COS’s mission is to increase openness, integrity, and reproducibility of research. Openness refers to transparency and inclusivity. COS aims to make visible and accessible the content and process of all research to facilitate reuse and self-correcting to accelerate discovery. And, COS aims to increase accessibility of research for all potential contributors and consumers.
Science will not meet its potential until the research culture enables and supports contributors from all backgrounds and circumstances and contributions of all kinds based on the interests, skills, and resources available. Failure to achieve diversity and inclusion of all stakeholders in science will slow progress in discovery and translation of knowledge to solving humanity’s most pressing problems. The benefits of diversity and inclusion for enhancing the research culture are partly articulated in the paper Scientific Utopia III: Crowdsourcing Science.
Also, like many other groups advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion in research and technology, COS recognizes that talent is distributed across people of all backgrounds and identities, but opportunity is not. COS promotes opportunity, particularly for those that have less access, as a mechanism to increase equity and to leverage all available talent for advancing our mission.
Some examples of concrete actions in line with our mission to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion among COS staff, among COS’s collaborative partnerships, and in the wider research community are:
The research community is diverse with people in very different places on awareness, beliefs, knowledge, and behaviors about openness, integrity, and reproducibility of research. We aim to meet researchers where they are with our products, services, and message. In practice, this means avoiding self-righteousness and judgmentalism about whether others’ meet idealistic standards of openness that risks alienating people, especially those from marginalized communities, from being included in the movement to improve research transparency and rigor. Adopting open scholarship is not all or none, nor is it clear yet how best the principles apply in all research situations in practice. With an incremental, forward-looking, evidence-based approach, we aim to bring aboard all researchers to the shared goal of making science as effective as possible for generating knowledge, solutions, and cures. With everyone providing voice, perspective, and evidence about what works and what doesn’t we are much more likely to achieve our mission.
For each new board member, the Governance and Nominating Board shall define a slate of candidates that meet the criteria for board values and the profile of the open position. That slate shall have:
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Responsible stewards of your support
COS has consistently earned a Guidestar rating of Platinum for its financial transparency, the highest rating available. You can see our profile on Guidestar. COS and the OSF were also awarded SOC 2 accreditation in 2022 after an independent assessment of our security and procedures by the American Institute of CPA’s (AICPA).
We invite all of our sponsors, partners, and members of the community to learn more about how our organization operates, our impact, our financial performance, and our nonprofit status.