This paper discusses how open science can be interlinked with community-based participatory research (CBPR) to address socio-environmental issues. By reviewing three case studies in Japan, the authors developed a theoretical framework to span these inter-actor boundaries by (1) discovering and sharing goals that actors with different interests could tackle together (the transcend method);(2) considering ethical equity with special attention to empowering marginalized (or ‘small voice’) actors;(3) developing fair data visualization based on the FAIR Data Principles and (4) facilitating dialogue. A civic tech approach, in which civic engineers develop a solution to local issues by using open governmental data and information and communication technologies, is applied. This framework will reflectively be tested using case studies.