Overview
Explore ways to apply Open Science principles to academic work - including your own. Learn how to share your research effectively and responsibly, building greater visibility and impact.
You can become a more visible, effective and impactful researcher by sharing your research data, software, and publications openly. In this introductory course, you will learn the objectives, main concepts, and benefits of Open Science principles along with practices for Open Data management and Open Data sharing.
Research increasingly relies on code, which is developed to process, model and simulate as well as to deal with the ever-growing volume of research data. This course will cover relevant FAIR software practices that are essential for the reproducibility of your research results.
Societal participation in research is becoming ever more important. The course will demonstrate what citizen science is about, how to stimulate citizens to participate in your research and how to handle (new) responsibilities when implementing citizen science.
You will learn to establish links between publications, data, software and methods, how to attach a persistent identifier and metadata to your results, and methods for clarifying usage rights. You will also discover ways to apply these principles to your daily research and adapt established routines. Finally, you will uncover potential barriers to sharing research and discuss possible solutions.
This course will help you grasp the key principles of Open Science, with answers to questions like:
- How can researchers effectively store, manage, and share research data and code?
- What kinds of Open Access publishing are most effective?
- How can researchers increase the visibility and impact of their research?
- How can the use of social media contribute to the visibility and impact of research?
- How can researchers be acknowledged for research outputs other than publications?
- How can research benefit from citizen science?
You will apply the topics of the course to a variety of case studies on Open Science adoption. You will also be presented with a hands-on guide to publishing your research with Open Access. This will help you to apply Open Science principles in your daily work. It will enable you to implement and benefit from the Open Science policies that are currently being developed by governments and research institutions around the world.
This course is aimed at researchers. Those who will benefit most include academic researchers at different levels: PhD students, postdoctoral researchers, and professors; researchers working for governments; researchers working for commercial enterprises; MSc and BSc students interested in learning about the principles of Open Science.
What you'll learn
- Describe concepts and objectives of Open Science
- Analyze and discuss benefits and barriers of particular Open Science cases, including cases from within your own region or discipline
- Set up an Open Data sharing strategy to increase your research visibility
- Determine appropriate routes to take when publishing an Open Access article
Additionally, you can choose elective modules and be informed on how to:
- Identify what knowledge, skills and tools are relevant and useful to publishing your own code in Open Science
- Increase your research visibility
- Gain insight into how research can benefit from citizen science
Details
Course Syllabus
Module 1: Introduction to Open Science
Introduction to the Open Science movement. What are the objectives, main concepts, and benefits of Open Science?
By following this module you will:
- Gain insight into the basic history of the Open Science
- Be informed about key topics open scientists are working on
- Learn about the practical Open Science benefits for researchers
- Learn about open science policies from important funding organizations
- Gain insight into programs on Open Data and Open Access publishing
- Identify what role open science plays for you and your fellow researchers
Module 2: Research Data Management
Introduction to effective and secure research data management.
By following this module, you will:
- Learn about the disciplinary standards of FAIR data sharing
- Be able to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of different data storage and backup options
- Be in a position to organize, document and add metadata to research data to optimize the visibility of your data
- Be made aware of data archiving, access, sharing and re-use with the use of data repositories
- Gain insight into the different copyright licenses designed to deal with Open Data
- Deal with confidential data, company restrictions, and third-party agreements through case studies
- Evaluate a data management plan
- Explain how Open Data can be applied in your field of research
Module 3: Publishing Open Access
This week you will learn all about the workings and benefits of publishing open access.
By following this module, you will be able to:
- Discuss the main differences between the Open Access and subscription-based publication model in science
- Explain the main misconceptions about Open Access publishing.
- Gain insight into the creative commons licenses used by Open Access journals and self-archiving policies.
- Examine how you can maximize the accessibility of publications in subscription-based journals
- Form and present your opinion of the Open Access publishing model
- Assess the 'openness' of the main scientific journals in your field of research.
Module 4: Choose topic(s) depending on your interests:
Making your research software FAIR (and OPEN)
Research Software development has gained significant attention in the field of Open Science. It has become clear that researchers need to possess sufficient software development skills and adopt best practices to effectively share their research output. In this module, we will explore how to write and reuse code (research software) for your research. You will learn about the challenges you may face along the way – and how to address them – as well as concepts and tools for research software development, such as FAIR for Research Software, re-use of code, version control, documentation, and publication.
Increasing your research visibility
Here you discuss and formulate your communication strategy, describing and choosing your social media channels for reaching certain target groups.
Citizen science
Societal participation in research is becoming ever more important. The course will demonstrate what citizen science is about, how to stimulate citizens to participate in your research and how to handle (new) responsibilities when implementing citizen science. In this module you will learn how to involve citizens in your research.
Finally, conclusions of this course will be discussed, and we will reflect on what has been taught in the previous modules.
Admission
This is a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) that runs on EdX.
Prerequisites:
- Basic professional knowledge of scientific publishing/practices and research processes
- Professional knowledge of research data management
- Command of written and spoken English
