The modern publication of scientific results began more than 350 years ago with the publication of two journals: the Journal des Sçavans and the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. Scientific publishing was initially a free exchange of ideas and scientific results, but in recent decades, the publication of scientific results has become a highly profitable industry. Science stopped being a free flow of ideas and results a long time ago – instead, the publication of scientific results is now controlled by scientific journals through their editorial boards, and the power of journals is determined by rating scales. Numerous studies in recent years have shown that existing systems for ranking journals and evaluating researchers through bibliometrics no longer work well, and that new approaches are necessary for both the exchange of scientific ideas and the evaluation of scientific work (Werner 2015). One of these new approaches is open science, which advocates not only for open-access scientific publications, but also for transparent and openly accessible research data, descriptions of methods, and scientific policy guidelines. However, we haven’t seen any major progress in the area of open access, as many researchers and decision makers in the field of science do not fully understand the concept of open science and its connection with new methods of evaluation that don’t involve strict bibliometrics.
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