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Announcing: the inaugural UCL Open Science & Scholarship Awards!

By Kirsty, on 17 July 2023

Red and gold fireworks, captured against a black skyUCL Office for Open Science and Scholarship and the local chapter of the UK Reproducibility Network are excited to announce the first Open Science and Scholarship Awards at UCL. UCL has been a pioneer in promoting open science practices, which include Open Access Publishing, Open Data and Software, Transparency, Reproducibility and other Open Methodologies, as well as the creation and use of Open Educational Resources, Citizen Science, Public Involvement, Co-production and Communication.

With these awards, we want to recognise and celebrate all UCL students and staff who embrace, advance, and promote open science.

Who is eligible?

All UCL students (undergraduate, postgraduate taught, and postgraduate research) and staff from any department/discipline, including professional services staff, can apply or be nominated.

Application and Nomination

You can apply or nominate someone else for the award by completing this form. We have kept the form as simple as possible to encourage as many applications as possible. You will be asked to (i) briefly describe the activity (max 200 words) and (ii) explain how the activity has promoted open science (max 300 words) for example by implementing open science practices, enhancing their adoption or impact, using open access resources in research and teaching, or any improvements to open practices.

Examples of activities include (but are not limited to):

  • applying open science practices in research
  • organising open science training/workshops locally or for a wider audience
  • building and coordinating a community around open research practices
  • supporting researchers with data management to promote reproducibility
  • developing open software and analytical tools
  • leading or supporting citizen science initiatives
  • authoring or co-authoring open research guidelines, standards, and policies
  • designing templates to enable open research practices
  • developing open datasets or databases that are used by other researchers
  • revise a module’s reading list to rely predominantly on open access resources/textbooks

Award categories

  • Use of open access resources, including textbooks
  • Activities by students
  • Activities by academic staff
  • Activities by professional services staff

Prizes

  • Winners in each category will be awarded 100GBP as a cash prize as well as a certificate. All winners will be invited to briefly present their research at the Awards ceremony.
  • Each category will also name up to two Honourable Mentions that will receive a certificate.

Timeline

Application deadline: Sunday 27 August 2023

Results communicated: Friday 29 September 2023

An award ceremony will take place during the Open Access Week in the third week of October 2023.

Open Science & Scholarship Newsletter – June 2021

By Kirsty, on 2 June 2021

Welcome to the third issue of the Open Science and Scholarship Newsletter!

This termly newsletter has updates across the 8 Pillars of Open Science, and contributions from colleagues across the university. If you would like to get involved, give feedback or write something for a future issue, please get in touch using the details at the end of the newsletter or by leaving a comment below.

In this issue:

  • Editorial
  • Update from the Head of the Office for Open Science & Scholarship
  • Community voice – Reliability and Reproducibility in Computational Science
  • Special Feature – Open Science in Horizon Europe
  • Deep Dive – Top posts from our blog
  • News and Events

Go to the newsletter on Sway, or view it below. If you use the version below, we recommend clicking the ‘full screen’ button to get the full experience!

When viewing a Sway, you can turn on Accessibility view. This view displays a high-contrast style for easier reading, disables any animations, and supports keyboard navigation for use with screen readers.

To turn on Accessibility view:

  • If you’re using a mouse or touchscreen, on the More options menu (shown as three dots on the Sway toolbar), choose Accessibility view.
  • If you’re using a screen reader, on the More options menu, when Accessibility view is selected, you hear “Displays this Sway in a high contrast design with full keyboard functionality and screen reader access to all content.”

Upcoming Reproducibility seminars from Leiden University

By Kirsty, on 1 April 2021

Leiden University Libraries (UBL) are hosting a series of online seminars on the challenges involved in achieving reproducibility in research.

The seminars aim to identify best practices that can help to overcome central challenges around reproducibility, and to convey several concrete guidelines that can help researchers during their attempts to make their own research transparent and verifiable. While discussions of crucial theoretical concepts will get ample attention, the seminars will also showcase experiences gained during various case studies.

The seminars will be held on Thursday 22 April, 29 April and Wednesday 12 May. For more information and to book visit their website.

These events were recorded and written up after the fact, so if you couldn’t make it, take a look now on their website.

UCL Open Science Conference 2021 – Programme now available

By Kirsty, on 26 March 2021

Thank you once more to everyone that submitted their ideas to the Call for Papers – we had so many and are so grateful that we have been able to create a packed programme.

All of the information about our Keynotes was revealed back in January, but we can now reveal the full programme and our 4 panels!

Day 1: Monday 26th April

Time Title
13:00 – 13:10 Welcome, housekeeping
13:10 – 13:40 Open Science – looking to the future
Jean-Claude Burgelman
13:40 – 13:55 Open Science at UCL – looking to our future
Paul Ayris
13:55 – 14:10 Q&A Discussion
  Break
14:20 – 15:00 Future of Open Science panel
15:00 – 15:15 Panel Q&A
  Break
15:25 – 16:05 Technical solutions panel
16:05 – 16:20 Panel Q&A
16:20 – 16:30 Summary and close

Day 2: Tuesday 27th April

Time Title
13:00 – 13:10 Welcome, housekeeping
13:10 – 13:30 Count-erproductive? The role of metrics in the advancement of Open Science
Lizzie Gadd
13:30 – 13:40 Q&A
13:40 – 14:00 Toolkit for Transparency, Reproducibility & Quality in Energy Research
Gesche Huebner & Mike Fell
14:00 – 14:10 Q&A
  Break
14:20 – 15:00 Reproducibility, Transparency & Metrics panel
15:00 – 15:15 Panel Q&A
  Break
15:25 – 16:05 Citizen science panel
16:05 – 16:20 Panel Q&A
16:20 – 16:30 Summary and close

Download the Draft Programme and details of all of our panellists (pdf)

Get your tickets now!

UCL Open Science Conference 2021 update – Keynotes and tickets!

By Kirsty, on 22 January 2021

As part of the Focus on Open Science programme, jointly organised by SKS, UCL and LIBER, the team in the UCL Office for Open Science & Scholarship recently announced their Spring conference, taking place on the afternoons of the 26th and 27th April 2021 and we are pleased to announce tickets are available now!

Don’t forget also that you can be a part of the conference by submitting a proposal to our call for papers, open until 28th February 2021. We welcome applications for lightning talks across a number of themes related to the 8 pillars of Open Science. The aim of the Open Science events is to add to a global community of practice in Open Science activity so please do share your insights into and use of Open Science policy and practice with the wider scholarly community.

We are also delighted to be able to confirm the Keynote speakers for each day:

Day 1: 

Jean-Claude Burgelman

Jean-Claude Burgelman is professor of Open Science Policies and Practices at the Free University of Brussels (Faculty of Social Science and Solvay Business School) He retired on 1-3-2020 from the EC as Open Access Envoy. Until 1-8-2019 he was the head of Unit Open Science at DG RTD and his team developed the EC’s polices on open science, the science cloud, open data and access.

He joined the European Commission in 1999 as a Visiting Scientist in the Joint Research Centre (the Institute of Prospective Technological Studies – IPTS), where he became Head of the Information Society Unit. In January 2008, he moved to the Bureau of European Policy Advisers (attached to the president of the EC) as adviser for innovation policy. Since 1-10-2008, he joined DG RTD, as advisor and then Head of Unit in charge of top level advisory boards like the European Research and Innovation Area Board, the Innovation for Growth Group and the European Forum for Forward Looking Activities.

Until 2000 he was full professor of communication technology policy at the Free University of Brussels, as well as director of its Centre for Studies on Media, Information and Telecommunication and was involved in science and technology assessment. He has been visiting professor at the University of Antwerp, the European College of Bruges and the University of South Africa and sits on several academic journals. He chaired the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Innovation and was a member of its Science Advisory Committee. He recently joined the Board of Directors of DONA

Keynote title: Open Science – looking to the future.

Open Science is here to stay and will become the standard way of doing science this decade. Sooner than we thought (due to CORONA) and much more needed than we assumed (in view of the large issues we face as societies).

Dr Paul Ayris

Dr Ayris is Pro-Vice-Provost (UCL Library Services & the UCL Office for Open Science and Scholarship). He joined UCL in 1997.

Dr Ayris was the President of LIBER (Association of European Research Libraries) 2010-14. He was Chair of the LERU (League of European Research Universities) INFO Community, finishing 10 years in office in December 2020. He is now the LERU observer in the EOSC Association and UCL’s Open Science Ambassador in the LERU Open Science Ambassadors Policy Group.

He also chairs the OAI Organizing Committee for the Cern-Unige Workshops on Innovations in Scholarly Communication. He is a member of the UUK High-Level Strategy Group on E-Resource purchasing for the Jisc community. On 1 August 2013, Dr Ayris became Chief Executive of UCL Press. He is a member of the Provost’s and President’s Senior Management Team in UCL. On 1 October 2020, Dr Ayris launched the UCL Office for Open Science and Scholarship, of which he is head.

He has a Ph.D. in Ecclesiastical History and publishes on English Reformation Studies. In 2019, he was made a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Keynote title: Open Science at UCL – looking to our future.

Dr Ayris will follow the opening keynote with a discussion of how the future of Open Science will directly affect universities and what the future of developments of Open Science will be at UCL.

Day 2: 

Dr Lizzie Gadd

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Gadd is a scholarly communications specialist working as a Research Policy Manager (Publications) at Loughborough University, UK.

She chairs the International Network of Research Management Societies (INORMS) Research Evaluation Working Group which has developed the ‘SCOPE’ model for responsible research evaluation and a set of principles and assessment tool for responsible University Rankings. In 2010 she co-founded and now chairs the LIS-Bibliometrics Forum for HE bibliometrics specialists. Under this umbrella she founded The Bibliomagician Blog which provides advice and guidance ‘by practitioners, for practitioners’. She also is co-Champion for the ARMA Research Evaluation SIG.  In 2020 she was the recipient of the INORMS Award for Excellence in Research Management Leadership.

She holds a PhD in copyright ownership and scholarly communication and regularly writes, researches and speaks on scholarly communication topics relating to copyright ownership, open access, bibliometrics and research evaluation.

Keynote title: Count-erproductive? The role of metrics in the advancement of open science.

Lizzie will talk about where metrics can be helpful and unhelpful, and what alternative forms of evaluation we might use to incentivise, monitor, promote and reward open research practice.

Gesche Huebner & Mike Fell

Dr Gesche Huebner is a Lecturer at the UCL Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering and a Senior Research Fellow at the UCL Energy Institute. Her research is focused on understanding drivers of energy consumption and temperatures in home and on assessing links between the built environment, health, and wellbeing.

Dr Michael Fell is a Senior Research Fellow at UCL Energy Institute. His research (on home energy use) employs quantitative and qualitative methods, and includes both original data collection and systematic review approaches. He has previously worked on secondment in the Open Science Team at the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. Mike and Gesche are both working on promoting research practices for greater transparency, reproducibility and quality in applied energy research, and have given presented, published, and taught on this topic.

Keynote title: Toolkit for Transparency, Reproducibility & Quality in Energy Research

The talk will draw on a recent paper considering the use of open science approaches in applied, multidisciplinary research areas. It will set out some of the key barriers we have noted in the case of energy research, and then present our new “TReQlist” (or checklist for transparency, reproducibility and quality) covering tools that we suggest are applicable in multidisciplinary research areas. We also show at what stages those tools help to improve research practices. We focus on the benefits to researchers of employing these approaches, countering the narrative that following good practice on open science is either burdensome or in opposition to career progression incentives.

Open Access Week: the first ReproHack ♻ @ UCL

By Kirsty, on 17 November 2020

The Research Software Development Group hosted the first ReproHack at UCL as part of the Open Access Week events run this year by the Office for Open Science and Scholarship. This was not only the first event of this type at UCL, but the first time a reprohack ran for a full week.

What’s a Reprohack?

A ReproHack is a hands-on reproducibility hackathon where participants attempt to reproduce the results of a research paper from published code and data and share their experiences with the group and the papers authors.

As it normally happens on hackathons, this is also a learning experience! During a Reprohack the participants, besides contributing to measure the reproducibility of published papers, also learn how to implement better reproducibility practices into their research and appreciate the high value of sharing code for Open Science.

An important aspect of the Reprohacks is that the authors themselves are the ones who put forward their papers to be tested. If you’ve published a paper and provided code and data with it, you can submit your papers for future editions of Reprohack! Your paper may be chosen by future reprohackers and provide you with feedback about the reproducibility of your paper! The feedback form is well designed so you get a complete overview of what went well and what could be improved.

Reprohacks are open to all domains! Any programming language used in the papers are accepted, however papers with code using open source programming languages are more likely to be to chosen by the participants as it may be easier to install it on their computers.

In this particular edition, the UCL Research Software Development Group was available throughout the week to provide support to the reprohackers.

What did I miss?

This was the first Reprohack at UCL! You missed all the excitement that first-time events bring with them! But do not worry, there will be more Reprohacks!

This event was particularly challenging with the same difficulties we have been fighting for the last nine months trying to run events online, but we had gain some experience already with other workshops and training sessions we run so everything went smoothly!

The event started with a brief introduction of what the event was going to be like, an ice-breaker to get the participants talking and a wonderful keynote by Daniela Ballari entitled “Why computational reproducibility is important?”. Daniela provided a great introduction to the event (did you know that only a ~20% of the published literature has only the “potential” of being computationally reproduced? and that most of it can’t be because either the software is not free, the data provided is incomplete, or it misses which version of the software was used? [Culina, 2020]), linking to resources like The Turing Way and providing five selfish reasons to work on reproducibility. She put these reasons in context of our circles of influences like how these practices benefits the author, their team, the reviewers and the overall community. The questions and answers that followed the talk were also very insightful! Daniela is a researcher in Geoinformation and Geostatics and never trained as a software developer, so she had to learn her way to make her research reproducible and her efforts in that front were highlighted in the selfish reasons she proposed in her talk.

The rest of the event consisted on ReproHacking-hacking-hacking! We separated into groups and started to choose papers. We then disconnected from the call and each participant or team worked as they preferred over the next days to try to reproduce the paper(s) they chose. At the end of the week we reconvened together to share how far we’d got and what we learned on the way.

In total we reviewed four papers, only one participant managed to reproduce the whole paper, the rest (me included) were stuck on the process. We found that full reproducibility is not easy! If the version of a software is not mentioned, then it becomes very difficult to find why something is not working as it should. But we also had a lot of fun and the participants were happy that there is a community at UCL that fights for reproducibility!

This ReproHack also counted with Peter Schmidt interviewing various participants for Code for thought, a podcast that will be published soon! Right now he’s the person running RSE Stories on this side of the Atlantic, a podcast hosted by Vanessa Sochat.

What’s next?

We will run this again! When? Not sure. We would like to run it twice a year, maybe again during the Open Access week and another session sometime between March-April. Are you interested in helping to organise it? Give me a shout! We can make a ReproHack that fits better for our needs (and our researchers!)

Thanks

Million thanks to Daniela Ballari, her talk was very illustrative and helpful to set the goals of the event!

Million thanks to Anna Krystalli too, a fellow Research Software Engineer at the University of Sheffield as she was the creator of this event and provided a lot of help to get us ready! She’s a Software Sustainability Institute Fellow and the SSI gave the initial push for this to exist. We also want to thank the RSE group at Sheffield as we were using some of their resources to run the event!

I also want to thank the organisers of ReproHack in LatinR (thanks Florencia!) as their event was just weeks before ours and seeing how they organised was super helpful!

Reproducibility events and initiatives from the UKRN

By Kirsty, on 11 November 2020

Improve your workflow for reproducible science: We recently hosted this workshop on reproducible data analysis in R Markdown and Git, led by data scientist Mine Cetinkaya-Rundel. The recording can be found here and the materials here.

Open science in covid-19 research, ReproducibiliTea journal club (Dec 2nd):Dr Lonni Besançon will present his paper ‘Open Science Saves Lives: Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic’. Further details and registration can be found here.

Funding for activities to develop data skills/software: UCL are offering £3000 for projects (£600 each) that support community-based activities which either contribute to the development of software and data skills, foster interdisciplinary research through the reuse of tools and resources (e.g. algorithms, data and software) or strengthen positive attributes of the community. The aim is also to provide PhD students, research and professional service staff opportunities to develop their leadership and advocacy skills. Deadline to apply is the 23 November 2020 (noon). Further details can be found here. 

 

Upcoming events – Focus Open Science and Reproducibility

By Kirsty, on 13 October 2020

Focus Open Science events open for booking

This years Focus on Open Science programme of events is taking shape and the first sessions have been launched for booking. The programme this year will all be virtual so all sessions are free and open to all!

The aim of the Focus on Open Science Workshops is to address the challenges posed by Open Science, using the 8 pillars of Open Science identified by the European Commission in its Open Science Policy Platform.

Improve your workflow for reproducible science (10th November 2020)

Join a 2-hour virtual workshop on reproducible data science using R, led by data scientist and lecturer Dr. Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel. Open to all and free to join.

Details and registration on Eventbrite.