Knowledge is a common good. It is owned by nobody in particular, and belongs to everybody. Science can be defined as a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. To achieve this goal, Science is most of the time supported by an international collaborative effort: scientific research. During the last decade, multiple scientists have warned against a potential drift of this scientific research system compared to the initial value of Science. One of the most striking issue raised was the “publish or perish” paradigm, which encourages scientist to produce more and not necessarily better knowledge, and to switch from a collaborative effort to a competitive activity. Moreover, scientists realized that the scientific publishing industry was taking financial advantage of the situation, making large profit by asking money to the both scientist who produced and scientist who wanted access to Knowledge. The Open Access movement burgeoned from this existential crisis of the scientific community, nourish by the development of digital practices, social media and new means of production of Knowledge. It branched out in different call for openness in Science, from open source to open data. At that period (January 2013), we co-founded the “HackYourPhD” community to gather researcher, students, and citizens around the values of Knowledge as a common good and facilitate discussion about this complex phenomenon of open science. We will discuss here the story of the community but also open the debate on what it means to opening Science to the Society and to other way of producing Knowledge like Arts.

Guillaume Dumas is researcher in the department of neuroscience of the Institut Pasteur in Paris. Originally from engineering and theoretical physics, he did a PhD on cognitive neuroscience at the University of Paris 6 (UPMC) and then moved in postdoc at the Center for Complex System and Brain Science of Florida Atlantic University. He came back in France for working in the “Human Genetics and Cognitive Functions” unit of the Institut Pasteur, where he started as a postdoc before receiving his permanent position. He has been involved in many projects at the interface between Science and Society, from outreach in schools and radio to advocacy in policymaking and research institutions.

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Célya Gruson-Daniel is a research assistant responsible for information and communication technology at the Centre Virchow-Villermé. She has coordinated production of the MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) for two years and participates now in research projects in the fields of Open Science. She earned a diploma from the Ecole Normale Supérieure and the University of Paris 6 (UPMC) in the field of cognitive and behavioral neurosciences. She is particularly interested in changes occurring in research and university education against the backdrop of the emerging Open Science and Open Education trends. Her doctoral thesis in information and communication science examines the Open Science movement.