Making Open Science the "New Normal" in a Large and Diverse Institution: The Road so Far

The University of Edinburgh is a member of the League of European Research Universities (LERU) and has adopted its 2018 paper Open Science and its role in universities: a roadmap for cultural change[1] as the basis for our own Open Research Roadmap[2]. This roadmap is owned by the university Library as many aspects of open research fall within our area of expertise, such as open access publishing and FAIR data. By developing this roadmap based on the LERU template we have been able to objectively evaluate our progress towards making Open Research the “new normal” across the university. Achieving the ambitions of our roadmap will take time and require fundamental cultural changes across our entire research community and those who support them.

In areas such as FAIR data and open access publishing we are doing well with policies, support, and resources in place to ensure that all researchers can make their publications and data open if they choose to do so. We are also making good progress with Citizen Science as we have recruited a Participatory Research and Citizen Science Engagement Officer specifically to focus on this area.

Other areas however present more of a challenge as they require changes to the ways in which researchers are trained in open research and recognised & rewarded for their efforts. Addressing these challenges successfully requires that the library works closely with other areas of the university who are responsible for research ethics, researcher training, recognition & reward, and more.

This poster shows some of the progress we have made but more than that will look at the remaining challenges and how we plan to address them. I hope that it will open useful discussions with people from other institutions about how they are addressing these same challenges so that we can support and learn from each other.

[1] LERU (2018), https://www.leru.org/publications/open-science-and-its-role-in-universities-a-roadmap-for-cultural-change#, accessed 14/04/2023

[2] University of Edinburgh (2023) https://www.ed.ac.uk/information-services/about/organisation/library-and-collections/open-research, accessed 14/04/2023