What is Open Science?

Print version of 'What is Open Science?' which is part of the FOSTER's Open Science (OS) training courses which aim to answer some of the most common questions researchers have about putting open science into practice. Each of the ten online courses takes about 1-2 hours to work through and participants receive a badge upon successful completion. The courses include practical tips on getting started with OS as well as providing information on discipline specific tools and resources that are available. There is no specified order through the courses – participants can just explore topics that they want to learn more about at their own pace. The courses are targeted toward early career researchers but can be completed by anyone. The courses are available as SCORM packages as well to support amendment and reuse by research support staff and Open Science trainers. 

These courses have been developed during 2018 as part of the FOSTER Plus (Fostering the practical implementation of Open Science in Horizon 2020 and beyond) project[1] reusing openly available content produced by a range of content providers including DataOne[2], Research Data Netherlands[3], Open Data Institute[4], European Data Portal[5], Digital Curation Centre[6], UK Data Service[7], CESSDA ERIC[8], DARIAH[9], ELIXIR[10], Software Sustainability Institute[11], FOSTER[12] and many others actively developing open educational resources relating to Open Science.

The courses are presented in a similar style to that employed by the Open Data Institute (ODI) and the European Data Portal in the hopes that this will enable our content to augment the body of Open Science related materials already produced and make their collective reuse more seamless. To this end, we have also made use of the Adapt authoring tool[13] also used by the ODI and European Data Portal.

We have employed a variation of the case study approach developed by the European Commission's Open Science Monitor[14] to help illustrate useful tools and initiatives from disciplinary perspectives. 

Images used in the courses are under CC0 license unless otherwise stated.

[1] FOSTER Plus https://www.fosteropenscience.eu/about. This project has also received funding from the European Union's Horizon2020 programme for research, technological development and demonstration under agreement no 741839.

[2] https://www.dataone.org/

[3] http://www.researchdata.nl/

[4] https://theodi.org/

[5] https://www.europeandataportal.eu/en/homepage

[6] http://www.dcc.ac.uk/

[7] https://www.ukdataservice.ac.uk/

[8] https://www.cessda.eu/

[9] https://www.dariah.eu/

[10] https://www.elixir-europe.org/

[11] https://software.ac.uk/

[12] https://fosteropenscience.eu/

[13] https://www.adaptlearning.org/

[14] https://ec.europa.eu/research/openscience/index.cfm?pg=home&section=monitor