Phil Bourne, one of the founders of FORCE11, passed away earlier this month. He was an open science giant and a driving force behind so many initiatives, practices and tools that today we take for granted in scholarly communications. FORCE11 is just among many of the activities he made possible. He will be sorely missed; we are grateful for both his vision and human approach, as well as we celebrate his many contributions to our community.
I first came to know of Phil Bourne while I was working at PLOS. He had co-founded the journal PLOS Computational Biology. I worked on PLOS ONE and we did not regularly interact but I regularly heard praise about Phil at cross-journal meetings where those who closely worked with him noted his knowledge, wisdom and energy. Reflecting years after the launch of PLOS Computational Biology, he said that he did not found the journal because of open access, but because he wanted to create a forum to bring the expanding conversations about informatics and its applications in biology to larger audiences. It was after becoming Editor-in-Chief of PLOS Computational Biology that Phil started to become interested in open access and opportunities of this open corpus of information that was being created. Conversations with others about those opportunities led Phil and a group of like-minded leaders to organize the Beyond the PDF workshop at UC San Diego in 2010, and appreciation for the possibilities of open scholarship grew. In parallel with another meeting in Europe, the seeds for FORCE11 were planted. A coalition of ‘believers’ – as Phil put it – wanted to embrace the possibilities opened up by the combination of an open and reusable corpus of knowledge and the emerging digital scholarship tools. This became the mission and goals of FORCE11.
Phil was an inspiration for many of us. I became involved with FORCE11 after he had stepped down from the Board, but I was lucky to meet him several years ago at a workshop about open science. I had considered myself an ‘open data’ person but I still remember how his talk, framed as explaining the open data landscape to an alien, made me realize that we were just scratching the surface on what was possible if we truly pushed open data practices. Phil’s overview discussed the amazing achievements of the Protein Data Bank, another platform where he played a key role, and the challenges and value of community-focused standardized collections of datasets. His talk influenced how I looked at the horizon of possibilities for open data since then.
Phil believed in the value of a community coming together – and this is still the backbone of FORCE11. Our activities – Working Groups, conference, FSCI and more – are all aimed at fostering connections and discussions across sectors and geographies, continuing to push the boundaries of what can be achieved through open digital scholarship. We will strive to honour Phil’s legacy by continuing building a community of ‘believers’ and keeping as a beacon his vision: ‘Complete access to all knowledge by everyone on the planet, and the ability to use that knowledge in new ways that only those people can imagine’.
Rest in Peace, Phil. Ta and Cheers!
Photo by Sanjay Suchak
