Open Science

The open science movement began in the early 2000s, driven by a growing realization: much of the world’s research (funded with public money) was hidden behind expensive paywalls. Scientists, institutions, and even the public who helped fund this work often couldn’t read or reuse it.

Preprint servers like arXiv (launched in 1991 for physics) had already shown how sharing research early and openly could accelerate discovery. The open-source software movement was proving that collaboration and transparency could produce powerful, reliable tools. Building on these examples, in 2002, the Budapest Open Access Initiative made a bold call for change, demanding that scientific papers be freely available to everyone.

Participants at meeting in Budapest, December 1, 2001.

By the 2010s, however, a deeper problem emerged: many scientific results could not be reproduced. This reproducibility crisis exposed how secrecy in research was not only unfair—it was harming science itself. Without access to data, code, or detailed methods, independent verification became almost impossible.

Core values from UNESCO

Recognizing this, in November 2021, 194 countries adopted the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science. This was the first global standard for open, transparent, and inclusive research. UNESCO defines open science as making scientific knowledge openly available, accessible, and reusable for everyone, with the goal of improving collaboration and ensuring that science serves society as a whole. In other words, open science is not only about access. It is about fairness, participation, and shared progress.

UNESCO’s framework for open science.

The UNESCO Recommendation identifies three interrelated core values that guide open science worldwide:

Collective benefit — Science is a global public good. Knowledge should benefit all of humanity, not just those who can afford it.
Equity and fairness — Everyone deserves equal opportunity to contribute to and benefit from science, regardless of location, income, career stage, or institution.
Diversity and inclusiveness — Open science embraces different forms of knowledge, practices, and languages, including traditional and Indigenous knowledge systems that expand our understanding of the world.

Together, these principles aim to make research more ethical, collaborative, and socially relevant.

From principles to policy: the European Commission

UNESCO’s Recommendation has influenced policy worldwide. Major research institutions have aligned their strategies with these values. Among them, the European Commission has become a global leader in putting open science into practice. The Commission views open science as central to its research and innovation strategy, placing it at the heart of the Horizon Europe program (2021-2027), the world’s largest research funding program with a budget of €95.5 billion.

Under Horizon Europe, open science is not optional, but mandatory. The policy operates under the principle:

“As open as possible, as closed as necessary.”

This means openness is the default, but researchers can restrict access when there are legitimate reasons like privacy, security, or intellectual property concerns.

Concrete requirements for Horizon Europe projects:

Open access to publications: All peer-reviewed publications must be made freely available immediately upon publication. Authors retain copyright and can choose open licenses.
Open research data: All research data must be made accessible following the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable). Researchers must create a Data Management Plan describing what data will be collected, how it will be shared, and where it will be stored.
Research outputs: Beyond publications and data, researchers are encouraged to share other outputs like software, algorithms, protocols, and methods.

The European approach goes further than just mandates. The Commission has created infrastructure to support open science. Open Research Europe is a free publishing platform for Horizon Europe and Horizon 2020 beneficiaries, offering immediate open access with no publication fees for authors. OpenAIRE provides a pan-European infrastructure that gives access to millions of open research outputs and supports researchers in complying with open science policies. The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) is building a trusted environment for research data storage, sharing, and reuse across disciplines and borders.

These policies and infrastructure ensure that publicly funded science in Europe remains truly public, setting a model that other regions are beginning to follow.

Why this matters in chemometrics

Despite advances in open science policy, serious challenges remain in chemometrics. Many powerful methods exist only within expensive commercial software. Important papers are behind paywalls. Datasets from published studies are often unavailable.

These barriers create real problems. Students cannot afford the software they need. Scientists cannot reproduce experiments when data or code is missing. Teachers cannot demonstrate modern techniques without expensive licenses. Researchers in well-funded universities have access to tools that others in poorer regions do not.

This inequality slows progress for everyone. Important research stays unpublished. Talented people cannot participate. Useful methods remain unknown. Open science aims to change this,so that knowledge can circulate freely, collaboration can flourish, and discovery can become truly shared.

How Lovelace’s Square contributes to open science

Open science is not just about access. It changes how research works. When methods are open, people can check them, improve them, and adapt them. When data is shared, it can be analyzed again, combined with new findings, or used to answer new questions. When collaboration is transparent, trust grows.

This shift is already happening in chemometrics. Researchers share code on GitHub. They upload datasets to open repositories like Zenodo. They write tutorials to help newcomers. Lovelace’s Square is part of this movement, built from the start with open science principles at its core.

Lovelace’s Square is designed to make transparency, accessibility, and collaboration real. Everything on the platform is free. You do not need a subscription, or institutional access. The Square’s algorithms, The Library’s educational content, and Ada’s assistance are available to anyone with internet access. All contributions must use recognized open licenses, ensuring that users can access, modify, extend, and share the tools. The most restrictive license we accept allows non-commercial use only, keeping everything accessible to researchers and educators.

Every algorithm, dataset, and tutorial comes with clear documentation. Contributors must explain what their code does, how it works, and why they made certain choices. This transparency helps others understand, trust, and build on shared work. Lovelace’s Square is not controlled by a single institution. It is a collaborative effort where researchers, educators, students, and practitioners from around the world contribute, ensuring the platform responds to real community needs. We follow FAIR principles for all contributions, ensuring that what is shared today stays useful tomorrow.

For researchers

Access professional algorithms without paying. Share your work and reach a global audience. Work openly with colleagues worldwide.

For students

Learn chemometrics without expensive software. Use real datasets and code that you can study, change, and use in your projects.

For educators

Build courses using free tools. Give students hands-on experience without budget limits. Teach reproducibility by example.

For the field

Speed up progress through shared resources. Make research more trustworthy and reproducible. Build on what others have done instead of starting from zero.

Today’s big challenges are too complex for any single lab to solve. They need collaboration across disciplines, countries, and institutions. This is why UNESCO and the European Commission prioritize open science. It is practical, not idealistic. Lovelace’s Square aligns with these principles, offering a concrete example of how open science can work in chemometrics.