Doing research “in the open” opens up an amazing spectrum of opportunities. More and more it becomes clear that we have a whole new kind of a digital education challenge here: How do we keep up with research practices at the current pace of change in research? Online materials for learning about Open Science are available on large scale. However, when it comes to practical guidance we identified a gap. What resources exist to support trainers that would like to teach and inspire researchers to practice Open Access, Open Data, Open Peer Review etc.?

Missing this specific guidance, we came up with the idea to ask experienced Open Science trainers and practitioners to write a book about teaching Open Science practices and principles to young researchers and other audiences, and to share them with future trainers.

We set up an open call for proposals to reach out to the community and find experienced Open Science instructors that would like to work on this unique resource. It was quite a challenge to review the 39 applications by well qualified trainers from all over the world and to make a well balanced selection in terms of different scientific backgrounds, gender and region etc.

Finally, we invited 14 experts from 10 countries to participate in the FOSTER Book Sprint which was organized in collaboration with the TIB Hannover. From 12-16 February 2018 the selected authors came together in Germany to write an Open Science training handbook collaboratively. The result is amazing: After agreeing on a concept on the first day, the group started an intensive writing process on day two. The basis for the handbook was set up in just two days. From the third day on the authors started to comment, edit, complete and finalize the chapters. The Open Science Training Handbook is now open for comments and suggestions until 4th of March 2018: https://tinyurl.com/osth-2018

Update: The Open Science Training Handbook can be found as a living Gitbook here.

Some impressions: