We are delighted to be able to finally launch the full programme for the Open Science & Scholarship Festival 2025 in collaboration with LSE and the Francis Crick Institute.

The festival will run from the 2-6th of June and includes and exciting array of sessions including creative workshops, informal networking, case studies, online and in person panel discussions and technology demonstrations.

Download the full programme or keep scrolling for all the booking links below!

Monday 2 June

Open Methods with Protocols.io

In person – Francis Crick Institute
9.15am-12noon

This workshop at the Open Science & Scholarship Festival 2025 will introduce you to the benefits of publishing your methods and protocols as a separate & open access output. The workshop is open to all, but may be of particular interest to scientific lab researchers and staff: PGRs, Postdoc, Research Assistants, Technicians etc.

The session will include:

• General principles of Open Methods: Who, What, When, Why?
• An introduction to Protocols.io as a way of publishing your methods and protocols
• A workshop with Protocols.io where you can try out the system and get immediate answers to your questions from the experts.

Register your place

Creativity in research and engagement – In Person

In person – UCL East campus
2-4pm

A session of making, sharing and storytelling. Speakers from across UCL share how they use creative methods to enrich their research, engage with people, and share their learning. Join us to discuss these methods, the benefits of creativity, and try creating a visual output based on your own work.

Register your place

Tuesday 3 June

Co-producing research with Special Collections: Prejudice and Power case study

Online only
10-11.30am

Join UCL Special Collections for a session exploring co-creation as a tool to engage with rare book and archive collections.
This session will focus on the practitioner experience of collaborating with communities using rare collections. The core example will be the recent Prejudice in Power project, that consisted
of a range of co-creation, community and academic initiatives that focussed on our holdings to respond to the university’s historic role in promoting eugenics. We will also discuss wider co-creation activity in UCL Special Collections, the lessons we have learnt and how we are embedding them into future practice.

Register your place

Wednesday 4 June

Should reproducibility be the aim for open qualitative research? Researchers’ perspectives

Hybrid: LSE campus and Online
10-11am

Reproducibility has been touted among quantitative researchers as a necessary step to make studies rigorous. To determine reproducibility, whether the same analyses of the same data produce the same results, the raw data and code must be accessible to other researchers. Qualitative researchers have also begun to consider making their data open too. However, where the analyses of these data do not involve quantification and statistical analysis, it is difficult to see how such analysis processes could be reproducible.

Furthermore, for researchers in fields where cultural knowledge plays a key role in the analysis of qualitative data, openness of such data may invite misrepresentation by re-use of the data by researchers unfamiliar with the cultural and social context in which it was produced. This event asks whether reproducibility should be the aim for open qualitative data, and if not, why should researchers make their qualitative data open and what are the other methods used to establish rigour and integrity in research?

Co-Chairs:

• Dr Matteo Galizzi, Associate Professor of Behavioural Science, Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, LSE
• Dr Sandy Schumann, Lecturer in Security and Crime Science, Dept of Security and Crime Science, University College London

Panel:

• Kirsty Wallis, Head of Research Liaison, Office for Open Science and Scholarship; and PhD Student, University College London
• Dr Annayah Prosser, Assistant Professor, Centre for Business, Organisations and Society (CBOS), University of Bath

• Dr Madeleine Pownall, Associate Professor, School of Psychology, University of Leeds

• Dr Matthew Hanchard, Research Fellow, School of Sociological Studies, Politics and International Relations, University of Sheffield

Register your place

How open is possible, how closed is necessary? Navigating data sharing whilst working with personal data

Hybrid: UCL Bloomsbury and Online
1 – 2pm

In the interests of transparency and research integrity, researchers are encouraged to open up more of their research process, including sharing data. However, for researchers working with personal data, including interview and medical data, there are important considerations for sharing. This event will bring together researchers from a range of disciplines to share their experiences and strategies for open research when working with personal data.

The panel will discuss if and how this type of data can be made openly available, the balance between the work involved to anonymise data and benefits to research and society for making it available, and consider the legal frameworks researchers are working within in the UK.

Chair:

Dr Douglas Gray, Head of Human Research Governance, the Francis Crick Institute

Panel:

• Dr Stella Tsoli, Research Officer, LSE Health Inequalities Lab
• Professor Gabriella Vigliocco, Professor of Psychology, Department of Psychology, UCL

Register your place

Thursday 5 June

Open Research in the Age of Populism

Online only
4-5pm

Political shifts around the world, from the Trump administration in the US to Orban’s government in Hungary, are making it more important than ever to have reliable research freely available. However, these governments are also making it more risky to be a researcher openly sharing the results of research in many countries and disciplines. Alongside the political censorship of research in some countries there are also changes to research funding, research being misrepresented and used to spread misinformation online, and concerns about the stability of open research infrastructure which is funded by the state. In these circumstances we will consider the value of open knowledge, the responsibilities of individual researchers and institutions to be open and how you can protect yourself when making your research openly available?

Chair:
Jason Mckenzie Alexander, Professor of Philosophy at LSE and author of The Open Society as an Enemy

Panel:

• Martin Eve is Professor of Literature, Technology and Publishing at Birkbeck, University of London and Technical Lead of Knowledge Commons at MESH Research, Michigan State University, and co-founder of the non-profit open access journals publisher, Open Library of the Humanities.
• Frances Pinter is a Visiting Fellow at LSE and has had an impressive career in publishing latterly focused on open access publishing.
• Sara Rouhi has a long career in publishing and is a co-founder of the Declaration to Defend Research Against US Government Censorship 

Register your place

Friday 6 June

Authorship in the era of AI

Online only

2-4pm 

With the rapid growth of AI tools over the past three years, there has been a corresponding rise in the number of academics and students using them in their own writing. While it is generally agreed that we still expect people to be the “authors” of their work, deciding how to interpret that is often a nuanced and subjective decision by the writer. This panel discussion will look at how we think about “authorship” for AI-assisted writing – what are these tools used for in different contexts? Where might readers and publishers draw their own lines as to what is still someone’s own work? And how might we see this develop over time?

Panel:

• Ayanna Prevatt-Goldstein – Head of the Academic Communications Centre at UCL
• Rachel Safer – Executive Publisher for Ethics & Integrity at OUP and a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics
• Dhara Snowden – Head of the textbooks program at UCL Press

Register your place

The library teams at LSE and the Francis Crick institute and the UCL Office for Open Science & Scholarship are proud to announce the first collaborative Open Science & Scholarship Festival in London. 

The festival will be taking place from 2-6 of June and will include a mixture of in person and hybrid events across all three institutions as well as a range of sessions purely held online. We have an exciting programme in development for you, including:

• Open Research in the Age of Populism
  Political shifts around the world, from the Trump administration in the US to Meloni’s government in Italy, are making it more important than ever to have reliable research freely available. However, these governments are also making it more risky to be a researcher openly sharing the results of research in many countries and disciplines. Alongside the political censorship of research in some countries there are also changes to research funding, research being misrepresented and used to spread misinformation online, and concerns about the stability of open research infrastructure which is funded by the state. In these circumstances we will consider the value of open knowledge, the responsibilities of individual researchers and institutions to be open and how you can protect yourself when making your research openly available?
• How open is possible, how closed is necessary? Navigating data sharing whilst working with personal data
  In the interests of transparency and research integrity, researchers are encouraged to open up more of their research process, including sharing data. However, for researchers working with personal data, including interview and medical data, there are important considerations for sharing. This event will bring together researchers from a range of disciplines to share their experiences and strategies for open research when working with personal data.
  The panel will discuss if and how this type of data can be made openly available, the balance between the work involved to anonymise data and benefits to research and society for making it available, and consider the legal frameworks researchers are working within in the UK.
• Authorship in the era of AI 
  With the rapid growth of AI tools over the past three years, there has been a corresponding rise in the number of academics and students using them in their own writing. While it is generally agreed that we still expect people to be the “authors” of their work, deciding how to interpret that is often a nuanced and subjective decision by the writer. This panel discussion will look at how we think about “authorship” for AI-assisted writing – what are these tools used for in different contexts? Where might readers and publishers draw their own lines as to what is still someone’s own work? And how might we see this develop over time?
• Creativity in research and engagement
  A session of making, sharing and storytelling. Speakers from across UCL share how they use creative methods to enrich their research, engage with people, and share their learning. Join us to discuss these methods, the benefits of creativity, and try creating a visual output based on your own work.   
  
• Professionalising data, software, and infrastructure support to transform open science
  Workshop in development where researchers and research technology professionals can come together to discuss challenges and opportunities to support research. This session will focus on skills and training needed in creating a culture of Open Science.
• Open Methods with Protocols.io
  Join the Francis Crick Institute and Protocols.io to talk about making your lab protocols and article methods sections open access. Improve replicability, re-use and gain credit for all those hours you spent at the bench. The session is open to all and will involve discussions of the value of open protocols alongside hands on training on how to use the protocols.io platform.
• Should reproducibility be the aim for open qualitative research? Researchers’ perspectives
  Reproducibility has been touted among quantitative researchers as a necessary step to make studies rigorous. To determine reproducibility, whether the same analyses of the same data produce the same results, the raw data and code must be accessible to other researchers. Qualitative researchers have also begun to consider making their data open too. However, where the analyses of these data do not involve quantification and statistical analysis, it is difficult to see how such analysis processes could be reproducible. Furthermore, for researchers in fields where cultural knowledge plays a key role in the analysis of qualitative data, openness of such data may invite misrepresentation by re-use of the data by researchers unfamiliar with the cultural and social context in which it was produced.  This event asks whether reproducibility should be the aim for open qualitative data, and if not, why should researchers make their qualitative data open and what are the other methods used to establish rigour and integrity in research? 

We are also developing sessions about:

• The Big Deal for Diamond Journals
• A networking coffee morning
• Openness and Engagement with Special Collections and Archives

More information will be shared and booking will be available as soon as we can, so watch this space and follow us on BlueSky and LinkedIn for updates!

Registrations are now open for UCL’s first Replication Games, organised by the Office for Open Science & Scholarship and UCL’s UKRN local network chapter. The event will be run by the Institute for Replication (I4R), and it is supported by a Research Culture Seed Grant.

The Replication Games is a one-day event that brings together researchers to collaborate on reproducing and replicating papers published in highly regarded journals. Researchers participating in the Replication Games will join a small team of 3-5 members with similar research interests. Teams verify the reproducibility of a paper using its replication package. They may conduct sensitivity analysis, employing different procedures than the original investigators.  Teams may also recode the study using the raw or intermediate data or implement novel analyses with new data. More information can be found on I4R’s Website.

Teams will be guided in all activities by Derek Mikola, an experienced facilitator from the I4R. After the event, teams are encouraged to document their work in a report that will be published on the website of the I4R. Participants are also eligible to be granted co-authorship in a meta-paper that combines a large number of replications.

This event takes place in person. Lunch and afternoon snacks are provided.

Who are we inviting to register?

Registration is on a ‘first come, first serve’ basis. We invite MRes students, doctoral students and researchers, post-docs, and faculty members at UCL to apply. Although students and scholars from all disciplines can apply, we hope to attract especially those working in the social sciences and humanities.

Participants must be confident using at least one of the following: R, Python, Stata, or Matlab.

Papers available for replication are listed on the I4R website. Prospective participants are asked to review this list to ensure that at least one paper aligns with their research interests.

How to apply?

Please complete this short form: https://forms.office.com/e/WEUUKH2BvA

Timeline and Procedure

• 15 March 25 – registrations close
• 31 March 25 – notification of outcomes and teams
• 7 April 25,  1pm – Mandatory Teams call with the I4R (online)
• 25 April 25, 9am-5pm – Replication Games (at UCL’s Bloomsbury Campus)

Please note that participants are expected to attend the full day.

Contact

If you have any questions, please contact Sandy Schumann (s.schumann@ucl.ac.uk)

In true UCL tradition, we kickstart the week with the annual Research Data Management review so take a look at our poster and see what we’ve been doing in the Library!

Post provided by Sheetal Saujani, Citizen Science Support Officer.

This week’s UCL Citizen Science Community Event brought researchers, academics, students and staff from across UCL together to celebrate citizen science and participatory research. The slides and programme are available online so that everyone can follow up with the references.

The morning was packed with engaging talks and workshops, highlighting unique perspectives and approaches to citizen science. From discussions about an innovative mapping tool and the role of the UCL Urban Room in preserving local memories to hands-on workshops that sparked new ideas, the event demonstrated the diversity and potential of citizen-led research. One highlight was seeing the genuine passion from the presenters, whose enthusiasm was contagious.

At the start of the event, the Citizen Science team at the Office for Science and Scholarship and the UCL Co-Production and Public Engagement teams showcased their services and support including training, resources and advice. Their dedication to supporting citizen science and public engagement left everyone excited and ready to get involved. Both teams are eager to hear from the UCL community about their projects and the support they may need, so they encourage everyone to get in touch.

We also heard from Marcos Moreu and Fabien Moustard from the Extreme Citizen Science Research Group (ExCites) about a new tool called Kapta that they have been involved in the design for, allowing mapping data to be collected simply using WhatsApp, allowing small or remote communities to collect data without extensive knowledge or additional training. More information can be found by looking at the slides above or on Kapta.earth.

Professor Muki Haklay delved into the topic of skills and competencies in citizen science, exploring how competency frameworks define the skills, knowledge, and values needed for success in this field. His talk highlighted frameworks like the UCL Academic Careers Framework, Vitae’s Researcher Development Framework, and ECS Academy’s Research Competencies framework, which outline progression paths, accreditation standards, and expectations at foundational to expert levels. These frameworks not only codify what individuals need to know but also guide learning, recruitment, and career development. A live Mentimeter poll engaged attendees, inviting their perspectives on key skills, competencies and areas for development, sparking conversations about advancing expertise in citizen science.

Dr Izzy Bishop led an interactive session where participants contributed their thoughts on the various elements required to include citizen science in a project proposal. The flipchart became a dynamic map, highlighting key areas such as co-design, engagement, training, communications, technology, volunteer management, data analysis, and impact. Each participant helped to identify UCL’s expertise and interest in these areas, promoting collaboration and a shared understanding.

We also discussed strategies for applying for and sustaining project funding, with a focus on Horizon Europe opportunities. Professor Muki Haklay provided valuable insights on successfully navigating the application process and securing support for citizen science initiatives.

Hearing Jo Baines discuss UCL’s Urban Room, and the innovative Memory Workshop was truly inspiring. These projects showcase the power of engaging communities, including underrepresented groups, to explore shared histories and reimagine urban spaces. The Memory Workshop and Memory Bike demonstrate citizen science in action, amplifying diverse voices, and uncovering new insights through creative, participatory research. By equipping participants with skills and tools that extend beyond the projects, they highlight how citizen science connects people and ideas to drive meaningful change.

We were captivated by voices from two remarkable projects Flotilla by Melanie Manchot and Breaking Waves, which highlight the power of art and storytelling to link communities and preserve collective memory. Both reflect the spirit of citizen science by fostering connections and inspiring new perspectives. The links to experience these projects for yourself are available in the slides linked above.

Before the event closed, there was a fun and relaxed speed networking session. The vibrant spirit of session encouraged meaningful conversations and connections, reminding us of the value of sharing knowledge and experiences across disciplines and communities!

A huge thank you to all the speakers, workshop leaders, and participants who made the event so worthwhile. We hope everyone left as inspired as we did to continue championing citizen science!

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.