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 26^th 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.

Last year in June UCL held the first Open Science Day, attended by over sixty people. This one day workshop provided an opportunity to ask for practical advice and to discuss different aspects of Open Science in a greater detail. Following its success, booking is now open for the second Open Science Day that takes place on Thursday 23rd May, at UCL Institute of Education (Logan Hall).

This one day workshop will explore the facets of Open Science and how these are, or could be, pursued by UCL researchers. In the morning speakers will discuss different aspects of and perspectives on Open Science. Afternoon workshops will offer practical advice on Software Carpentry, Citizen Science, GDPR and Open Education. There will also be opportunity to discuss the steps UCL should take to support Open Science.

Morning sessions include:

• Open Pharma – Prof. Matt Todd, UCL School of Pharmacy
• Research Evaluation and DORA – Prof. Steven Curry, Imperial College
• Reproducible Research Oxford – Dr. Laura Fortunato, University of Oxford
• Digital Science – Speaker TBC

The afternoon workshops will cover:

• Scholarly Communication: megajournals and measuring impact – The recently-launched UCL Press megajournal is an an example of how new models of publishing can be used to support open science. This workshop will outline the work done by the megajournal and some of the issues around measuring the impact of open publications, with contributions from members of the editorial board.
• Software Carpentry. Taster session – Software Carpentry is a project dedicated to teaching researchers basic computing skills such as like program design, version control, testing, and task automation. This is a short taster session to introduce the program and give an idea of what is available.
• Citizen Science discussion – Citizen Science is a fundamental element of many open science programs, and is part of a broader move to link research with wider society. Universities are having to develop new ways to support this work, with new processes and services.
• GDPR and opening data – One of the biggest issues surrounding making research data openly available is the protection of personal information. This workshop, delivered by the UK Data Archive, will discuss how the goal of openness can be balanced with the need for protection, particularly in the light of new and more stringent regulations.
• On the Trail of Open Education Policy Co-creation – This workshop looks at developing policies which can be used to support open education and open science, considering different issues and contexts, and the various interested parties.

And close with a discussion on building open science communities, with UCL researchers Isabelle Van Der Vegt, Dr. Sandy Schumann, Dr. Ben Thomas, and Dr. Vaughan Bell.

This free event is open to all and is delivered by UCL Library Services with support from UCL Organisational Development.

You can register via Eventbrite here.

For any questions please contact lib-researchsupport@ucl.ac.uk

On 25th of June UCL held the first UCL Open Science Day, a one-day workshop organised by UCL Library Services with support from UCL Organisational Development. Over sixty people attanded the workshop, and the day began with a welcome from Professor David Price, Vice-Provost (Research).

Morning sessions discussed different aspects of and perspectives on Open Science. Dr Paul Ayris, Director of UCL Library Services and Pro-Vice-Provost, started with an analysis of the LERU Roadmap for Open Science from the League of European Research Universities. After this introduction to Open Science Dr Catriona MacCallum, Director of Open Science, Hindawi, followed with a publisher’s perspective on the Open Science movement. Professor James Wilsdon from the University of Sheffield presented an overview of the responsible use of metrics in an Open Science environment.

After the break Simon Hetrrick from Software Sustainability Institute followed with a talk about the role of software in Open Science. Dr Emily Sena from the University of Edinburgh ended the session with a presentation on how Open Science can help in pre-clinical work.

In the afternoon attendees participated in one of the five breakout sessions:

• How do we make Open the default at UCL?
• How to make your data Open and FAIR
• UCL Press: engaging in Open Peer Review
• Open Education: Introducing OpenEd@UCL
• Citizen Science in research: UCL ExCites

These workshops gave an opportunity to ask for practical advice and to discuss different aspects of Open Science in a greater detail.

The day ended with a panel discussion – Dr Paul Ayris, Director of UCL Library Services and Pro-Vice-Provost, Professor David Bogle, Pro-Vice-Provost, UCL Doctoral School, and Clare Gryce, Director of Research IT Services, UCL ISD answered questions from the audience about the emerging role of Open Science at UCL. Following the panel, Rebecca Lawrence from F1000 delivered a final presentation on embedding Open Science in university culture.

Presentations from the sessions are now available in UCL Discovery, under the following links:

• Open Science and Universities: managing the change, Dr Paul Ayris
• Open Science – a publisher perspective, Dr Catriona MacCallum
• A turning tide? Responsible metrics for open science, professor James Wilsdon
• Translational failure in preclinical research; how open science can help, Dr Emily Sena
• Embedding open science in the university culture, Rebecca Lawrence

On 25^th June UCL is holding Open Science Day. The workshop will explore the facets of Open Science and how these are/could be pursued by UCL researchers. In the morning speakers will discuss different aspects of and perspectives on Open Science, and the afternoon workshops will offer practical advice.

Open Science, or Open Scholarship, is a movement that extends the principles of openness to the whole research cycle; it goes beyond making the primary outputs of publically funded research open access.

Open Science includes various movements that aim at making every step in the research lifecycle open. It starts with Open Notebooks, an emerging practice of sharing the entire record of the research project. With Open Notebooks researchers share raw and processed data, failed and other experiments that otherwise would remain unpublished. Open Data focuses on the next step in the research cycle. The data related to a research project is managed to ensure that it is easily discoverable and accessible, and can be shared. You can find out about Research Data Management at UCL here.

Open Peer Review has many definitions. The most open approach would be to post the whole pre-publication history of the article online, with reviewers’ comments, authors’ responses and previous versions of the article. See Wellcome Open Research for an example of a platform that publishes research with open peer-review. Open Access is making research articles freely available online, preferably under a licence that allows re-use, so that they can be used and shared easily. Open Source involves sharing software including the source code, also in a fully accessible and discoverable way; the code and software can be freely disseminated and adapted.

In the movement, there is also space for Scientific social networks; researchers can share scientific knowledge not only by responsible use of social sites like ResearchGate.net and Academia.edu but also via platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn .

Part of the movement is involving general public in the process of scientific research via Citizen Science, where non-academic public can actively contribute to science. This can be a part of public engagement programme at an institution or crowdsourcing research activities, as in UCL’s project Transcribe Bentham or ExCiteS. Open educational resources is yet another step in making research openly available, and it involves making materials that are useful for both teaching and research purposes freely available and usable.

If you want to find out more about Open Science register for UCL Open Science Day via Eventbrite.