Post by Sheetal Saujani, UCL Citizen Science Coordinator.

Are you passionate about citizen science, or curious about how to involve the public in research projects? Join us on Monday, 9 December, from 10:00-13:00 at UCL’s IAS Common Ground (Room G11, South Wing, UCL Wilkins Building) for a half-day event that will bring together the Citizen Science community at UCL to learn, share, and connect!

This event is a fantastic opportunity for UCL staff and students interested in Citizen Science —whether you’re already engaged in a project or just exploring the field. The event will feature inspiring lightning talks, two hands-on workshops, and a look into a standout citizen science initiative—the UCL Memory Workshop. You’ll gain insights into cutting-edge citizen science practices at UCL and beyond, as well as guidance on skills development, research funding, and collaborative projects.

Our agenda includes:

• Lightning talks: Discover citizen science units, resources, and support across UCL.
• Skills development workshop: Led by Prof. Muki Haklay from UCL ExCiteS, this session will build core competencies in citizen science.
• Interactive workshop: Develop compelling grant applications for citizen science and map out UCL expertise in the field.
• Citizen science project highlight: An introduction to the UCL Memory Workshop, our showcase citizen science initiative. 
• Speed networking session (optional): Meet others passionate about citizen science and grow your professional network.

This event is more than just a chance to learn: it’s designed to connect you with like-minded peers and foster collaborations across departments. Plus, with light refreshments provided, it’s the perfect way to spend a Monday morning in great company!

Please see the Eventbrite page for more information and book your place today!

Don’t miss out on the chance to grow, learn, and become part of a vibrant, diverse community. Register now and help shape the future of citizen science at UCL!

This event is for UCL staff and students only.

Get involved and join the Citizen Science MS Teams Community!

In October 2023, we launched the UCL Citizen Science community on MS Teams, and we want you to be part of it! Whether you’re a student, staff member, or researcher at UCL with a passion for or interest in citizen science, this informal network is your chance to connect and grow. Join a community where you can share knowledge and experiences, exchange ideas, advice, and stories that inspire. It’s more than just a platform—it’s a space for building networks, sparking creativity, and driving citizen science forward.

Become part of the online network today and help shape the future of citizen science!

As part of our Open Access Week celebrations, we were delighted to host the second annual Open Science & Scholarship Awards presentation. This event gave us the opportunity to gather in person, congratulate the awardees, and celebrate their achievements after announcing the winners a few weeks ago.

The event began with certificate presentations, followed by a showcase of the award-winning projects.

First, Enny van Beest and Célian Bimbard, who received an honourable mention in the Open Source Software/Analytical Tools category, shared their project UnitMatch. Designed to track neurons across extensive Neuropixel Recordings, this software accelerates the analysis of large datasets, proving a valuable resource for researchers handling high volumes of neural data.

Next, winners of the Student category, Sophie Ka Ling Lau and Divya Balain, presented Diverse Voices, a website emerging from their project on the impact of COVID-19 on East London communities. Sophie and Divya, both Master’s students from UCL’s Departments of Brain Sciences and Life Sciences, respectively, created this collaborative platform to share insights gained from their research.

In the Advocating for Open Science & Community Building category, Joseph Cook shared his work with the UCL Citizen Science Academy, housed within the Institute for Global Prosperity. The Academy empowers citizens to participate in research projects, offering a structured learning programme and a certificate that recognises their contributions and learning.

The Professional Services Staff category award went to the Understanding Disability Project, presented by Eirini-Christina Saloniki and William Lammons. This project combines lived experiences with broad representation to document perspectives of people living with disabilities across North Thames, aiming for a comprehensive view that highlights the unique challenges they face.

Finally, in the Open Publishing category, Emily Gardner discussed her work with the NCL Mutation Database. This essential resource supports Batten Disease research and therapeutic development, with Emily’s work ensuring metadata accuracy and database reliability for researchers.

In the Open-Source Software category, we also recognised Alessandro Felder and the BrainGlobe Initiative, a collaborative project focused on creating open-access tools that support neuroscientific research worldwide. Although Alessandro couldn’t attend the ceremony, we were proud to recognise this initiative’s impressive accomplishments. Founded in 2020 to advance the handling and analysis of neuroimaging data, the BrainGlobe tools have been downloaded over 2.7 million times around the world!

After the presentations, the audience had a chance to network and enjoy refreshments provided by UCL Press, the event’s generous sponsor.

We would like to extend a special thank you to our other honorable mention recipients: Beth Downe, Gabrielle Pengyu Shao, Deborah Padfield, Dr. Adam Parker, Hengrui Zhang, Mathilde Ripart, Justyna Petke, Claire Waddington, and Fan Cheng. Representing a range of departments, teams, and centres across UCL – from the Slade School of Fine Art to the Dementia Research Centre – we were thrilled to celebrate your work and dedication to advancing open science across disciplines. Thank you for being part of this event!

Our heartfelt thanks go to UCL Press for their support, the Office for Open Science & Scholarship team for organising the awards, and Sandy Schumann and Jessie Baldwin, UKRN local network leads, for managing the submission and peer review process. Special thanks go to Paul Ayris, Head of the UCL Office for Open Science & Scholarship, and David Shanks, UCL’s Institutional Lead for Reproducibility, for their continued support of these awards.

Watch this space for the next Open Science and Scholarship Awards!

On behalf of the UCL Office for Open Science & Scholarship and the UKRN local leads, we would like to thank everyone who engaged with the nominations and showed us how amazing the research community at UCL is. We were overwhelmed by the support for this process, and the judging panel had a really hard job selecting just a few winners from the over 50 applications and nominations we received!

We will be presenting the awards in a small ceremony during International Open Access Week on 2-3:30pm, Wednesday 23rd October (for the full list of events for that week, check our blog post). A selection of winners and honourable mentions will present their work, followed by a small reception sponsored by UCL Press.

We have limited tickets available due to the small venue, but tickets are available on Eventbrite for UCL staff and students.

Full information about all of these projects will be available on the day of the awards, so watch this space!

Category: Students

Winners:
• Sophie Ka Ling Lau and Divya Balain, postgraduate students at the Faculty of Brain Sciences and Life Sciences

Honourable mentions:
• Beth Downe, MSc in Ecology and Data Science at Division of Biosciences
• Gabrielle Pengyu Shao, Undergraduate student in Geography

Category: Non-academic Staff

Winners:
• Dr Eirini-Christina Saloniki, Senior Research Fellow in Health Economics (NIHR ARC North Thames) in the Department of Applied Health Research
• William Lammons, Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement Lead for the Applied Research Collaboration North Thames

Category: Open Publishing

Winner:
• Dr Emily Gardner, Research Fellow in the Department of Genetics & Genomic Medicine

Honourable mentions:
• Dr Deborah Padfield, Associate Professor at the Slade School of Fine Art
• Dr Adam Parker, Lecturer in the Division of Psychology and Language Sciences (with David Shanks, Courtenay Norbury, and Daryl Lee)

Category: Open-Source Software/Analytical Tools

Winner:
• Alessandro Felder (on behalf of the BrainGlobe team), Research Software Engineer in the Neuroinformatics Unit at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre and technical lead for the BrainGlobe initiative

Honourable mentions:
• Hengrui Zhang, PhD student at the Institute of Health Informatics
• Mathilde Ripart, PhD student at the Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health
• Prof Justyna Petke, Professor of Software Engineering at the Centre for Research on Evolution, Search and Testing
• Dr Enny van Beest, Senior Research Associate at the Institute of Ophthalmology, and Dr Célian Bimbard, Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Ophthalmology

Category: Advocating for Open Science/Community Building

Winner:
• Dr Joseph Cook, Lead of the UCL Citizen Science Academy at the Institute for Global Prosperity

Honourable mentions:
• Claire Waddington, PhD student at the Dementia Research Centre
• Fan Cheng, PhD student at the Faculty of Population Health Sciences

Book your tickets now and join us in celebrating the incredible open science work happening at UCL!

For more information about the UCL Open Science and Scholarship Awards, visit our webpage. You can also stay connected by following us on LinkedIn or BlueSky, and be sure to subscribe to our newsletter for the latest updates on the awards and all things open science at UCL!

We’re excited to announce a packed programme of events for this year’s #OAWeek at UCL! Throughout the week, we’ll be sharing daily blog posts and updates on social media that highlight the latest activities from UCL Press and the UCL Copyright team, alongside exciting news on our growing Citizen Science Community on MS Teams. This year’s theme, ‘Community over Commercialisation’, will be at the heart of our discussions, exploring how we can prioritise openness and collaboration in research to benefit the public and academic communities rather than profit-driven initiatives.

Poster of the International Open Access Week 2024

Read more about Open Access week and this year’s theme.

Tuesday 22 October (11:00am-2:00 pm) – Open Science and ARC Roadshow

As part of this year’s Open Access Week activities, we’re launching the first in a series of pilot roadshows, jointly organised by the UCL Office for Open Science & Scholarship and the Centre for Advanced Research Computing.

Come and find us outside the Academic Staff Common Room in the North Cloisters between 11:00 am and 2:00 pm, where our team will be on hand to answer all your questions about Open Access publishing, Research Data Management, Research IT, Data Stewardship, Citizen Science, and any other Open Science-related topics you’re curious about! Stop by to find out more—we might even have some goodies waiting for you!

No registration needed – find the event location on the webpage.

Tuesday 22 October (2:30-4:00 pm) – Copyright, Open Science & Creativity

One event we’re particularly excited about is happening on Tuesday, 22 October (2:30–4:00 pm). We’ll be hosting a brand-new card game designed by Christine Daouti, titled ‘Copyright, Open Science, and Creativity’. This engaging game provides a fun and interactive way to explore key topics like equity in open science, authors’ rights, and open access publishing. You’ll have the opportunity to debate various aspects of copyright with fellow participants and explore issues such as open licences, AI in research, rights retention, and the challenges of equity in open science.

Spaces are limited, so be sure to sign up early! For more details and registration information, visit the event page.

Wednesday 23 October (2:00–3:30 pm) – Annual Open Science & Scholarship Awards

We’re also really glad to invite you to our second Annual Open Science & Scholarship Awards! Join us in celebrating the incredible contributions of colleagues and students to the future of open research and scholarship. The event will feature short talks from the winners in each category, followed by the award presentations. Afterwards, stay for drinks, nibbles, and a chance to network with peers.

Register today via our Eventbrite page!

Thursday 24 October, 2.30 pm – 4 pm, drop-in session on Copyright, Licences and Open Science

Join the UCL Copyright team for an online drop-in session where they’ll be available to answer your questions about copyright, licensing, and how to share your research openly. This is a great opportunity to clarify any issues related to your research, thesis, publications, or data. Feel free to drop in on Teams between 2:30 and 3:50 pm or send your questions in advance to copyright@ucl.ac.uk.

To get you started, here are a few questions you might want to consider:

• Why do research funders prefer CC BY licences for journal articles and monographs?
• What copyright considerations should you keep in mind when making your data open and FAIR?
• Can you use someone else’s copyrighted materials in your own thesis or publication that you plan to make open access?

This session offers a chance to resolve these and other copyright and licensing concerns so you can better understand the open research landscape.

Visit the event page for more information and sign up now!

Stay connected!

While we prepare for the events coming up, make sure you stay informed about new articles, events, and projects by signing up for your mailing list to receive the next issue of our Open@UCL newsletter. Also, join in the conversation during #OAWeek by checking this blog page for daily updates, and following us on LinkedIn or our newly created BlueSky account.

See you there!

As part of our work at the Office this year, we’ve made it a priority to stay connected with all of our award winners. Some of them shared their experiences during our conference, and we’re already well on our way to planning another exciting Awards ceremony for this year’s winners!

You can apply now for the UCL Open Science & Scholarship Awards 2024 to celebrate UCL students and staff who are advancing and promoting open science and scholarship. The awards are open to all UCL students, PhD candidates, professional services, and academic staff across all disciplines. There’s still time to submit your applications and nominations in all categories— the deadline is 1 September!

To give you some inspiration for what’s possible in open science, Mike Fell has given us an update on the work that he and Gesche have done since receiving their award last year:

In autumn last year, we were surprised and really happy to hear we’d received the first UCL Open Scholarship Awards. Even more so when we heard at the ceremony about the great projects that others at UCL are doing in this space.

The award was for work we’d done (together with PhD colleague Nicole Watson) to improve transparency, reproducibility, and quality (TReQ) or research in applied multidisciplinary areas like energy. This included producing videos, writing papers, and delivering teaching and related resources.

Of course, it’s nice for initiatives you’ve been involved in to be recognized. But even better have been some of the doors this recognition has helped to open. Shortly after getting the award, we were invited to write an opinion piece for PLOS Climate on the role of open science in addressing the climate crisis. We also engaged with leadership at the Center for Open Science.

More broadly – although it’s always hard to draw direct connections – we feel the award has had career benefits. Gesche was recently appointed Professor of Environment & Human Health at University of Exeter, and Director the European Centre for Environment and Human Health. As well as highlighting her work on open science, and the award, in her application, this now provides an opportunity to spread the work further beyond the bounds of UCL and our existing research projects.

There’s still a lot to do, however. While teaching about open science is now a standard part of the curriculum for graduate students in our UCL department (and Gesche planning this for the ECEHH too), we don’t have a sense that this is common in energy research, other applied research fields, and education more broadly. It’s still quite rare to see tools like pre-analysis plans, reporting guidelines, and even preprints employed in energy research.

A new research centre we are both involved in, the UKRI Energy Demand Research Centre, has been up and running for a year, and with lots of the setup stage now complete and staff in place, we hope to pick up a strand of work in this area. Gesche is the data champion for the Equity theme of that centre. The new focus must be on how to better socialize open research practices and make them more a part of the culture of doing energy research. We look forward to continuing to work with UCL Open Science in achieving that goal.

Get involved!

The UCL Office for Open Science and Scholarship invites you to contribute to the open science and scholarship movement. Join our mailing list, and follow us on X, formerly Twitter and LinkedIn, to stay connected for updates, events, and opportunities.

Last month, we hosted our 4th UCL Open Science Conference! This year, we focused inward to showcase the innovative and collaborative work of our UCL researchers in our first UCL community-centered conference. We were excited to present a strong lineup of speakers, projects, and posters dedicated to advancing open science and scholarship. The conference was a great success, with nearly 80 registrants and an engaged online audience.

If you missed any sessions or want to revisit the presentations, you can find highlights, recordings, and posters from the event below.

Session 1 – Celebrating Our Open Researchers

The conference began with a celebration of the inaugural winners of the Open Science & Scholarship Awards, recognizing researchers who have significantly contributed to open science. This session also opened nominations for next year’s awards.

Access the full recording of the session 1 on MediaCentral.

Session 2: Policies and Practice

Katherine Welch introduced an innovative approach to policy development through collaborative mosaic-making. Ilan Kelman discussed the ethical limits of open science. He reminded us of the challenges and considerations when opening up research and data to the public. David Perez Suarez introduced the concept of an Open Source Programme Office (OSPO) at UCL and, with Sam Ahern, showcased the Centre of Advanced Research Computing’s unique approach to creating and sharing open educational resources.

Access the full recording of the session 2 on MediaCentral.

Session 3: Enabling Open Science and Scholarship at UCL

This session introduced new and updated services and systems at UCL designed to support open science and scholarship. Highlights included UCL Profiles, Open Science Case Studies, the UCL Press Open Textbooks Project, UCL Citizen Science Academy, and the Open@UCL Newsletter.

Access the full recording of the session 3 on MediaCentral.

Session 4: Research Projects and Collaborations

This session featured presentations on cutting-edge research projects and collaborations transforming scholarly communication and advancing scientific integrity. Klaus Abels discussed the journey of flipping a subscription journal to diamond open-access. Banaz Jalil and Michael Heinrich presented the ConPhyMP guidelines for chemical analysis of medicinal plant extracts, improving healthcare research. Francisco Duran explored social and cultural barriers to data sharing and the role of identity and epistemic virtues in creating transparent and equitable research environments.

Access the full recording of the session 4 on Media Central.

Posters and Networking:

We also hosted a Poster Session and Networking event where attendees explored a variety of posters showcasing ongoing research across UCL’s disciplines, accompanied by drinks and snacks. This interactive session provided a platform for researchers to present their work, exchange ideas, and foster collaborations within and beyond the UCL community.

Participants engaged directly with presenters, learning about research findings and discussing potential synergies for future projects. Themes covered by the posters included innovative approaches to public engagement by UCL’s Institute of Global Prosperity and Citizen Science Academy, as well as discussions on the balance between open access and data security in the digital age.

Explore all the posters presented at the UCL Open Science Conference 2024 on the UCL Research Data Repository. This collection is under construction and will continue to grow.

Reminder for Attendees – Feedback

For those who attended, please take a minute to complete our feedback form. Your input is very important to improve future conferences. We would appreciate your thoughts and suggestions.

A Huge Thank You!

Thank you to everyone who joined us for the UCL Open Science Conference 2024. Your participation and enthusiasm made this event a great success. We appreciate your commitment to advancing open science and scholarship across UCL and beyond, and we look forward to seeing the impact of your work in the years to come.

Please watch the sessions and share your feedback with us. Your insights are invaluable in shaping future events and supporting the open science community.

We look forward to seeing you at next year’s conference!

Guest post by James A J Wilson, Head of Research Data in Advance Research Computing at UCL, in celebration of International Love Data Week 2024.

A Research Data Steward is a relatively recent term for someone undertaking a range of jobs that have already been undertaken for some time, albeit sometimes without due appreciation. If you have helped researchers manage their data – helping with data management plans, adding metadata, providing services for data hosting, preparing datasets for analysis, scripting data transformations, readying data for sharing or publication, or engaging in long-term data preservation and curation – you may have unwittingly been a data steward.

As the importance of data for enabling research reproducibility and transparency becomes more widely recognized, so does the importance of good data stewardship.  In 2016, the European Commission’s publication ‘Realising the European Open Science Cloud’, estimated that, “on average, about 5% of research expenditure should be spent on properly managing and stewarding data”[1]. Whilst the world and UCL are not at that level yet, the importance of managing research data more effectively has not passed the university by.

Advanced Research Computing (ARC) has established four different Research Technology professions. Besides our Research Software Engineers (who already have more than a decade of experience behind them at UCL) there are now groups of Research Infrastructure Developers, Data Scientists, and Data Stewards. None of the roles that the teams take on are new, but there are advantages to treating the people who make up those professions as members of a profession, rather than assorted and frequently rather isolated postdocs. Firstly, we now have a pool of people who can exchange experiences, impart knowledge to one another, and lend each other a bit of moral support. Secondly, it enables the development of focused career paths. No longer do research technology professionals need to kick their heels working on barely recognized tasks until they get an opportunity to break into the research big time. Their importance is recognized and can be rewarded.

There are now more than a dozen professional research data stewards in ARC. Team members develop and support services, collaborate with research teams from other departments to ensure that their data is as well managed and as FAIR as possible (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable), and undertake research themselves. Examples of research projects include work with eChild; preparing data packs for the Medical Research Council Clinical Trials Unit (MRC CTU); supplying the MAESaM and CAAL archaeology projects with geospatial data and mapping software expertise and helping to prepare bids across a range of disciplines. Some projects are more infrastructure based, such as the EU-funded DICE project to establish services for data processing pipelines. Other work is focused on improving UCL’s services and their coordination, such as the ‘3^rd-party data’ project, which seeks to help researchers obtain data from other organisations and enable broader awareness of and access to that data. We’re also working with departments, helping them migrate data to centrally managed storage.

The ARC Research Data Stewards are not the only people engaged in data stewardship at UCL. Many people across different projects and teams are involved in aspects of data stewardship. Most obviously, our close colleagues in UCL Library’s Research Data Management team, but also those working on services to provide particular datasets or metadata, plus all those on research contracts working away at polishing and processing data in labs, libraries, and offices across Bloomsbury and beyond. We will shortly begin forming a Data Stewardship Community of Practice, to create a forum where everyone involved in this important work can exchange ideas and start to form a sense of what really constitutes ‘best practice’.

If you are based at UCL and are potentially interested in working with us, drop us a line at researchdata-support@ucl.ac.uk.

Get involved!

The UCL Office for Open Science and Scholarship invites you to contribute to the open science and scholarship movement. Stay connected for updates, events, and opportunities. Follow us on X, formerly Twitter, and join our mailing list to be part of the conversation!

[1] European Commission, Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, Realising the European open science cloud – First report and recommendations of the Commission high level expert group on the European open science cloud, Publications Office, 2016, https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2777/940154

Guest post by Iona Preston, Research Data Support Officer.

Next week (February 12-16), we’re excited to be celebrating International Love Data Week. We’ll be looking at how data is shared and reused within our UCL and academic community, highlighting the support available across UCL for these initiatives. This year’s theme, “My Kind of Data,” focuses on data equity, inclusion, and disciplinary communities. We’ll be blogging and posting on X throughout the week, so please join us to learn more.

Here’s a sneak preview of what’s coming up:

• Did you know the Research Data Management team can review your data management plan and support you in publishing your data in our Research Data Repository? Find out more about our last year in review with Christiana McMahon, Research Data Support Officer.
• Have you met any members of our Data Stewards team? James Wilson, Head of Research Data Services, will be explaining how you can collaborate with them to streamline the process of managing and preserving your data, thereby supporting reproducibility and transparency in your research.
• Are you seeking tools to support best practices in data management for your specific discipline? We have some suggestions from Iona Preston, Research Data Support Officer.
• You may have heard of FAIR data – but what does that mean in practice? Join Research Data Steward Shipra Suman and Senior Research Data Steward Victor Olago as they discuss projects where they’ve supported making data FAIR.
• And, finally, to round off the week, Senior Research Data Steward Michelle Harricharan will talk about a project the Data Stewards are carrying out to better support UCL researchers in accessing and managing external datasets.

We look forward to engaging with you throughout the week and hope you enjoy learning more about research data at UCL.

And get involved!

The UCL Office for Open Science and Scholarship invites you to contribute to the open science and scholarship movement. Stay connected for updates, events, and opportunities. Follow us on X, formerly Twitter, and join our mailing list to be part of the conversation!

Following our blog post last week, where we reflected on the achievements of 2023, this week we wanted to look forward and share our plans for 2024. From championing open research practices to fostering inclusivity, transparency, and collaboration, the UCL Office for Open Science Scholarship (OOSS) teams are gearing up for an exciting new year!

OOSS 2024 Initiatives:

Annual Conference: Anticipate the return of the UCL Open Science Conference after Easter, promising an exciting and engaging program. Stay tuned for details as we continue to drive conversations on open science, sustainability, and inclusivity in research practices.

Authorship Overview: Building on the success of the 2023 conference, OOSS is preparing to release an overview of best practices in authorship. The focus on equity in authorship during a dedicated workshop last year has further contributed to the development of a UCL statement on Authorship, showcasing our commitment to fostering fair and inclusive authorship practices.

UCL Open Research Train the Trainer Course: OOSS proudly supports the UCL Open Research Train the Trainer course, a key part of the UKRN Open Research Programme. This course aims to empower participants with the knowledge and skills needed to champion open research practices, contributing to the broader mission of advancing openness in academia and beyond.

Open Science Website Overhaul: Over the summer, the office has ambitious plans for an overhaul of the Open Science website. This initiative aims to enhance user experience and engagement. As part of this revamp, case studies from the community will be gathered, providing an opportunity for voices within UCL to contribute to the narrative of open science. Watch out this space!

Research Data Team:

Love Data Week 2024: In February 2024, the Research Data Team will celebrate Love Data Week, a dedicated time to showcase impactful data from the academic community underscoring the team’s commitment to recognising the value of open data practices and promoting its significance in research. Join us!

Training and Review Services: The Research Data Team is dedicated to enhancing accessibility in 2024. One of the key initiatives involves the redesign of online training for Writing Data Management Plan providing a more user-friendly experience for researchers to access resources and guidance efficiently. Additionally, throughout the year, the team will offer training sessions and review services on data management plans. This ongoing support ensures that researchers align with funders’ criteria and best practices, contributing to the overall improvement of data management within the UCL community.

Best Practice Guidance for Metadata Records: An important focus next year will be the development of best practice guidance for creating high-quality metadata records. These records play an essential role in enhancing the findability and reusability of research data. To facilitate this, the team is creating user-friendly video guides, making it easier for researchers to grasp the essentials of metadata creation and promoting adherence to best practices.

Citizen Science Team:

Community Building: The Citizen Science Team at OOSS is committed to community building in 2024. The focus is on expanding the UCL Citizen Science community, fostering connections among researchers and communities passionate about citizen science initiatives. A landmark initiative will be the hosting of the inaugural UCL Citizen Science Community event. This event provides a platform for community members to come together, share experiences, and explore collaborative opportunities. Stay tuned and participate!

Principles for UCL Citizen Science Projects: The Citizen Science Team recognizes the importance of establishing clear principles for UCL Citizen Science projects. In 2024, efforts are underway to articulate these principles, providing a framework that ensures the ethical, inclusive, and impactful execution of citizen science initiatives. These principles aim to guide project leaders, participants, and collaborators in creating meaningful contributions to both research and public engagement.

Establishing a Citizen Science Support Service: To further support the UCL community’s engagement with citizen science, the team is working on establishing a dedicated Citizen Science Support Service. This service will serve as a central hub for resources, guidance, and assistance related to citizen science projects. The team is also compiling an enhanced list of support resources for citizen science. This will include a diverse range of materials, from guidelines and toolkits to success stories and best practice examples. By consolidating these resources, the team intends to provide a valuable repository to guide researchers and community members involved in citizen science projects. While this is underway, we encourage you to explore the available resources and training materials on our website!

Open Access:

Support and Funding for Long-Form Outputs: In 2024, the Open Access Team is committed to extending support and funding to authors working on long-form outputs, such as monographs, book chapters, and edited collections. Recognizing the importance of diverse and open scholarly contributions, this initiative aims to facilitate open access publishing for a broader range of academic works. UCL authors are encouraged to apply for funding to cover the associated publishing costs, promoting accessibility and dissemination of scholarly knowledge.

Improving Profiles and RPS for Enhanced Accessibility: The Open Access Team is dedicated to enhancing the Profiles platform and Research Publications Service (RPS) in 2024. Plans include the development of department and group pages within these platforms, fostering a more comprehensive and accessible presentation of academic profiles, publications, and collaborative efforts. These enhancements contribute to the overall visibility of UCL research outputs and strengthen the university’s commitment to showcasing the diverse impactful work of its academic community.

Safeguarding Authors’ Rights for Open Availability: An active investigation into a UCL Rights Retention policy is underway, reflecting the Open Access Team’s commitment to safeguarding authors’ rights. This policy aims to support authors by allowing them to retain the rights to make their outputs openly available. By exploring and implementing this policy, the team seeks to align UCL with practices that prioritise authors’ control over the accessibility of their scholarly works. This initiative is an important step towards ensuring that the academic community retains agency in sharing their contributions openly.

Research Bibliometrics Team:

New LibGuide for Metrics Tools: In 2024, the Research Bibliometrics Team is focused on supporting researchers with the knowledge and tools needed to navigate the landscape of research impact metrics. A new LibGuides is underway, focusing on key metrics tools, including InCites, Altmetric, and Overton. This comprehensive resource will serve as a guide for researchers, offering in-depth information on harnessing these tools to assess the impact and visibility of their scholarly work.

Training for Overton: As part of the team’s commitment to enhancing research impact assessment, special attention will be given to Overton. The Research Bibliometrics Team plans to roll out further training sessions specifically designed to harness the potential of the platform as a discovery and research metrics tool. This will provide researchers with skills and understanding enabling them to use Overton effectively for evaluating the broader impact of their research in the academic landscape.

Get Involved!

As we embark on 2024, the UCL Office for Open Science and Scholarship invites you to be a part of the open science and scholarship movement. Whether you are a researcher, student, or simply curious about the future of academia, your engagement can contribute to a more transparent, collaborative, and innovative research landscape. Stay connected for updates, events, and opportunities. Follow us on X, formerly Twitter, and join our mailing list to be a part of the open science and scholarship conversation at UCL!

As we step into a new year, let’s reflect on the collective achievements and milestones of the UCL Office for Open Science & Scholarship (OOSS) and our associated teams in 2023. This year witnessed the growth and integration of OOSS within the institutional culture of UCL, offering pivotal support to academic staff, researchers, and students. From the successful return to in-person events with our annual conference to pioneering initiatives and awards, let’s revisit the highlights that shaped our work last year!

Annual Conference & Open Access Celebrations

In April 2023, we successfully organized our annual conference, marking our first return to in-person events. Themed Open Science and the Case for Social Justice, the conference fostered important discussions on sustainability in research practices, addressing critical issues such as gender, language, authorship, and geographical disparities. Recordings of these insightful discussions are available. Notably, a workshop during the conference addressed equity in authorship, contributing to a forthcoming UCL statement on Authorship. Additionally, October saw the celebration of our Open Access week, themed Community over Commercialisation. This included a series of blog posts, activities, and discussions, emphasizing equitable access to a wide range of works.

Honouring Excellence: Inaugural Open Science and Scholarship Awards:

Another highlight was the inaugural Open Science and Scholarship Awards at UCL in collaboration with the UK Reproducibility Network. These awards aimed to recognize and celebrate the efforts of UCL students and staff who champion open science practices. Learn more about the winners and their innovative work!

Open Access: Profiles & Transformative Agreements

The Open Access Team played a pivotal role in ensuring the open availability of UCL academics’ research outputs throughout 2023. A major achievement was the successful introduction of the new Profiles platform, replacing the outdated IRIS. Profiles acts as UCL’s public search and discovery tool, significantly improving the visibility of academic profiles, publication lists, research and teaching activities, and collaborations with UCL colleagues. The team also facilitated the Gold open access publication of 3,383 papers in 2023, contributing to the thriving UCL Discovery with over 44 million downloads. The repository now boasts over 166,000 open access items, including 23,400 theses, with over 18,500 uploads in the preceding twelve months.

Aligned with the UKRI and Wellcome open access policies, the Open Access Team provided robust support for UCL researchers. This included facilitating compliance through publishing in fully open access journals, making use of transformative agreements with publishers encompassing over 12,000 journals, and using funders’ language to secure the right to make accepted manuscripts freely accessible upon publication under the CC BY license.

Research Data: Enhancing Support to Researchers

The Research Data team introduced a more user-friendly version of the UCL Research Data Repository, incorporating enhanced features and a comprehensive user manual. The repository saw a significant influx of 193 new items, including data sets, media items, and software applications. Engaging with researchers, the team provided substantial assistance, reviewing 32 data management plans and conducting successful training sessions for 61 researchers. Additionally, the team expanded and refined frequently asked questions (FAQs) for better user support.

Citizen Science: New website and initiatives

The Citizen Science Team expanded its reach and impact in 2023 through new Citizen Science website pages and an enhanced list of citizen science projects at UCL, fostering a greater understanding of the breadth of such initiatives across the university. The creation of a unifying definition of citizen science at UCL, accompanied by an inclusive word cloud, provided clarity on the diverse subject areas and disciplines covered by citizen science projects.

The development of the UCL Citizen Science Certificate, in collaboration with the UCL Citizen Science Academy, marked a significant milestone and underscored our commitment to fostering collaborative initiatives. A new Citizen Science community on MS Teams was launched, providing a dedicated space for discussions and updates. Get involved!

Bibliometrics: Measuring Research Impact

The Bibliometrics Team, in collaboration with the Open Access Team, played a crucial role in implementing the new Profiles system. Their research confirmed the citation advantage associated with open access practices. After a detailed analysis of UCL publications over recent years, the study demonstrated that open access materials are utilised and cited more extensively, and confirmed the place of the institution as leading organisation in making material available in open access.

Additionally, the team introduced new courses, including an introduction to altmetrics and the Overton database, aiming to assess the broader impact of published research in the wider world and cover policy documents and official documents. Another training provided an overview of understanding and demonstrating research impact, further supporting UCL’s researchers. The Bibliometrics Team’s dedication to understanding and demonstrating research impact through various courses and collaborations reinforced UCL’s position as a leader in research output accessibility.

Stay connected and Informed

The combined efforts of OOSS teams in 2023 exemplify UCL’s commitment to open and accessible research practices across diverse disciplines. As we move forward, the OOSS remains dedicated to fostering an inclusive culture of open science and scholarship, shaping a transformative academic environment at UCL.

Join us in 2024 for updates and insights, and follow us on X, formerly Twitter, to find out more about open science and scholarship at UCL!