Around the Research Alliance and it’s partners

Open Science Conference: Tickets available

You can still register for our Open Science Conference in Berlin. It is dedicated to the Open Science movement and provides a unique forum for researchers, librarians, practitioners, infrastructure providers, policy makers, and other important stakeholders to discuss the latest and future developments in Open Science. We are happy to announce Martin Fenner (DataCite) as speaker and that the recent report “Future of Scholarly Publishing and Scholarly Communication” by the corresponding EC expert group is presented and discussed in a panel (see schedule).

Date: 19-20 March 2019, Berlin

Hashtag: #osc2019

New Research Alliance Projects

Two new research projects are initiated within the Leibniz Research Alliance Science 2.0. The first project ‘Science Popularization and Open Science’ is dedicated to the openness of science for the broad public. The project activities include mainly empirical studies to receive further scientific insights that enable the improvement of science popularization in the course of Open Science and digitalization of science. Additionally, promising and innovative initiatives of science popularization will be academically accompanied in order to support a continuous optimization.

The second project ‘Open peer review: a qualitative, interview-based study’ wants to find out why researchers experience with open peer review. Researchers were interviewed who experienced open peer review as authors, reviewers, or editors.

Fellow Programme Open Science: Webinar Academic SEO, or: How do I get my research to show up in search engines and discovery tools?

Open Knowledge Maps and Wikimedia are offering a second round of their Webinar ‘Academic SEO, or: How do I get my research to show up in search engines and discovery tools?’. Search engines and discovery tools are a way for other people to find your research. But how do you make sure that your publications are included in current and future services? The Webinar will give lots of practical tips that you can implement in no time – and make sure that your research is found by your audience(s). More info in this blogpost by Wikimedia (Link only in German, the webinar language is English)

Date: 6 March 2019, 2 am

GenR – Latest Blogposts

Next Generation Researchers and Open Science in the University

How can we spread Open Science principles to the next generation of researchers? One way is to practice Open Scholarship already at the university. Another way is to encourage people teaching in higher education to spread the word for Open Science, such as the Open Science Fellows Program in Germany. In this blogpost the fellows Caroline Fischer and Rima-Maria Rahal share their experiences with the programme.

Jupyter Notebooks in Higher Education

Jupyter Notebooks are a way in which you can write and execute code in the browser. This is a small and simple step but most definitely not the end of the story. Jupyter Notebook file can be downloaded and instantly the package can be run in the browser to generate results, say a chart, while simultaneously the data and code for generating results, such as a chart, can be examined. Read more about them in this blogpost.

Top 10 FAIR Data & Software Things

The Top 10 FAIR Data & Software Global Sprint was held online over the course of two days (29-30 November 2018), where participants from around the world were invited to develop brief guides (stand alone, self paced training materials), called “Things”, that can be used by the research community to understand FAIR in different contexts but also as starting points for conversations around FAIR. Chris Erdmann and Natasha Simons report about the results.

Imagine a Research Future Defined by Open Values: Introducing the Open Science MOOC

The world of research is not working as well as it could be. On all sides we see issues with reproducibility, questionable research practices, barriers and walls, wasteful research, and flawed incentive and reward systems. If we want research to be more effective in helping to solve the problems our world currently faces, we have to be better. This is what the Open Science MOOC aims for. Jon Tennant is presenting the vision in his GenR Blogpost.

If you want to contribute an article on GenR please contact the editor Simon Worthington.

Open Science in General

Open Science Isn’t Always Open to All Scientists

Open Science, a global movement toward openness in scientific research, is fundamentally about accountability and transparency of the scientific enterprise. Rather than keeping data and materials (and ideas) within the confines of academic research labs, open science invites anyone to observe, contribute, and create. Yet historically the culture of science has been a solitary and often secretive endeavor. Open Science is built on the same foundation as science itself, and inherits many systematic barriers that already exist in mainstream science as this article in American Scientist shows.

“A love letter to your future self”: What scientists need to know about FAIR data

The idea that scientific data should be FAIR — Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable — is one increasingly endorsed by scientific institutions including the United States National Academies of Science Engineering and Medicine, the European Commission, and the Wellcome Trust. But it is yet to gain much traction among the people that ultimately matter, the scientists generating the data. In this article Jon Brock is summarizing the most important aspects.

Stifterverband Study: What do we gain through Open Science and Open Innovation?

A new study (Link to study in German) by The Stifterverband explores the topics of Open Innovation and Open Science in Germany. It demonstrates that scientific discourse in these subjects has previously been largely disconnected. How could this disconnection be overcome? And what potential is there hidden away? This blogpost summarizes the findings.

Frictionless Data Tool Fund by Open Knowledge International

Open Knowledge International is launching the Frictionless Data Tool Fund, a mini-grant scheme offering grants of $5,000 to support individuals or organizations in developing an open source tool for reproducible science or research built using the Frictionless Data specifications and software. They welcome submissions of interest until the 30 April 2019.

Open Science Radio: de-RSE Association and Conference for Research Software Engineers in Germany

In a joint effort of a group of research software enthusiasts, the association de-RSE e.V. – Gesellschaft für Forschungssoftware was founded in late November 2018. It seeks to provide a new home to the German community of Research Software Engineers and a first major effort is the organization of the deRSE19 – Conference for Research Software Engineers in Germany. Open Science Radio sat down with Carina Haupt and Stephan Druskat to talk about the research software engineer’s profile, the de-RSE association as well as the deRSE19 conference.

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