Take-aways from Open Science Festival
Naomi Wahls, 1 September 2023
Photo by Joshua Sortino on Unsplash
The Open Science Festival was hosted by the Erasmus University in Rotterdam on 31 August 2023. Over 400 people registered for the event, ranging from experts in Open Science to those interested in learning about Open Science. It includes researchers, research support staff, and suppliers. The full programme includes presentations, plenaries, and networking time.
Reflection on Opening Session
The opening session was a nice confirmation of steps that TU Delft is taking in the right direction towards open by establishing Data Stewards and by creating grassroots funding opportunities for Open Science. The opening session was lead by Esther van Rijswijk and Antonio Schettino and included Annelien Bredenoord, Rector Magnificus of Erasmus University Rotterdam.
Open Science though tends to have more grassroot pilots in various stages with hopes of becoming embedded into an ecosystem. Before moving to the Netherlands, I supported virtual exchanges which often are grassroot pilots which hope to become embedded into an ecosystem between multiple universities. Due to my prior work, open education sparked my interest, particularly Open Educational Practice (OEP). Thus for me, Open Science feels like a more established infrastructure to empower research advancements. Ironically, Erasmus is globally known as a symbol of student mobility and thus is often the name leading virtual exchanges such as the Erasmus Virtual Exchanges.
Open Science events are an excellent space to see how others are collaborating and what advancements there are in the field. It’s also where you can foresee hurdles along the path of advancements.
The Open ebook from 2017 by Rajiv Jhangiani and Robert Biswas-Diener implied that OEP and Open Education overshadow Open Educational Resources (OER) which often take form in MOOCs in Open Education. For Open Science, the format of OER is often software such as a tool which some called Open Education Tools (OET) for a time, but that has seemed to disappear or reverted back to OER.
Session reflections
The first session I attended was Beyond Access: Making Research Discoverable, Accessible and Inclusive for All. This session speakers were Peter Kraker (Open Knowledge Maps), Astrid van Wesenbeeck & Martijn Kleppe (KB, National Library of the Netherlands), Maurice Vanderfeesten (VU University Library). To showcase the issue of paywalls, the first speaker was a primary school teacher who showcased the need for open access. In short, teachers do not have access that they might have had as a student through a university library. The example given was if the teacher reads a book with references that do not have open access, then they need to purchase subscriptions. A fundamental problem in the education system is that elementary and secondary schools do not have access to research that could provide professional development.
Following that, the struggle that the national library system has in improving services beyond creating awareness became more evident.
Next in that session was a demo of Open Knowledge Maps and then OpenAire. Both offer much potential to campus. Open Knowledge Maps seems to be a nice way to see what themes are in a repository or collection that we maybe didn’t notice yet. It could also be a nice way to allow end-users to make their own selection of items they want to display/save from our repository.
2.3 Connecting FAIR data with OPEN ACCESS Publications Project
This session was presented by Madalina Fron and Zahra Khoshnevis (TU Delft). The project was supporty by Yan Wang, Just de Leeuwe, and Frederique Belliard (TU Delft). This TU Delft initiative was a great starter project from Bachelor level students. They presented that 82% of peer-reviewed articles and 71% of conference papers are Open Access (OA), but that we lack numbers on open data. The project aims to review the connection between OA and Findable Accessible Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR).
The questions and answers posed in the session were difficult to follow by the audience, but were still relevant to the field. This session made me wonder how we train end-users for uploading and how we advise visitors of licensing and if there is room for improvement to embed training and advise in our repository further. The speakers brought up metadata and seemed to believe in sound metadata, but I also wonder based on the perception in the room what role automating metadata and checking and auto improving metadata is already expected from end-users. Perhaps current expectations are that showcased technologies at such events like these are already embedded into current tools.
3.4 Recognition & Rewards: Open & Responsible Research Assessment
This session was presented by Lizette Guzman-Ramirez, Nami Sunami and Jeffrey Sweeney (EUR). This final presentation offered an intriguing solution for recognition. They explained their recognition and rewards badging system and asked the audience for input on improving the badges. However, one audience member sparked a debate by asking if badges replace the current problematic system with another that simply repeats a checklist but offers a different list with different people giving the checks. The debate seemed to question the reasoning behind rewards and recognition. It also seemed to question how such a system relates to empowering researchers to advance their careers in a different way or provide transparency about their career opportunities. If we want to help researchers advance their career in a personalized way, could virtual career advice be applied to a researcher profile to improve the career opportunities based on their outputs, education, and other skills noted in a researcher profile? I wonder if something could be explored in that space in addition to the rewards and recognition programmes or as part of them.
Reflections on Open Education and Open Science events and Future Infrastructure Predictions
While I typically attend Open Education events, I’m new to attending Open Science events. Here are my reflections on Open Education events and future predictions.
Open Education events tend to be more about Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), although it is much debated if they are really massive since the original numbers of participants have decreased since the early years of MOOCs. In 2016, the trend in MOOCs predicted they would replace lifelong learning and provide flexible professional development (Castaño-Muñoz, Kreijns, Kalz, 2016). This prediction seems to be quite accurate. Willem van Valkenburg predicted in 2018 that “as more universities and higher education systems begin offering their degree programs online, we could be moving towards a single, global system of higher education” (The 9th TCU International e-Learning Conference in Thailand in 2018 (Pickard, 2018). I believe this prediction will also take place; it is only a question of when.
With these reflections in mind, I attended the Open Science Festival hoping to hear future predictions in the field and also hear how we’ve learned from the recent past, from predictions that missed the mark. I missed the closing due to last minute scheduling and thus missed the likely future predictions. The trends seem to be that the younger generation already assumed Open Science is a standard and they do not seem to be aware how much effort it took to get here. Across the field, there seems to be common support issues for Open-Source pilots seeking to become established services. Infrastructure for OER within Open Science is much needed. I look forward to future Open Science events and seeing the future advancements!
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