Open Science to Open the Future: A Necessary Reflection

We are living in a critical moment for science. On one hand, we are facing a global crisis of trust: more and more public figures are disregarding scientific evidence, while skepticism around key issues—such as climate change, vaccines, or biodiversity loss—is growing across various social sectors. On the other hand, we are also facing an internal crisis: the so-called reproducibility crisis, which challenges the very foundations of how we produce and validate knowledge.

In this context, contributing as a co-author to the piece “Open Science to Open the Future”, published in La Jornada Veracruz, was a valuable opportunity to collectively reflect—alongside colleagues from various institutions—on the role that Open Science can and should play in the face of this landscape.

🔗 You can read the full article (in Spanish) here:

Abrir la ciencia para abrir el futuro


What is Open Science?

In the article, we argue that beyond free access to scientific articles, Open Science proposes a profound cultural transformation. It means making data, methods, code, and results available for review, reuse, and validation. But it also demands a rethinking of how we evaluate, communicate, and teach science.

It is a call for transparency, collaboration, equity, and public accountability. Because if most science is publicly funded, shouldn’t its benefits also be freely accessible to society?

A More Democratic Science

We advocate that opening science is not merely a technical or editorial strategy. It is an ethical and political stance that recognizes knowledge as a common good. It challenges elitist models, paywalls, and hypercompetitive cultures, while striving to recover the social purpose of research.

As a collective, we believe this approach is essential if science is to continue playing a key role in building a more just, informed, and sustainable future.

A Collective Effort

This text was collaboratively written by the Ciencia Abierta Xalapa collective, with support from the Institute of Ecology (INECOL), the Center for Biomedical Research at Universidad Veracruzana (UV), and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this dialogue alongside colleagues Miguel Equihua Zamora, Octavio Pérez Maqueo, Agustín Fernández Eguiarte, Andrés De la Rosa Portilla, Elio Lagunes Díaz, Griselda Benítez Badillo, and Claudio Torres Nachón.

🌱 Opening science also means opening pathways for society to take ownership of knowledge and use it for the common good.

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Read directly from La Jornada Veracruz (in Spanish):