Simon Worthington is a researcher in future publishing — free and open source systems, economic models, and the politics of Open Science. He is active in LIBER’s Citizen Science Working Group.

He authored The Book Liberation Manifesto supporting the FOSS community to make research available to all through platform independent, interoperable publications. Simon is also Editor-in-Chief at Generation Research an editorial platform for open scholarship for the Leibniz Association Research Alliance Open Science. As of 2019 he is a Board Member of FORCE11 an organisation for the future of scholarly communication.

In 1994 he co-founded and published Mute magazine a culture and technology publication, the European counter to Wired magazine, and continues as a member of the editorial collective and as publisher. He originally studied media art at the Slade School, UCL (UK) and CalArts (USA).

I ran an editorial theme on the open science platform I edit GenR about citizen science and the LIBER guide was an important inspiration for the work. I also see a close connection to climate and environmental issues with citizen science. With the involvement of young people in climate change protests it leads to the question of how these people can be engaged in science and scholarship in new ways. I am collaborating with the open access advocate Peter Murray-Rust on just such an exploration of new forms of engagement and how research can be made accessible by young people when OA rates are at less than 30%. Our project is called ‘Open Climate Knowledge’.