Libraries and the Promotion of Open Science: An Experience in Creating a Brief Chronology

While promoting open science, libraries inevitably face a lack of information regarding its history. This impacts efforts to overcome researchers’ reticence to embrace open science practices and to engage the public in research. Sources covering the history of open science remain fragmented; the most comprehensive are available in foreign languages and focus on the development of open access in specific countries.

This article introduces the Russian-language project A Brief Chronology of Open Science, describing its development principles and the challenges associated with its creation. This resource was prepared by the Open Science Research Department of the State Public Library for Science and Technology, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The main challenges in creating the chronology were the lack of consensus on the concept’s inception, insufficient availability of open-source information for pre-2010 events, and the high risk of interruptions in the services providing the visual component of the project.

This resource, presented as a widget, covers the period from 1971 to 2025 (and is expected to be expanded further). It provides links to both original documents and copies archived in The Wayback Machine, and also includes a text copy of the information to prevent data loss. The events recorded in the chronology offer a clear perspective on the development and practical implementation of the open science concept, and the project itself has the potential to become the basis for a more detailed source on the history of the subject, accessible to a wider audience.

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