Photo by Kirsty Wallis

On the afternoon of 22nd October 2025, 40 people gathered in Bentham House to celebrate the winners and honourable mentions of this year’s UCL Open Science and Scholarship Awards.

Sandy Schumann and Jessie Baldwin, the UKRN Local Network Leads at UCL, hosted the ceremony and awards were presented by David Shanks, UCL’s UKRN Institutional Lead. Sandy began by congratulating this year’s cohort – 69 applications were submitted for consideration this year, so the competition was fierce! She also thanked the judges, as well as UCL Press for sponsoring the event.

There were five categories in total, and after the awards were presented, the overall winner of each category showcased their project.

Photo by Kirsty Wallis

The first category was, ‘Activities Led By Non-Academic Staff’, won by Vassilis Sideropoulos (Senior Research Technical Professional, Department of Psychology and Human Development, IOE) for his work establishing an open research training programme and practice community within the IOE. Vassilis saw the need to make open research practical and relevant, and created a programme with modular training covering topics such as Data Management and Pre-Registration. Following feedback on the initial training programme delivered between 2019-2023, he spent 18 months considering how to improve it, which led to a revamped programme with more applicable guidance. Alongside this, he recognised that researchers were seeking a community, a place where they could reach out to someone who could train them and respond to their questions, which led him to establish an open research practice community.

To encourage engagement with the practice of open science, an understanding of what researchers need is vital. By listening and responding to feedback, Vassilis recognised this and has created a programme that has transformed the ways in which IOE researchers engage with and understand open science.

Photo by Kirsty Wallis

The winner of the second category, ‘Activities by academic staff (including post-docs) or PhD students: Open-source software/analytical tools’, was Deyu Ming (Lecturer in Mathematics and Data Analytics, School of Management, Faculty of Engineering) for the development of the open-source package ‘DGPSI’, which allows for scalable surrogate modelling of expensive computer models and model networks. In his showcase, Deyu took us on the journey of this project. From the origins of the idea in 2019, to translating it into something that others could use and publishing it on GitHub in 2020, to it subsequently appearing on the python package index and on CONDA in 2022. But it didn’t stop there. In 2023, the package started making considerable impact through the UKRI-funded projects Net Zero Plus and ADD-TREES, which support AI-enhanced tree-planting decision tools used by DEFRA, Forest Research, the National Trust, and other stakeholders to advance the UK’s Net Zero 2050 goals.

Since 2021, there have been 19 releases of the software, and it is now 60x faster than the original. As creator, lead developer, and sole maintainer of ‘DGPSI’, Deyu has worked incredibly hard on this open-source software, and with already over 100,000 downloads, it will no doubt continue to make a resounding and long-lasting impact.

Photo by Kirsty Wallis

The award for ‘Activities led by undergraduate or postgraduate students’ went to Yinan Chen, Eric Chen and Adelina Xie (undergraduate students at the Department of Statistical Science, Faculty of Mathematical and Physical Sciences) for developing an open peer-review system for statistical science undergraduate coding assignments as part of a UCL ChangeMakers project. The problem they set out to address was the limitation in Moodle (the learning platform used at UCL) with regard to peer review, as students could only receive general feedback on coding assignments. Since Moodle only supports the review of PDF outputs and not raw R code, there was no option for line-by-line code reviews, and they felt that collaborative learning opportunities were being missed. Their solution: GitHub and Moodle integration. This innovative hybrid approach, with GitHub’s powerful code review system and Moodle’s familiar interface, has led to a practical, accessible and scalable tool designed for students, by students.

This is a recently concluded pilot project, but it is already having significant impact. A paper is being written on it for the Journal of Open-Source Education, and it has attracted interest for presentation at the Royal Statistical Society’s education conference, which shows its potential for nation-wide statistical education – testament to Yinan, Eric and Adelina’s hard work and dedication. Alongside this, their commitment to the practice of open science at such an early stage in their academic career was inspiring to see.

Photo by Kirsty Wallis

For the category ‘Activities led by academic staff (including post-docs) or PhD students: Open publishing’, the award was presented to Adam Crymble (Lecturer of Digital Humanities, Department of Information Studies, Faculty of Arts and Humanities), for the open publishing initiative ‘Programming Historian’ which he co-founded. Programming Historian offers over 250 peer-reviewed tutorials for digital humanities in English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese. Adam explained how a gap in digital skills amongst humanities professionals was the motivation for the project, and from its humble beginnings as a blog, it has become a financially self-sustaining open publisher. By offering practical applications and case studies in each tutorial, as well as ensuring translations are culturally adapted, this project has had far-reaching influence and continues to do so.

Since the outset, community and collaboration have been vital in the development of Programming Historian, and Adam has worked hard to expand the project’s global community and to ensure inclusivity. This approach, alongside the use of open peer review and the promotion of open data and open-source tools, epitomises the principles of open science and was fantastic to hear about.

Photo by Kirsty Wallis

The final category was ‘Activities by academic staff (including post-docs) or PhD students: Enhancing open science and reproducibility capacity in the academic community’, won by Martin Mokros (Lecturer in Earth Observation, Department of Geography, Faculty of Social and Historical Sciences) for his COST Action 3DForEcoTech project. Four years ago, Martin noticed the issue of scientists undertaking similar forest ecosystem research but not talking to each other about it. He wanted to standardise laser scanning technologies for forest ecology and inventory to allow for collaboration, and so launched COST Action 3DForEcoTech – the first global open-science network focused on ground-based 3D forest monitoring. With over 600 members from 50+ countries, the reach is impressive, and it is an innovative approach to scientific practice. Open science was a key motivation for the project, and it incorporates fully accessible datasets, algorithms and benchmarks results, as well as open-source software and an algorithm library.

Alongside the provision of open data and tools, this project has engaged with open science by creating equitable access to knowledge and opportunities through supporting ECRs, enforcing gender balance and ensuring participation from underrepresented regions. The idea of equitable access underpins the entire concept of open science, and by making it a central tenet to the COST Action 3DForEcoTech project, Martin has provided an excellent example of how this can be done.

Each of these award winners have advocated for, harnessed and showcased open science in various fields of research and study, and we are delighted that they have received recognition with a UCL Open Science & Scholarship Award.

We are looking forward to hearing about these projects’ ongoing impact and wonder what new initiatives they might inspire!

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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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!

As we conclude International Open Access Week, we have been inspired by a wealth of discussions and events across UCL! This week, we have explored balancing collaboration and commercialisation, highlighted the work of Citizen Science initiatives, discussed the role of open access textbooks in education, and addressed key copyright challenges in the age of AI to ensure free and open access to knowledge.

Today, we are excited to introduce the UCL Statement of Principles of Authorship. This new document, shaped through a co-creation workshop and community consultation, provides guidance on equitable authorship practices and aims to foster more inclusive and transparent research collaboration across UCL.

The team at the UCL Office for Open Science & Scholarship is pleased to launch the UCL Statement of Principles of Authorship. These principles have been built up from a co-creation workshop and developed in consultation with our academic community and are now available for wider use, linked from our website.

Participants during ‘Challenges of Equity in Authorship’ workshop in 2023

In August 2023, the OOSS Team posted a discussion about the challenges of equity in authorship and the co-production workshop held during that year’s Open Science & Scholarship Conference. We outlined some preliminary considerations that led to the workshop, summarised the discussion and emerging themes, including the need to more widely acknowledge contributions to research outputs, the power dynamics involved in authorship decisions, and ways to make academic language and terminology accessible for contributors outside the academic ‘bubble’.

The outcomes of the workshop were then used as the basis for developing the new Statement of Principles of Authorship. This document provides general advice, recommendations and requirements for authors, designed to complement the UCL Code of Conduct for Research and align with existing published frameworks, such as the Technicians Commitment or CRediT. The document outlines four core principles and a variety of applications for their use across the broad range of subject areas and output types that are produced across the institution. It also proposes standards for affiliations and equitable representation of contributors.

While it is true that academic publishing is a complex and changing environment, these principles are intended as a touchstone for discussions around authorship rather than explicit expectations or policy. They can guide decision making, help understand how affiliations should be presented for best consistency and traceability in the long term, and empower people to request inclusion or make plans to include citizen scientists or other types of collaborators to their work.

We look forward to hearing the many ways that these principles can be used by the community!

For a full overview of our #OAWeek 2024 posts, visit our blog series page. To learn more about the Principles of Authorship and stay updated on open science initiatives across UCL, sign up for our mailing list.

As we continue celebrating International Open Access Week, following our earlier post on balancing openness and commercialisation, we’re now turning our focus to Citizen Science initiatives. Sheetal Saujani, UCL’s Citizen Science Coordinator, highlights in her article below how community-driven research and open access are shaping the future of knowledge creation, empowering individuals to make meaningful contributions to global challenges.

Did you know that ordinary citizens are making significant contributions to solving some of the world’s biggest challenges – from climate change to wildlife conservation?

This year’s International Open Access Week continues to focus on the importance of community in scholarly research and open access initiatives.

Definition of citizen science at UCL

UCL supports a broad approach to citizen science, recognising that there are different applications and functions of citizen science in research, whether they are community-driven research projects or global investigations.

Citizen science is characterised as research conducted by the public, often in collaboration with academic institutions, and is a diverse practice involving academic and community researchers from various disciplines.

At its most inclusive and most innovative, citizen science involves ordinary people as partners in the entire research process, including determining research themes, questions, methodologies and means of disseminating results. The involvement of people in participatory research can range from short-term data collection to intensive involvement in the research process, from technical contribution to genuine research, and from open collaboration to co-creation of knowledge.

Citizen science promotes community-driven collaboration over profit-driven research

Citizen science is a model for open access and collective participation in research, ensuring the benefits of knowledge creation are accessible to all.  It embodies community-driven collaboration because it is built on principles of openness, inclusivity, and shared ownership of knowledge. The focus is on addressing real-world problems and empowering communities to take part in research that benefits everyone – not on generating profit for a select few.

Why does open access matter?

Open access refers to the free, unrestricted access to research outputs like journal articles, data, and educational resources. It ensures that research reaches the widest possible audience, and that it can be used and shared easily.

Open access aligns with the values of community engagement and citizen science by making knowledge and data open to the public. This allows people to engage in research without the barriers of paywalls or proprietary information, unlike commercialised research, where data can be restricted for profit.

Citizen science as an open, community-driven approach

Citizen science is a community-driven approach that focuses on problem-solving and knowledge expansion, promoting open collaboration and ownership. Citizen science projects typically share their findings openly. Initiatives like Zooniverse and iNaturalist offer open access to tools, software, and platforms, democratising knowledge. By enabling people to participate in and shape real research based on publicly accessible data, this approach promotes accessibility and inclusivity. It builds trust between researchers and the public, strengthening the quality and impact of research by drawing on collective wisdom and diverse perspectives.

Case studies: open access in citizen science

Below are two examples of successful citizen science projects that embody this week’s theme.

Air quality monitoring by communities: In the Open AQ project, citizens use open-access, low-cost sensors to track air pollution in their neighbourhoods. The data collected is shared freely and openly, allowing communities to act and policymakers to respond. This contrasts with commercial entities that might charge for proprietary pollution data or sensor technology.

Biodiversity conservation: iNaturalist invites people to document plant and animal species in their area. The data is shared freely, benefiting researchers and conservationists worldwide. No one is excluded based on ability to pay or access to commercial tools – everyone has a stake in biodiversity protection.

Challenges and opportunities: advancing with community in mind

Challenges of commercialisation in citizen science do exist: some citizen science platforms are commercialised, locking data behind paywalls or limiting access to paying users. Profit-driven research models hinder knowledge access, distort priorities, exploit participants, and compromise objectivity. To benefit society and produce shared findings, it is important to prioritise the public good and fair access to research.

Promoting open access in citizen science can enhance participation, diversity, and openness. Because citizen science invites participation from all, it offers opportunities for underrepresented communities and developing countries to contribute to and benefit from research. This inclusive model breaks down barriers in commercialised research systems, ensuring marginalised voices are heard and valued in the research process.

We would encourage everyone to support open access movements and citizen science platforms and projects that rank community benefit over profit.

Empowering the public through open access and citizen science

Open access and citizen science align with the theme of “Community over Commercialization” by prioritising collaboration and transparency in research. Open access removes barriers, while citizen science empowers people to participate in research projects. This approach puts the interests of the public first and benefits the wider population.

Looking towards the future, prioritising community-driven approaches in research can lead to more equitable, inclusive, and impactful research. Citizen science and open access work together to resist commercialised research, leading to a more equitable, community-centred approach to research.

As we celebrate International Open Access Week, let’s remember that when we put community at the heart of research, we empower everyone to contribute to the knowledge that shapes our world and makes a lasting impact on society.