Barcamp Open Science 2024: Happy Birthday!

Implementing Open Science practices in your workflows is a worthwhile endeavour, yet, still not enough researchers are convinced that it is worth to change their research practice – after all, what do they gain when they practise Open Science?

We therefore met in this session to collect success stories from people practising Open Science to make the benefits more tangible to people who are still on the fence about it. This is especially important when talking to established researchers who don’t see the need to change their traditional way of working and might prevent younger scientists from implementing Open Science practices.

First, we defined what a success story is – basically anything you or other people did in the Open Science context that positively impacted your or other people’s work and careers. The goal behind this session was to turn success stories into testimonials at some point that everybody can share across their networks and hopefully be able to convince more researchers to choose that road.

With a diverse set of people in the session, the success stories shared varied a lot and showcase how far-reaching the impact of doing Open Science can be. A recurring theme across all shared stories was the feeling of gratification and validation many felt when they worked on their Open Science projects and got positive feedback from peers or people outside of their own community.

A few examples:

• We heard about a student project in the arts which consisted of an art installation that was fully documented with code and descriptions and thus is reproducible for everyone using the same resources. The download numbers of their shared resources show the visibility of the project and hint to an intent of re-use by other artists.
• Profound Open Science experience triggered a career shift – from scientist to entrepreneur – and led to the founding of the Digital Research Academy (DRA). The DRA is a trainer network that offers consulting services and workshops on Open Science topics.
• A self-teaching course on Open Educational Resources won a teaching prize, a great recognition for a well thought out teaching resource.

Overall, practising Open Science does not only benefit the individual who actively practises it, it can have unforeseen positive impacts on others who benefit from accessibility and openness of the work. One recent example are disadvantaged communities from the Global South who are routinely excluded from major scientific work due to a lack of access to research and often a lack of training in good scientific practice. The recently founded African Reproducibility Network AREN benefits from trainers mostly from the Global North who freely share their experience and currently train a diverse cohort of African researchers in a large variety of Open Science topics.

Universities of Applied Sciences (UAS) have, until recently, not been featured prominently in discussions surrounding Open Science in Germany. Speaking broadly, these institutions have a smaller focus on research compared to “traditional” universities, instead focusing on teaching and providing students with first-hand experience in industry or other spheres. In recent years, interest in Open Science has been growing at UAS, yet it is increasingly obvious that solutions and approaches are not “one size fits all” (see also notes from the session “Open Science beyond STEM – in search for a Middle Ground” below). In this session, participants from academic institutions in Berlin and Brandenburg, as well as representatives from several Open Science networks came together to discuss challenges and opportunities particular to the UAS community.

We learned that several institutions have been or are currently working on an Open Science policy. Many applauded these steps and also recounted how having commitments on paper is a critical tool for advocating for change in their research communities. However, others expressed their frustration with policies that do not keep in step with the allocation of personnel, resources and (especially) research infrastructures.

As always, we noted that Open Science is a matter of changing culture. This is particularly true for researchers at UAS (and related institutions) who do not rely as heavily on peer-reviewed publications as their university counterparts. We were reminded of great allies and resources from organisations such as the NFDI and Helmholtz, as well as countering misconceptions such as that industry partners are categorically opposed to Open Science activities. We also acknowledged the importance of community building, both within and across institutions. Even for diverse research contexts such as UAS, it is rare that one has to completely reinvent the wheel. However, as one participant noted, community building in this context is a marathon, not a sprint.

At the end of the session, one hopeful thought prevailed: Participants noted that UAS are already home to a wide variety of Open Science practices – they just aren’t immediately labelled as such by their practitioners! Recognizing and rewarding activities in fields such as Citizen Science or Open Educational Resources is an important step to including UAS in discussions surrounding Open Science, and giving them a platform to share their expertise with the broader community.

The session explored the concept of reuse of Open Data in research, particularly focusing on how research outputs can be made available and useful for specific audiences, or communities of practice, beyond generic scenarios. It highlighted several challenges, including ensuring data findability, accessibility, providing context and documentation, applying appropriate licences, and using open file formats.

In its course, the discussion addressed various issues of data reuse, including the question of audiences and reuse settings. Understanding specific audiences and their intentions for reusing research material is crucial. This includes considering disciplinary aspects and the challenges of reaching a “general public” without dedicated intermediaries and communication strategies. While the promise of open research often is very inclusive, in reality communicating science to and engaging with non-academic audiences requires additional translational work. Making data and other resources simply available is not sufficient. Rather, the research logic, methodological specifics and the limitations of the respective research approaches must also be provided in an easily understandable context.

Other challenges in promoting reuse include ensuring findability, retrievability, and searchability of reusable material, as well as providing high-quality metadata and documentation. Another part of the discussion focussed on strategies to encourage reuse. Provision alone is often not very effective. In this context, the expansion of reputation measures and the recognition of reutilisation as a distinct scientific achievement are also relevant. Possible strategies are publishing on established platforms within specific communities. Also, it helps to focus on the high-quality presentation of research data and to develop appropriate citation and evaluation standards.

Another important aspect is differentiating possible types of reuse. The discussion touched on differences between reproduction, replication, and reutilisation, again emphasising the need to consider the purpose and potential reuse scenarios when publishing data.

In conclusion, there were two main areas for further exploration: firstly, monitoring and documenting actual reuse, and secondly, better defining the concept of “general public” in the context of Open Science. The discussion emphasised the importance of tailoring data presentation to specific audiences and purposes, as well as the need for dedicated competencies and education in preparing and communicating research data for reuse.

In 2016, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research encouraged the establishment of Open Access networking and competence centres at the level of the federal states to promote Open Access to academic publications. These centres developed Open Access strategies, implemented basic practices, and established positions in higher education institutions. Eight years later, some of these centres aim to expand their focus to include Open Science and research policies. The challenge, however, is to build communities of practice in Open Science without losing the original emphasis on Open Access.

Representatives of various Open Access networking centres discussed this challenge and concluded that there are better solutions than merely rebranding the centres. Given the limited resources available and existing skillsets mostly geared towards Open Access, the feasibility of expanding the focus to Open Science should be carefully considered. While Open Access offices can act as networkers and mediators, their authority may be limited in regions where agreements are made directly between the state and universities.

The success of the Open Access strategy has prompted considerations for new priorities, such as Open Science. However, it is important to carefully consider whether Open Access offices should stay within their core topic or expand their focus to include Open Science. In principle, the latter would require a new or at least adapted science policy framework and corresponding specific allocations of resources.

How can we support researchers from non-STEM disciplines and also support each other on our roads to an equitable Open Science, broadening our horizons on different research cultures and practices?

We believe discussing what challenges disciplines beyond STEM face during this Open Science transformation can help unmask possible biases in the Open Science community that developed its underlying concepts of openness mainly based on challenges in STEM-related publication cultures and markets. We also believe that the difficulties of thereby “othered” disciplines to implement certain Open Science practices are due to this normalisation of particular research cultures and their production modes by the community in shaping the Open Science transformation – and should not be reduced to fears of change or of the loss of appreciation and reputation.

In this spontaneous session, we assembled and discussed examples for research practices and situations that cannot simply be projected onto established Open Science strategies although they represent aspects of scientific openness, like:

• different data formats and publication processes
• connectedness to creative industries that operate without public funding
• absence of a reproducibility crisis in the arts & humanities
• transdisciplinarity
• post-publication review modes that are currently (re)introduced unacknowledged as Open Peer Review
• participatory research approaches in social research
• or simply the necessity to work unfunded.

In the end, we had to face how difficult it is to interrogate one’s own perspective and that much more symmetrical exchange is needed among the disciplines, to bring to the table the multitude of approaches to knowledge production that is required to truly rethink and reassemble scholarly communication for an era of Open Research.

Open Science seems to be endorsed in the research communities. Many institutions have written statements and policies addressing the dimensions of Open Science. Additionally, surveys show that researchers have a positive attitude towards Open Science. However, we do not have yet evidence that Open Science is advancing as a default for good scientific practice in science. Monitoring the progress and impact of activities aiming to foster Open Science – like strategy and policy actions and supportive services – is crucial to evaluate our way to open up research. However, the question is how Open Science practices should be monitored in a fair and desired way. The session participants collected current discussion papers and initiative to monitor Open Science (see links in pad). Besides the CoARA initiative, one relevant paper is the UNESCO draft, whose initiators are currently asking for feedback from the Open Science community.

The group discussed the risks of misinterpreting quantitative Open Science indicators, emphasising the different disciplinary cultures and the challenges when comparing them based on simple indicators, as well as the difficulty to get full and comparative data to measure Open Science practices beyond Open Access publications. Regarding the different top-down and bottom-up initiatives, it will be thrilling to see how Open Science monitoring will be conceptualised and who will implement it in the near future.

So far, Open Data efforts have focussed on the open publication and sharing of data after it has been deemed “finished”. For example, many widely used tools and repositories such as Zenodo have no integrated features for collaboration. In this session, we focussed on practices and processes for open collaboration on research data during the research process. We discussed use cases in climate policy data and astrophysical data. We noticed that data sharing and collaboration workflows today are very different between disciplines, and even within disciplines for specific data types. For successful collaboration, standardisation of data formats, tools and repositories are necessary, which often derives from discipline-specific traditions. Additionally, workflows are different due to different data size and therefore storage requirements. Unfortunately, successful workflows are therefore usually not easily transferable as a whole to other disciplines or data types, but a mix-and-match approach is promising.