Guest post by Sheetal Saujani, Citizen Science Coordinator, and Christiana McMahon, Research Data Support Officer

This year’s theme for International Open Access Week 2025, “Who Owns Our Knowledge?”, asks us to reflect on how knowledge is created, shared, and controlled, and whose voices are included in that process. It’s a question that aligns closely with UCL’s approach to citizen science, which promotes openness, collaboration and equity in research.

Citizen science provides a powerful lens to examine how knowledge is co-produced with communities. It recognises that valuable knowledge comes not only from academic institutions but also but also from lived experience, community knowledge, and shared exploration.

Through initiatives like the UCL Citizen Science Academy and UCL Citizen Science Certificate, we support researchers and project leads to work in partnership with the public, enabling people from all backgrounds to take part in research that matters to them. These programmes are designed to be inclusive and hands-on, helping to build confidence, skills and shared responsibility.

For those of us working in academia, this theme reminds us that open access isn’t just about making papers free to read – it’s about changing how research is produced. Involving citizen scientists in forming research questions, collecting data, and interpreting findings opens up the research process itself, not just access to its outputs.

The Principles for Citizen Science at UCL emphasise respectful partnerships, transparency, and fair recognition. They reflect our belief that citizen scientists are co-creators whose insights – rooted in everyday experience and local knowledge – bring depth and relevance to academic work.

In particular, the fifth principle for Citizen Science at UCL states that CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance should be considered when working with marginalised communities and Indigenous groups. These principles are: Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, and Ethics, which remind researchers that creating knowledge from Indigenous data must be to the benefit of Indigenous Peoples, nations and communities. These Principles support Indigenous Peoples in establishing more control over their data and its use in research. The Research Data Management Team encourage staff and students to engage with the CARE Principles in addition to the FAIR principles.

So, who owns our knowledge? At UCL, we believe the answer should be: everyone. Through citizen science and its principles, we’re building a future where knowledge is created collectively, shared responsibly and made openly accessible – because it belongs to the communities that help shape it.

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.

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Guest post by Catherine Sharp, Head of Open Access Services at UCL

“Who Owns Our Knowledge?”, the theme of this year’s International Open Access Week, asks how “communities can reassert control over the knowledge they produce”. With commercial publishers continuing to monetise academic content through ever-increasing subscription and open access fees – the costs of so-called “transformative” agreements to UK HEIs is around £140m – and to report substantial and growing profit margins, while at the same time attempting to restrict authors’ rights in their own work, this remains a challenge for all HEIs. Against this background, the UK’s rights retention movement is a vital tool in the effort to free academic research and empower authors to use and share their knowledge.

UCL’s Intellectual Property (IP) Policy has long enshrined the principle that UCL staff own the copyright in their own scholarly materials, and that UCL has the right to use them for academic and research purposes. This year, with the introduction of an updated Publications Policy, UCL has joined a number of other universities, including Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial and Manchester, in taking action to assert this right. This is known as rights retention.

In practical terms, this means that from 2026, having notified publishers of UCL’s pre-existing licence, UCL will make the accepted manuscripts of scholarly articles by UCL staff open access without an embargo in UCL Discovery, UCL’s open access repository, under the Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC BY) (unless an alternative licence or exemption is requested). The CC BY licence allows widespread re-use and sharing, and is the licence that research funders, including Wellcome, UKRI, NIHR and EC funders, require.

While UCL will continue to provide opportunities for authors to publish Gold open access through transformative agreements and in fully open access journals, articles that are not Gold open access will also benefit from immediate open access, on publication, in UCL Discovery. This will allow all UCL authors to meet their funders’ (including REF) open access requirements while continuing to publish in their journals of choice, and to benefit from open access through higher impact, increased citations and more collaborations.

The policy also benefits co-authors, and UCL authors are encouraged to let their co-authors know about it and to take advantage of it. Aside from that, authors do not need to take any action other than to upload their accepted manuscripts to RPS, on publication.

We are looking forward to seeing the practical effects of the policy as more UCL research is made available, more freely, than ever before.

 

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Guest post by Christine Daoutis, Copyright Support Officer at UCL

The theme of this year’s International Open Access Week is a question – and a call for collaboration. By addressing ‘who owns our knowledge’, it invites diverse communities to recognise and challenge existing assumptions about how scholarship is created, disseminated and built upon; to recognise power dynamics that shape these assumptions; and to make decisions that best serve the interests of the public and the academic community.

Understanding how copyright frames these assumptions, power dynamics and decisions is essential. In the strictest sense, who ‘owns’ scholarship (perceived as the IP rights in the outcomes of research – publications, research data and any other outputs created in the life of a research project) is, after all, defined by legislation and by the terms of publishing agreements and other contracts. In a broader sense, ‘owning’ can determine the ‘what’, the ‘how’ and the ‘who’ of scholarship in the first place: what is selected to be funded and published? How will the outcomes be disseminated? And crucially, who is able (or not able) to access, understand, benefit from and possibly build on the outcomes of a work? While many of these questions depend on IP rights, other factors (including criteria of research quality and impact, academic freedom, linguistic and cultural barriers to access) also influence how we address them.

Keeping close to this year’s theme, this post will focus on three key approaches related to copyright which should help adopt practices that support open scholarship.

 

1. Understanding authorship and copyright ownership
   To make a work as open as possible, it is first necessary to establish who the rights owner is, as it is the rights owner who has control over reproducing and disseminating the work. It is natural to assume that the author(s) of a work should be its owner(s). However, this is determined by copyright laws and by contract. In the UK, the first owner of a work is its author. However, if the work was created in the course of employment, the employer is the owner unless there is an agreement that says otherwise (CDPA 11). Understanding – and where necessary, negotiating – ownership empowers authors to make their research widely available and reusable. This involves reading and understanding institutional IP policies and the terms of grant agreements, publisher agreements and collaboration/co-production agreements. In terms of publishing, rights retention policies (covered in another post this week) ensure that authors and their institutions keep key rights enabling them to make their research articles immediately available under the terms of an open licence.
2. Addressing authorship and ownership in collaborations
   Moral rights – which include the right to be attributed as the author of a work – are just as important as economic rights when addressing copyright. Deciding who is co-author in a work and in what order they should be credited is essential. Further, contributions to a research project that may or may not also involve direct authorship of a publication should also be established and acknowledged. This includes acknowledging contributions by research participants, citizen science participants and anyone who has played an advisory or supporting role in the research by applying standards such as the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CrediT).
3. Understanding and using open licences
   Open licences, including Creative Commons licences and open source licences, support the dissemination and reuse of a wide range of works. While research funders have requirements around the use of licences (for example, the CC BY licence for research publications) researchers can also apply licences to a broader range materials (educational resources, images, preprints, datasets). Particularly in the age of AI, understanding how licences such as Creative Commons work is important, both for authors and users of scholarly works. Creative Commons are also introducing ‘preference signals’ to support transparency and reciprocity in how scholarly works are used by AI.

Further Support

The UCL copyright service helps you navigate these issues through training, discussion and opportunities to follow and participate in current debates. To engage with copyright at UCL:

• Join one of our sessions, which include addressing copyright in publishing agreements and discussing copyright and open access issues via our Copyright for Humans game.
• Join our UCL Copyright Community Teams channel for discussions, events and opportunities to share and develop your copyright knowledge.
• Contact copyright@ucl.ac.uk for support.

 

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Guest post by Miguel Xochicale, Senior Research Engineer at UCL, leading work on open-source technologies from robotics to AI tools designed to improve healthcare.

In this blog, I would like to reflect on the journey so far, the challenges and rewards of trying to build something meaningful with modest means, and to look ahead with ambition to explore how open-source AI and robotics can help shape the next generation of healthcare.

In October 2023, I was honoured to receive the UCL Open Science & Scholarship Award in the category ‘Professional Services Staff Activities’. This was in recognition of initiating a half-day workshop titled ‘Open-source software for surgical technologies’. I had the privilege of hosting seven distinguished speakers, with an audience of around twenty participants. Hence, that first workshop became the springboard for subsequent events in 2024 and 2025, each growing gradually in terms of co-organisers, speakers, activities, and participants. What started as a small gathering with limited resources and time has begun to take shape as the early foundations of a community that we would like to keep building.

The workshop has grown steadily across 2023, 2024 and 2025. 2023: A half-day workshop with 7 speakers from software engineering and academia, 25 participants, and 4 organisers. 2024: A full-day workshop featuring 10 speakers from academia and industry, 6 posters archived on zenodo, 30 participants, and 3 co-organisers. 2025: A full-day workshop with 13 speakers and 7 panellists from academia, industry and regulatory backgrounds. It included 6 posters, each with a two-page abstract, supported by 6 organisers and 2 volunteers. The event sold out, with all 52 seats filled.

The challenges of leading such workshops require careful planning well in advance, ideally starting a year beforehand. This includes checking the availability and interest of co-organisers, aligning the agenda, and building relationships with new speakers and collaborators from different institutions and industries, thinking that such relationships should extend beyond purely scientific or engineering goals, fostering an environment where people also enjoy working together. In organising such workshops, we were always careful to balance responsibilities so that no one felt overwhelmed.

However, despite these considerations, our most recent workshop was scheduled too tightly, leaving little space for meaningful conversations or questions. From this, we learnt the value of tailoring the workshop to the audience, setting clear aims for the community, and creating win–win situations for everyone involved.

We also recognised that funding and sponsorship are essential. They can help cover costs such as materials (souvenirs, t-shirts, stickers), support for guest speakers, and sponsorship for students from around the world. Just as importantly, they would allow us to be compensated for the time we dedicate to organising these events.

What started as a half-day workshop in 2023 on open-source software for surgical technologies has quickly grown into a movement. By 2024 and 2025, it had developed into full-day workshops, “Healing Through Collaboration: Open-Source Software in Surgical, Biomedical, and AI Technologies”, bringing together co-organisers, speakers, and volunteers dedicated to shaping the future of healthcare with open-source AI and robotics. Each year, the community grows, the insights deepen, and the vision becomes sharper. We are now looking for like-minded collaborators, sponsors, and co-organisers to help drive this effort forward. The momentum is here, together, we can redefine what’s possible for open-source innovation in healthcare. By pooling our skills, resources, and passion, we have the chance not just to advance technology, but to transform patient outcomes and make healthcare more open, accessible, and equitable worldwide.

Get Involved!

Help us continue building a vibrant community, by following our GitHub organisation, starring our repositories including the website for workshops, creating issues or pull requests to improve materials, or contributing to the writing of our white-paper in its GitHub repository.

We are always looking for like-minded people who share our vision of open-source software, hardware and technologies benefiting everyone, everywhere. If you are interested in driving healthcare forward with open source, please get in touch with me or join our Discord server for networking, discussions, and event updates. Recorded talks will also be available on the symposium’s YouTube channel. Many more opportunities to get involved are on the way.

Author Biography:

Miguel Xochicale specialises in medical imaging, MedTech, SurgTech, biomechanics, and clinical translation, and is currently exploring physical AI and embodied AI, with a strong focus on open, accessible innovation. Miguel aims to turn cutting-edge research into real-world solutions with lasting impact. Key areas of his work include: End-to-end real-time AI workflows for surgery; Eye movement analysis for neurological disorders; AI-assisted echocardiography; Sensor fusion combining wearables, EEG devices, and medical imaging; Generative AI for fetal ultrasound scans; Human–robot and child–robot interaction in healthcare and low-resource settings; Physical and embodied AI with multimodal data. He is committed to transforming healthcare through safe, scalable, and open AI solutions. If you are interested in collaborating, whether in research, academic-industry partnerships, or developing AI-powered healthcare software, let’s connect.

 

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.

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Guest Post by Dominic Allington-Smith (Open Access Publications Manager)

UCL Discovery, UCL’s institutional repository, has hit another milestone! UCL Publications Board and the Open Access Team are excited to share that on Friday 18 July, the number of downloads reached the 60 million mark. UCL Discovery is UCL’s open access repository, showcasing and providing access to UCL research outputs from all UCL disciplines. UCL authors currently deposit around 1,100 outputs in the repository every month (average figure for the current academic year).

The 60 millionth download was of the interim report ‘Young people & coastal communities: Local policymaker and practitioner perspectives’ produced by the UCL Coastal Youth Life Chances project led by Professor Avril Keating.  This research project examines how growing up in coastal communities in England impacts the life chances of young people. The report arises from the project team’s conversations with 50 policymakers and practitioners from around England about their perspectives on the challenges facing young adults aged 15-20.

At the time of writing, UCL Discovery hosts over 193,200 open access publications, comprising mostly self-archived copies of research outputs, but also including doctoral and research master’s theses (contemporary submissions and historic digitisations), and books published by UCL Press.  Since the 50 million downloads milestone in June 2024, the following titles are the highest-downloaded publications for each UCL Faculty, Institute or School. This list continues to reflect the diversity across UCL research:

• Faculty of Arts and Humanities: Цифровые гуманитарные науки Хрестоматия / Digital humanities: in search of definitions (book, 2017)
• Faculty of Laws: Artificial Intelligence, Education and Assessment at UCL Laws: Current Thinking and Next Steps for the UK Legal Education Sector (working/discussion paper, 2025)
• School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies: The Gesta Hungarorum of Anonymus, the Anonymous Notary of King Béla: A Translation (journal article, 2009)*
• Faculty of Social and Historical Sciences: The Responsibility of Intellectuals: Reflections by Noam Chomsky and others after 50 years (UCL Press book, 2019)
• Faculty of the Built Environment (Bartlett): Space Syntax: Selected papers by Bill Hillier (UCL Press book, 2025)
• Faculty of Engineering Sciences: Mastering the game of Go without human knowledge (journal article, 2017)
• Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences: The Traditional Four Steps Transportation Modeling Using a Simplified Transport Network: A Case Study of Dhaka City, Bangladesh (journal article, 2012)*
• Faculty of Brain Sciences: What is mentalization? The concept and its foundations in developmental research (book chapter, 2012)*
• Faculty of Life Sciences: FIP Global Pharmacy Workforce Report 2012 (report, 2012)
• Faculty of Medical Sciences: Textbook of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (UCL Press book, 2016)*
• Faculty of Population Health Sciences: Global, regional, and national burden of stroke and its risk factors, 1990-2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019 (journal article, 2021)
• Institute of Education: Intelligence Unleashed: An argument for AI in Education (report, 2016)

* These publications are also the highest-downloaded of all time.

Hitting 60 million downloads highlights the reach and potential which comes from sharing research through UCL Discovery. There are a number of ways you can do this, primarily through sharing your research publications via UCL RPS and Profiles. You might also want to consider sharing other types of outputs such as data, code and software to further enhance the visibility and reproducibility of your work. UCL’s Research Data Management team maintain a guide on best practice for software sustainability, preservation and sharing, and can give further support to UCL researchers as required.

Another year of sharing research, and another incredible milestone – congratulations to everyone involved! Let’s keep it up and continue pursuing open access at UCL to ensure we are reaching the widest audience and having the greatest impact.

 

Get Involved!

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Guest post by Sheetal Saujani, Citizen Science Coordinator in the Office for Open Science & Scholarship

Citizen Science, where members of the public contribute to academic research, is reshaping how we do research. It opens new possibilities for data collection, community engagement, and impact, and at UCL, it’s increasingly seen as a key part of open and inclusive research.

In this post, we explore some of the platforms that make Citizen Science possible, including iNaturalist, and share insights from Professor Muki Haklay’s (UCL Extreme Citizen Science) blog to inspire UCL researchers to get involved.

Why Citizen Science platforms matter

Citizen Science platforms aren’t just bits of technology – they are powerful tools for bringing people and research together. They help researchers:

• Collect data on a large scale, across different locations and time periods
• Work with diverse communities in ways that feel meaningful
• Enhance the impact of their research by opening it up to the public
• Recognise and include lived experience and local knowledge as valuable data

Citizen Science platforms make it easy for anyone to take part by connecting researchers with thousands (or even millions) of contributors. Whether it’s identifying wildlife, tracking pollution, or classifying stars, Citizen Science tools make it easy for anyone to take part.

But not every platform fits every project. It’s worth considering how easy it is to use, the quality of the data, ethical considerations, and how long the platform can be supported. It’s great that there are now a wide range of tools out there to support different research areas.

Popular platforms to explore

Here are a few Citizen Science platforms worth considering:

1. Zooniverse – a platform for crowdsourced data analysis in fields ranging from climate science to history.
2. Cochrane Crowd – global community classifying health research to support systematic reviews, open to all with no prior expertise needed.
3. SciStarter – a hub connecting volunteers to projects across science, health, and the environment.
4. GLOBE Observer – a NASA app for environmental monitoring including cloud cover and mosquito habitats.

Many of these tools are open source or open access, which aligns with UCL’s Open Science approach to research.

Spotlight on iNaturalist

iNaturalist is one of the world’s leading Citizen Science platforms, built to help people record and share observations of biodiversity. With over 150 million contributions, it reflects the core values of open Citizen Science: it’s user-friendly, community-driven, and open in its data policies.

If you’re interested in tracking urban wildlife, exploring plant ecology, or examining environmental change, iNaturalist offers:

• Community-powered species ID: observations are confirmed by a global network of experts and enthusiasts.
• Open data integration: verified sightings feed directly into the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), supporting research and conservation worldwide.
• Educational value: a powerful tool for learning about local ecosystems, supporting outreach, and involving the public in meaningful fieldwork.

For UCL researchers in ecology, conservation, education, or public engagement, iNaturalist offers a ready-made platform for collaborative projects, supporting both academic outcomes and community impact.

Reflections on iNaturalist from Prof. Muki Haklay

At the CAPS25 conference, iNaturalist’s Executive Director, Scott Loarie, delivered the opening keynote sharing five key lessons from the platform’s 17-year evolution – from an MSc project to a global biodiversity tool.

In a follow-up blog post, Professor Muki Haklay (UCL Extreme Citizen Science) reflects on these insights, highlighting iNaturalist’s focus on a pressing challenge: documenting species before they disappear. With one in three species at risk, the platform’s mission is urgent.

Prof. Haklay praises iNaturalist for making participation fun and not too complicated, empowering people to contribute meaningfully – from spotting rare birds to discovering new butterflies. He also emphasises the social side of Citizen Science, where events like the City Nature Challenge become global celebrations of biodiversity.

He describes iNaturalist as “a new kind of scientific instrument” – open, scalable, and powered by AI. Millions of photos help track species distribution, detect invasive spread, and even reveal behavioural patterns. AI/computer vision is “providing a new journey,” he notes, with tools that link images to DNA and uncover new species.

For UCL researchers, Prof. Haklay’s reflections remind us to think beyond data collection. How can we design Citizen Science that’s inclusive, engaging, and makes a difference in the world?

Next steps

Citizen Science can enhance public engagement, enable large-scale data collection, and support the co-production of knowledge – especially when linked with Open Science values. To get started:

• Choose a platform that fits your research needs
• Pilot a small-scale activity or join an existing project
• Reflect on inclusion, ethics, and sustainability from the outset
• Connect with UCL’s Citizen Science community for guidance and support

Let’s collaborate

Have you used a Citizen Science platform in your research or teaching? Or are you just getting started and curious about the possibilities?

Platforms like iNaturalist show how Citizen Science can be rigorous, inclusive and impactful – offering new ways to collaborate, engage communities and produce knowledge. As UCL advances its Open Science agenda, now is a great time to consider how Citizen Science can enhance your work across disciplines.

The UCL Office for Open Science & Scholarship is here to support you. Our Citizen Science Support and Training resources include guidance on integrating Citizen Science into your projects, information on key platforms, and our favourite Citizen Science initiatives from around the world. You can also explore the Principles of Citizen Science at UCL to shape your approach from the outset.

Whether you’re starting a project or exploring ideas, we’d love to hear from you. Visit the UCL Citizen Science website to learn more – and let’s work together to make research more open, inclusive, and collaborative.

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Guest post by Sheetal Saujani, Citizen Science Coordinator in the Office for Open Science & Scholarship

At the Creativity in Research and Engagement session during the 2025 Open Science and Scholarship Festival, we invited participants to ask a simple question: what if we looked at research and engagement through the lens of creativity?

Together, we explored how creative approaches can unlock new possibilities across research, public engagement, and community participation. Through talks, discussions, and hands-on activities, we discussed visual thinking, storytelling, and participatory methods – tools that help us rethink how we work and connect with others.

Why creativity?

Whether it’s communicating complex science through visual storytelling, turning data into art, or reimagining who gets to ask the research questions in the first place, creative approaches help break down barriers and make research more inclusive and impactful.

Sketchnoting

We began by learning a new skill – sketchnoting – a quick, visual way of capturing ideas with shapes, symbols, diagrams, and keywords rather than full sentences. It’s not about being artistic; it’s about clarity and connection. As we reminded participants “Anyone can draw!”

Throughout the session, it became clear that creativity isn’t about perfection – it’s about connection, experimentation, and finding new ways to involve and inspire others in our work.

Three UCL speakers then shared how they’ve used creative methods in their research and engagement work.

Angharad Green – Turning genomic data into art

Angharad Green, Senior Research Data Steward at UCL’s Advanced Research Computing Centre, shared her work on the evolution of Streptococcus pneumoniae (the bacteria behind pneumonia and meningitis) using genomic data and experimental evolution.

What made her talk stand out was the way she visualised complex data. Using vibrant Muller plots to track changes in bacterial populations over time, she transformed dense genomic information into something accessible and visually compelling. She also ensured the visuals were accessible to people with colour blindness.

The images were so impactful that they earned a place on the cover of Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology. Angharad’s work is a powerful example of how creative design can not only improve research communication and uncover patterns that might otherwise go unnoticed, but also proves that data can double as art and that science can be both rigorous and imaginative.

“As I looked at the Muller plots,” she said, “I started to see other changes I hadn’t noticed – how one mutation would trigger another.”

Katharine Round – Ghost Town and the art of the undirected lens

Katharine Round, a filmmaker and Lecturer in Ethnographic and Documentary Film in UCL’s Department of Anthropology presented Ghost Town, set in the tsunami-struck city of Kamaishi, Japan. Local taxi drivers reported picking up passengers who then vanished – ghosts, perhaps, or expressions of unresolved grief.

Katharine explored memory, myth, and trauma using a unique method: fixed cameras installed inside taxis, with no filmmaker present. This “abandoned camera” approach created a space that felt intimate and undirected, like a moving confessional booth, allowing deeply personal stories to surface.

By simply asking, “Has anything happened to you since the tsunami that you’ve never spoken about?” the project uncovered raw, unstructured truths, stories that traditional interviews might never reach.

Katharine’s work reminds us that storytelling can be an evocative form of research. By using creative, non-linear methods, she uncovered stories that traditional data collection approaches might have missed. Sometimes, the most powerful insights come when the researcher steps back, listens, and lets the story unfold on its own.

Joseph Cook – Co-creation and creativity in Citizen Science

Joseph Cook leads the UCL Citizen Science Academy at the UCL Institute for Global Prosperity.

He shared how the Academy trains and supports community members to become co-researchers in community projects that matter to them, often co-designed with local councils on topics like health, prosperity, and wellbeing.

Joseph shared a range of inspiring creative work:

• Zines made by young citizen scientists in Tower Hamlets, including a research rap and reflections on life in the care system.
• A silk scarf by Aysha Ahmed, filled with symbols of home and belonging drawn from displaced communities in Camden.
• A tea towel capturing community recipes and food memories from Regent’s Park Estate, part of a project on culture and cohesion.
• Creative exhibitions such as The Architecture of Pharmacies, exploring healthcare spaces through the lens of lived experience.

Instead of asking communities to answer predefined questions, the Academy invites people to ask their own, reframing participants as experts in their own lives.

Joseph was joined by Mohammed Rahman, a citizen scientist and care leaver, awarded a UCL Citizen Science Certificate through the Academy’s ActEarly ‘Citizen Science with Care Leavers’ programme. Through his zine and audio documentary, Mohammed shared personal insights on wellbeing, support and independence showing how storytelling deepens understanding and drives change.

From thinking to making

After the talks, participants reflected and got creative. They explored evaluation methods like the “4Ls” (Liked, Learned, Lacked, Longed For) and discussed embedding co-design throughout projects, including evaluation, and why it’s vital to  involve communities from the start.

Participants made badges, sketchnoted their reflections, and took on a “Zine in 15 Minutes” challenge, contributing to a collective zine on creativity and community.

Final reflections

Creativity isn’t an add-on – it’s essential. It helps us ask better questions, involve more people, and communicate in ways that resonate. Methods like sketchnoting, visual metaphors, zine-making, and creative media open research and engagement to a wider range of voices and experiences.

Creative work doesn’t need to be academic papers – it can be a rap, a tea towel, or a short film. Creativity sparks insight, supports co-creation, and builds meaningful connection.

Whether through drawing, storytelling, or simply asking different questions, we must continue making space for creativity – in our projects and institutions.

Find out more

• Sketchnoting for Citizen Science – European Citizen Science Association (ECSA) webinar (YouTube)
• Award-winning journal cover featuring Angharad’s visuals. Questions? Contact: Angharad.green@ucl.ac.uk
• Discover the UCL Citizen Science Academy projects
• Explore citizen scientist zines on Issuu.
• For more on Ghost Town or updates, contact Katharine Round: k.round@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 Bluesky, and join our mailing list to be part of the conversation!

Guest post by Dr Christiana McMahon, Research Data Support Officer

Since launching in June 2019, the UCL Research Data Repository has now received over 1million views from over 190 countries and territories across the world! Plus, we have published over 1000 items and facilitated over 800,000 downloads!

This is a huge milestone and demonstrates how far reaching the Research Data Repository has become.

To date, the:

• most viewed record is:

Heenan, Thomas; Jnawali, Anmol; Kok, Matt; Tranter, Thomas; Tan, Chun; Dimitrijevic,  Alexander; et al. (2020). Lithium-ion Battery INR18650 MJ1 Data: 400 Electrochemical Cycles (EIL-015). University College London. Dataset. https://doi.org/10.5522/04/12159462.v1

• most downloaded record is:

Steinmetz, Nicholas A; Zatka-Haas, Peter; Carandini, Matteo; Harris, Kenneth (2019). Distributed coding of choice, action, and engagement across the mouse brain. University College London. Dataset. https://doi.org/10.5522/04/9970907.v1

• most cited record is:

Pérez-García, Fernando; Rodionov, Roman; Alim-Marvasti, Ali; Sparks, Rachel; Duncan, John; Ourselin, Sebastien (2020). EPISURG: a dataset of postoperative magnetic resonance images (MRI) for quantitative analysis of resection neurosurgery for refractory epilepsy. University College London. Dataset. https://doi.org/10.5522/04/9996158.v1

What is the UCL Research Data Repository?

From the Research Publications Service for published manuscripts and theses, to MediaCentral for all things media, UCL staff and students can access different places to store their research outputs – and the UCL Research Data Repository is a perfect place for research data, posters, presentations, software, workflows, data management plans, figures and models.

Key features:

• Available to all current staff and research students
• Supports almost all file types
• All published items can have a full data citation including a DOI (unique persistent identifier)
• Items can be embargoed where necessary
• Helps provide access and data sharing
• Preserves and curates outputs for 10+ years
• Facilitates discovery of research outputs
• Helps researchers to meet UCL / funders’ requirements for FAIR data

More information about the service can be found on our website.

Access our user guide.

Why use the Research Data Repository?

With communities across UCL being actively encouraged to engage with the FAIR principles, it was important to give staff and research students even greater means to do so. The FAIR principles: Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable, refer to a set of attributes research outputs should have to enable secondary researchers to find, understand, repurpose and reuse these without major technical barriers​. Subsequently, there are many advantages to having FAIR research outputs including:

• Greater accessibility of research outputs
• Enhanced transparency of the research process
• Greater potential to replicate studies and verify findings
• Enhanced potential for greater citation and collaboration
• Encourages members of the public to become involved in research projects and become citizen scientists
• Maximises research potential of existing research resources by reusing and repurposing them

Hence, we developed and launched the Research Data Repository to support staff and research students wanting to further engage with the FAIR principles here at UCL.

Collaboration is key

The Research Data Management team in Library Services and the Research Data Stewardship team from the Centre for Advanced Research Computing, collaborate to provide both administrative and technical support – helping users to upload, publish and archive their research outputs.

You can reach us using researchdatarepository@ucl.ac.uk or join us at one of our online or in-person drop-in sessions.

What does the future hold?

Over the past year, the Research Data Repository team participated in a series of workshops as part of the FAIR-IMPACT Coordination and Support Action  funded by the European Union. This work was led by Dr Socrates Varakliotis and supported by Dr Christiana McMahon, Kirsty Wallis, Dr James Wilson and Daniel Delargy.

The aims of these workshops were to:

• firstly, enhance the trustworthiness of the repository; and
• secondly, to enhance the semantic metadata (documentation) made publicly available online

During the first project, we conducted a thorough self-assessment of the information we provide about the repository service with a view to highlighting how we demonstrate trustworthiness. Consequently, we made a series of improvements to our documentation including the publishing of a new, more accessible website.

Over the course of the second project, we focused on improving the standardised metadata we make available to search engines indexing repository information globally. In this project, we were able to demonstrate how having validated metadata is important to supporting the trustworthiness of repository services.

The next step is to further explore how the repository’s trustworthiness may be enhanced even further to formally meet international standards and expectations.

Final thoughts

Having over 1million views truly is a fantastic achievement and testament to the hard work and dedication of those working behind the scenes to provide this brilliant service, and the wonderful users across UCL who have published with us.

Next stop, 2million views – and until then…

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 Bluesky, and join our mailing list to be part of the conversation!

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)

Guest post by Preeti Matharu, Jack Hindley, Victor Olago, Angharad Green (ARC Research Data Stewards), in celebration of International Love Data Week 2025

Research data is a valuable yet vulnerable asset. Research data is a valuable yet vulnerable asset. Researchers collect and analyse large amounts of personal and sensitive data ranging from health records to survey responses, and this raises an important question – whose data is it anyway?

If data involve human subjects, then participants are the original owners of their personal data. They grant permission to researchers to collect and use their data through informed consent. Therefore, responsibility for managing and protecting their data, in line with legal, regulatory, ethical requirements, and policies lie with researchers and their institution. Hence, maintaining a balance between participant rights and researcher needs.

Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the UK and EU, participants have the right to access, update and request deletion of their data, whilst researchers must comply with the law to ensure research integrity. However, under the Data Protection Act, research data processed in the public interest must be retained irrespective of participant rights, including the rights to erase, access and rectify. UCL must uphold this requirement while ensuring participant confidentiality is not compromised.

Information governance consists of policies, procedures and processes adopted by UCL to ensure research data is managed securely and complies with legal and operational requirements.

Support for information governance in research is now provided by Data Stewards within ARC RDM IG. That’s a long acronym, let’s break it down.

• ARC: Advanced Research Computing – UCL’s research innovative centre and provides 1. Secure digital infrastructure and 2. Teaching software.
• RDM: Research Data Management – assist researchers with data management.
• IG: Information governance – advise researchers on compliance for managing sensitive data.

Data Stewards – we support researchers with data management throughout the research study, provide guidance on data security awareness training, data security requirements for projects, and compliance with legal and regulatory standards, encompassing the Five Safes Framework principles. Additionally, we advise on sensitive data storage options, such as a Trusted Research Environment (TRE) or the Data Safe Haven (DSH).

Furthermore, we emphasise the importance of maintaining up-to-date and relevant documentation and provide guidance on FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data principles.

As stated above, data can be vulnerable. UCL must implement strong security controls including encryption, access control and authentication, to protect sensitive data, such as personal health data and intellectual property. Sensitive data refers to data whose unauthorised disclosure could cause potential harm to participants or UCL.

UCL’s Information Security Management System (ISMS) is a systematic approach to managing sensitive research data to ensure confidentiality, integrity, and availability. It is a risk management process involving people, processes and IT systems. The key components include information management policy, identifying and assessing risks, implementing security controls to mitigate identified risks, training users and continuous monitoring. The ISMS is crucial in research:

1. It protects sensitive data; without stringent security measures, data is at risk of being accessed by unauthorised individuals leading to potential theft.
2. It ensures legal and regulatory compliance i.e. GDPR and UCL policies. Non-compliance results in hefty fines, legal action and reputational damage.
3. Research ethics demand participant data is handled with confidentiality. The ISMS ensures data management practices, data anonymisation, and controlled access whilst reinforcing ethical responsibility.
4. It reduces the risk of phishing attacks and ransomware.
5. It ensures data integrity and reliability – tampered or corrupted data can lead to invalid research and waste of resources.

UCL practices for Information Governance in research:

• Data security – Use encrypted storage, access controls and secure platforms like TRE or DSH.
• Ethical responsibility – Data protection office and Ethics obtain informed consent from participants and ensure they fully understand how their data will be used.
• Data Security Awareness training – Ensure researchers have completed and regularly review their training.
• Information Security Group – Conduct regular audits, identify vulnerabilities and mitigate potential risks.
• Contract Services – Review all research related contracts.

In response to the question, whose data is it anyway? Data may be generated by participants, but the overall responsibility to use, process, protect, ethically manage lies upon the researchers and UCL. Additionally, beyond compliance and good information governance, it is about ensuring research integrity and safeguarding the participants who make research possible.