We Need the Open Artefact: Design Science as a Pathway to Open Science in Information Systems Research

Design science research (DSR) is facing some significant challenges such as how to make the knowledge and artefacts we create more accessible; exclusion from competitive funding schemes that require open practices; and a potential reproducibility crisis if scholars do not have access to everything needed to repeat past research. To help tackle these challenges we suggest that the community should strongly engage with open science, which has been growing in prominence in other fields in recent years. A review of current DSR literature suggests that researchers have not yet discussed how open science practices can be adopted within the field. Thus, we propose how the concepts of open science, namely open access, open data, open source, and open peer review, can be mapped to a DSR process model. Further, we identify an emerging concept, the open artefact, which provides an opportunity to make artefacts more accessible to practice and scholars. The aim of this paper is to stimulate a discussion amongst researchers about these open science practices in DSR, and whether it is a necessary step forward to keep the pace of the changing academic environment.