10.1 Where Librarians Can Learn and Teach Open Science for European Researchers

Training European researchers and professionals in Open Science is both a necessity and a challenge, in particular to further facilitate the European Commission’s Open Access and Open Data policies as adopted for the Horizon2020 research framework and by many other research funders across Europe and worldwide. Finding good resources for teaching and training can, however, be challenging, despite or even because institutions and national initiatives have developed and delivered high-quality training content which is widely dispersed online but so far not systematically harnessed and shared with the community. This makes it difficult for librarians to establish services and training for their users.

The FOSTER project is aimed at identifying, enriching and providing training content on all relevant topics in the area of Open Science for the European research community. It will equip librarians and other enablers in the research process with the necessary tools and materials to learn and teach all the facets of Open Science. Knowledge managers and librarians are guided by learning objectives specifically developed for them to be able quickly to identify the topics most relevant to them and their clientele. Our training toolkit provides assistance and a range of examples to enable the adoption of materials and courses to learn and teach Open Science.

The training resources collected and freely available in the FOSTER Training Portal are provided under open licenses; have been identified from reliable resources and quality assured by the FOSTER consortium; have additionally been developed for a series of FOSTER training sessions held in 2014 (continuing in 2015); are multi-disciplinary and multi-lingual; use and support a variety of training methods and formats; can be contributed to by interested members of the ‘Open’ communities; are qualified in several categories: e.g. relevant topics (such as Open Access, Open Data, Open Science, Open Metrics and Impact, Funder policies, Copyright and legal issues, etc.), audiences (academic staff, institutions, research project managers, policy makers) and knowledge level.

This presentation will showcase the FOSTER Training Portal and its Open Science taxonomy. It will describe the process of how to identify relevant training topics, select suitable resources and combine them into a training offering.

Astrid Orth works on international and national projects and initiatives in the Electronic Publishing Unit in Göttingen State and University Library, with a strong focus on policies and services that enhance open access and research data management in libraries. In 2014 she joined the recently-started FOSTER project as Project Officer (www. fosteropenscience.eu), which creates Open Science training materials for key stakeholders in European research.