Exploratory and confirmatory research in the open science era

Applied ecological research is increasingly inspired by the open science movement. However, new challenges about how we define our science when biodiversity data are being shared and re‐used are not solved. Among these challenges is the risk associated with blurring the distinction between research that mainly seeks to explore patterns with no a‐priori articulated hypotheses (exploratory research), and research that explicitly tests a‐priori...