Let’s celebrate Earth Day as the Age of Open Science

As Earth Day approaches, a day dedicated to both raising environmental awareness and celebrating environmental action, it can sometimes seem that there is more to worry about than to celebrate. Environmental awareness on Earth Day often involves spreading science-based knowledge about global change, but that can be discouraging as it involves things such as mass extinction, climate change, and emerging diseases.

These and other global change factors—such as invasive species, pollution, and habitat degradation—collectively threaten Earth’s ability to stay within the safe planetary operating space it has maintained throughout human history (1). The downside of focusing on all this is that it seems like Earth’s end times are near, and this fuels environmental doomsday prophecies and environmental nihilism. Hard to celebrate environmental action if environmental awareness overwhelms us.

In the midst of all this environmental change, however, there is something to cheer: The extraordinary rise in open access, freely available science that sheds light on global environmental problems and their solutions. Ever since the emergence of open access, making science freely available has been on the rise. Today, a majority of publications (~57%) offer some level of open access (2). For environmental awareness and action, this is huge.

Consider the following examples of open access environmental science that enriches awareness and inspires action. Recently, scientists developed a way for detecting early warning signs that Atlantic Ocean circulation patterns may shift and cause regional and global changes in climate (3). Similarly, an open access study of co-extinctions (when a species goes extinct, those they interact with may also go extinct), will be the major factor in the mass extinction of vertebrates by 2100 (4). Likewise, an open access study of Australia’s Tinderbox Drought (2017 to 2019) that preceded the Black Summer fire disaster that drew international attention identified the biotic and abiotic causes underpinning the conflagration, a study that will help to predict, manage, and possibly avoid future fires (5). As a final example, Science of the High Seas (6), a special collection of freely available research papers, was presented to the U.N. High Seas Commission in 2018, which contributed to the adoption of the High Seas Treaty in 2023. The treaty promotes equity, tackling environmental degradation and climate change and promoting biodiversity conservation.

Each of these examples points to advances in understanding and finding solutions to the environmental challenges we all face. All of these examples come from Science Advances, which has been open access since its inception in 2014.

The news about the rise in open access science is not all good, however, as the costs of publication have shifted from readers to researchers, generating considerable inequity in science. The annual cost of open access is north of $1 billion US, the brunt of that borne by scientists. With the cost of publication of a single paper ranging from $500 to more than $10,000, many researchers, especially students and scientists in developing countries, simply cannot afford to make their papers open access. There is, however, an increasing number of waiver programs for those who cannot afford to pay for open access, with Science Advances leading the way, but right now it is not particularly clear how 100% open access can be achieved in the near future.

Solving these serious issues of costs and equity will take some doing, and many are working to find ways to move forward because open access broadens accessibility to some of the most important papers in earth, climate change, ecological, and evolutionary science in all terrestrial, marine, and freshwater systems. A dramatic increase in access will allow for a more broadly informed population to weigh in on the importance of environmental science and, perhaps more importantly, on supporting inquiry-based research to discover those things we do not yet know.

In spite of the sense of powerlessness environmental awareness can instill in the face of what seem like overwhelming challenges, we are a plucky species such that, on Earth Day, about a billion people around the world will plant trees, pick up plastic from beaches, set up composters, adopt a sea turtle or other endangered species, and spread the word about the state of our planet and the importance of each and every one of us joining in what amounts to a global campaign to restore and sustainably manage our biosphere.

On Earth Day, as scientists and non-scientists alike, we can add to the celebration by increasing environmental awareness through sharing and promoting open access science—both the advances that expand what we know and those that facilitate discovery, so that humanity can be better stewards of the planet we all share.