The practical implications of open science

My name is Tracy Coleman and I’m the Head Athletic Trainer and Rehab Coordinator for FC Dallas of Major League Soccer and one of the original Knowledgr team members.

I want to tell a little story to show the potential impact of open access scientific publishing on my career caring for athletes.

A large part of my job involves staying up to date on all of the current sports medicine literature involving novel treatment techniques and rehab protocols. This is something that is made easier by the emergence of open-access publishing options where I can find large collections of scholarly journals and recent studies from which to make informed decisions regarding the plan of care for my injured athletes.

Without these open-access sources, I would struggle to stay current on the literature due to the overwhelming amount of research hidden behind paywalls. I honestly believe that the quality of my rehab programming is correlated with how accessible the relevant clinical information is.

An injury I dealt with recently serves as a prime example of the importance of open-access publishing and highlights why we find a new business model that can disrupt paywalls and sustainably support scientific communication.

We had a player suffer what most of our doctors and surgeons considered an incredibly rare injury. In fact, after extensive research, I could not find one instance of it occurring in Major League Soccer in the last decade. Only one of my colleagues in MLS had personal experience working with such an injury.

I will omit the details for privacy reasons, but the takeaway message is that since there wasn’t a substantial amount of literature on this injury and many of the recent studies I was able to find were hidden behind paywalls, my ability to quickly make decisions on a plan of care was lost. Luckily, I work with a team of brilliant doctors and physical therapists who were all able to come together and get our athlete treated on the path to recovery.

The whole situation emphasized the importance of open-access information that professionals from every field can access quickly and use to make informed decisions in their respective careers.

We hope Knowledgr will create an infrastructure and incentive model for all researchers to openly share their work.