection allows us to maintain a single-entry point to these projects.”
Since 2000, EMBSI has actively engaged in peer-reviewed scientific research, publishing over 460 journal articles. However, not all valuable information can be included in peer-reviewed journals. The OSF Collections infrastructure enables EMBSI to publicly share all outputs from the research process to make it easier to assess, extend, and critique their findings.
With OSF Collections, funders, journals, and research groups like EMBSI can create and manage collections of papers, data, code, protocols, and any other digital research materials. OSF Collections also enable research communities to set norms and advance open research practices collectively.
“Open science practices promote transparency, which is critical for industry-led science to be credible,” said Barter. “With transparency comes the ability to receive technical input from the scientific community. This input serves to strengthen our science and to identify potential opportunities to constructively engage in scientific dialogue.”
Do you help coordinate research? Do you need to highlight best practices and encourage open and transparent research within your community? Learn more about OSF Collections.
