Open Science: what’s not to like?

Open Science, enabled and abetted by digital genres, is the new academic buzzword. Credited by institutions, funders and governments to be the best thing to happen to scholarship since the printing press, it promises to bring greater transparency, efficiency, reproducibility, accessibility and collaboration to research. While there are various definitions of the term, the basic principle can’t be seriously disputed. However, while accompanied by gushingly positive endorsements, Open Science does not always sit comfortably with other aspects of university life and, to some extent, is an ideology which is attended by a certain amount of optimism - even hype. In this short opinion piece I want to pause the parade and raise a few questions that puzzle me about all this.