The open science movement is a grassroots and growing effort to make science publicly accessible. While securing open access to published results is the most well known open science issue, activists are also working towards: breaking down the barriers between scientist and non-scientist through participatory research and citizen science; opening up the data and methods of published studies to allow reproducible results and meta-analysis; and highlighting the importance of contributions beyond patents and papers, such as the creation of free hardware and free software tools.
In this panel, activists at the intersection of open science and free software will discuss how the two movements can learn from each other and work together. How do free software and open science differ in their approaches to shared goals of communal knowledge? What technical barriers to open science exist, and how can free software advocates help? How can open science projects build free software communities?