Trinity News sits down with immunology alumna Dr Ailís O’Carroll to discuss her passion for open science and engagement.
The general aim of open science, Dr Ailis O’Carroll explains, “is making knowledge and research as open, as accessible, as equitable as possible”. This applies to “every stage of the research cycle”, and it encompasses many aspects including paywall-free open-access publishing, open peer review, and ensuring articles are accessible. “There’s so many ways of talking about open science”, O’Carroll says. “I really feel we’re only at the beginning and it will get better as our technologies get better.”
O’Carroll studied immunology at Trinity, completing her PhD and two postdocs in Australia, focusing on viruses, protein interactions, and microscopy using super-resolution microscopes. It was during her PhD at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney that she “really woke up” to science communication and open science: “You hit upon so many issues in academia”, O’Carroll says, a major one being barriers to the wide dissemination of knowledge.
“Scientists [worldwide] have to spend money to publish and then when you send to the big journals it’s locked away and people have to pay to read it. It was so interesting for me to see that it was such a detrimental part to the whole research process”
When COVID-19 hit, O’Carroll moved to Ireland to supervise testing labs, then on to Oxford where she “got really into science communication, working with a company who were making really small super-resolution microscopes that could be used to detect COVID”. Jumping fully into open science, O’Carroll joined eLife, an open-access journal “extremely passionate about making things open and accessible, but also equitable”. She describes her time as eLife’s community manager as “a fascinating three years [spent] understanding how [the publishing system] works, its flaws, the fact that scientists [worldwide] have to spend money to publish and then when you send to the big journals it’s locked away and people have to pay to read the research. It was so interesting for me to see that it was such a detrimental part of the whole research process.”
Talking of the importance of sharing science publicly, O’Carroll notes: “When you also focus on the sustainable development goals, they all hinge on the fact that knowledge needs to be transferred equitably to everyone. And if we can’t do that, there is no way we’ll hit any of the targets for any of the goals. And when you kind of boil it all back – that researchers publishing in open access journals and focusing on open science, could really, really benefit, you know, someone in a different part of the world to be able to push out of poverty, or to create some sort of solution – it’s always excited me, how we can spread [knowledge] for the betterment of humankind.”
“Science engagement is a two-way relationship – good storytelling is key.”
There are many aspects to science engagement, O’Carroll emphasises, from academic writing styles to creating art or videos or giving public talks. It can mean engagement “with patients, or indigenous communities who might be impacted by [your] results”. Importantly, engagement is a two-way relationship. O’Carroll notes, on the one hand “public engagement [is] lacking, [we saw] there wasn’t engagement before the pandemic in what viruses are, and how disease spreads, and I think it’s really, really important for people to trust and believe in fact and science”. On the other hand, O’Carroll feels, engagement is not taught to researchers: “There’s no right way of communicating, it’s how you do it, [and] the more people that can engage with the public on their topic of interest, the better.”
Good science storytelling is key to science engagement. From O’Carroll’s personal experience: “Studying in Trinity, some of the lecturers were really good storytellers… The different characters of the proteins or the molecules [in immunology] came to life in my head because of the way it was told to me.” The pandemic highlighted the lack of public understanding of viruses, “because the story just wasn’t told to them in the right way”, and in her own career O’Carroll hopes to be “the person who could help communicate a dense topic as a story that would relate to more people”. When asked what science engagement work she enjoys, O’Carroll says: “I enjoy taking a topic that people instinctively maybe don’t think will be interesting or fun, and then trying to understand what they find interesting, and then pairing the two together.” Take using genetics to explain traits, diseases, or discovering your family tree, for example: “People just connect so strongly with that.”
Another motivator for O’Carroll in pursuing a career in open science is the lack of diversity in academia: “As you go higher up, there’s less women and people from [different] socioeconomic backgrounds…. Knowledge, for so long, would have been withheld [from] communities.” O’Carroll feels it is wrong that many groups in science aren’t at the table, and hopes that working in open science she can help in making changes.
O’Carroll’s passion for open science is also driven by a lack of mainstream discussion on academic accessibility problems: “It’s a Netflix documentary waiting to be made on the billions made – so it’s public funding for your research, which comes from taxpayers’ money or from charities, and a huge amount of that is given to publishers, or is wasted on research waste; repeating experiments that won’t end up actually giving efficient or good results. I just think, with all the crises [going on], it’s a massive scandal.”
“It’s kind of angering, isn’t it? Just to think about all the money being wasted for no reason.” O’Carroll acknowledges there are some necessary costs in publishing, but regarding open access fees, lack of reviewer payment, and articles being kept behind paywalls despite public funding of research, she feels: “there are so many [issues] that you’d nearly want to break down the full system, and then start again. That system was made [when] there was no way of sharing that knowledge other than making it whole journals. We have the internet now, and we have ways of communicating that are much better than a piece of paper, and I know [many journals] are really trying to go that way.”
On a positive note, O’Carroll believes science is moving towards open access, with big systems getting behind it globally, such as in the United States: “[The White House] have pushed forward to open access policies, where if you get public-funded grants, you have to publish openly.” O’Carroll adds: “I think the tide is turning, you just need the people who are [reinventing] what open access looks like, to be led by really creative minds. I think more people should get involved in the movement, but, I know researchers are busy, and it’s nearly a publish or perish system.” This system of judging researchers on impact factors, O’Carroll adds, needs change: “We need to be really looking in a holistic way, judging [researchers] on their public engagement, judging them on how they can manage a team. It shouldn’t just be about publishing.” Additionally, O’Carroll feels training for early-career researchers on peer review, publishing, and their choices, and increasing collaboration and interdisciplinary work, would aid in the move towards open science.
O’Carroll hopes to see a wide variety of open science and science engagement projects going forward: “Ireland is such a beautiful island, and there are so many stories that we can tell, but we all need to work together – scientists, people in technology, artists – and engage as much of the public as possible, having different ways that the citizens of Ireland can get involved.”
It is clear that both the public and researchers themselves have much to gain from the open science movement, and O’Carroll’s hope for a more accessible and engaging scientific community is something that could be realised if we continue to foster this movement.
