Contextualising open science training programmes

Open science training programmes are on the rise both in academic and non academic settings. Several organisations are providing upskilling sessions on different topics essential to ensure reproducibility and accessibility of research. Among them, OLS, a capacity building organisation has led the way with their flagship Open Seeds programme, a training and mentoring programme in Open Science for researchers from all levels. This programme provides hands-on experience with open science principles during a 16 week long training period, including different topics like Open data, open communities and EDI.

One of the disadvantages of these kinds of global programmes is the lack of context in the content provided. Participants can fall out from learning key concepts and tools related to their specific fields of work.

We have recently run a pilot version of Open Seeds in the School of Neuroscience at King’s College London, called Open Neuroseeds. In this session, we will highlight the lessons learned and the feedback obtained from contextualising this important type of training. We will provide tips and tricks to adapt your own training programmes to the audience to help contextualise lessons learn, and hence, embrace them more efficiently in their research workflows.

This is an important discussion for all RSEs and trainers who usually work in multidisciplinary teams and with researchers not well versed in open science practices.