Open Science is key to improving the quality of science. Promising greater transparency, reproducibility, avenues for collaboration and innovation, resource efficiency and many other advantages, Open Science is also a policy priority of the European Commission and other leading funding agencies. Scientific communities are endeavouring to develop, improve and adapt various aspects of Open Science for the benefit of researchers and societal stakeholders. While the benefits of Open Science are widely recognised and manifold, this development also requires cultural change and institutional transformation.
Like the European Commission, the aUPaEU project considers Open Science as a priority for the institutional transformation of both Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and the deepening of the European Research Area (ERA). aUPaEU firmly believes that acceleration services can go hand in hand with Open Science, as both work towards accelerating research and innovation (R&I), collaborations and institutional change. As part of its mission, aUPaEU is committed to developing, refining and disseminating acceleration services to support HEI transformation. In the following, we will explore some of the various synergies between acceleration services and Open Science.
Open Science accelerates science
Given the wide range of Open Science activities and their progressive nature, it is not surprising to see that a number of potential acceleration services are located within Open Science, for example in the areas of researcher career assessment and infrastructure sharing. To better understand the kinship and potential synergies between acceleration services and different facets of Open Science, we would first like to outline some commonly perceived goals, benefits and characteristics of the latter.
Like acceleration services, Open Science is capable of speeding up research processes. Take the example of data sharing, which enables faster and more efficient dissemination of results, speeding up the reuse of datasets and fostering collaborations between researchers. Sharing research data goes hand in hand with improving data quality: The FAIR principles, which stand for Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability[1], represent a set of standards for good research practices that are increasingly applied beyond the context of research data, for example to research software. Or take the flagship of Open Science, Open Access, which reduces costs and barriers for researchers and other stakeholders to access and use scientific results, thus improving the openness, inclusivity, and transferability of science. These examples are far from exhaustive, but they show that all these practices contribute to the overall quality of science, paving and accelerating its way forward.
Accelerating Open Science
However, and although many Open Science activities are already considered good scientific practice, they are not yet necessarily common practice. Despite the enormous relevance and benefits, many of the steps undertaken to move towards Open Science are quite recent developments and are still in the early stages of implementation. Funding agencies, HEIs, and scientific communities are offering more and more services and resources to educate researchers on Open Science practices, develop guidelines and policies, or promote new career paths, for example as Data Stewards. Yet Open Science still faces legal, cultural and technical challenges, as well as a widespread lack of awareness among researchers.
To overcome these obstacles and speed up the cultural shift towards Open Science, it is beneficial to draw on the idea of acceleration services. Acceleration services are powerful tools to foster institutional transformation and have the potential to boost HEI’s human capital, strategic alignment, R&I dimension, access to resources any many other relevant areas. In doing so, acceleration services help HEIs to address present challenges and speed up institutional change. It is our belief that thinking of Open Science in terms of acceleration services can help to translate the notion of Open Science into tangible and useful services and thus provide a meaningful way to facilitate Open Science. Let us substantiate this claim with some examples of acceleration services offered by the Agora platform.
An Agora for Open Science
As an open source platform for the provision and consumption of acceleration services, the Agora supports HEIs and university alliances seeking institutional transformation. By collecting, validating and facilitating acceleration services, the Agora serves as a hub for R&I activities while at the same time enabling the creation of a community of practice open to different types of stakeholders. The acceleration services offered by the Agora platform will cover a variety of priority areas from the ERA Policy Agenda, such as infrastructure and resource sharing, promoting researcher professions, involving citizens, facilitating university–industry collaboration, as well as promoting open science.
In the following, we would like to present three concrete examples from the Agora platform to illustrate the relevance of various acceleration services for Open Science.
- When it comes to resource sharing, most people first think of sharing data. However, the sharing of researching infrastructures is increasingly becoming a promoted aspect of Open Science. The Catalogue of Research Infrastructures is a service that can facilitate this challenging practice by improving the findability, accessibility, interoperability and reusability of infrastructures and helping researchers to share and access these valuable resources.
- Speaking of valuable resources: With the Open Experts on Acceleration Services, researchers looking for specialised training and expertise in specific fields can browse the platform and contact suitable experts. Conversely, this service offers experts the opportunity to share and disseminate their expertise, connect with other stakeholders and build collaborations.
- In line with the concept of Open Educational Resources, the Unite! Online Toolkit Showcase provides tools such as guides, best practice examples, and more to develop and manage joint educational offerings such as joint programmes or collaborative courses. Using this service allows users to find or disseminate valuable tools or identify partners for collaboration.
Conclusion
Both Acceleration Services and Open Science aim, among other things, at better research and innovation, more efficient science, and increased collaboration. As outlined above, both notions can easily go hand in hand, learn from each other and mutually support each other’s developments. On the one hand, Acceleration Services can benefit from understanding and implementing the FAIR principles and the deployment of relevant tools and policies, as well as learn from prevailing challenges for Open Science. On the other hand, Open Science can gain from translating its ambitions into tangible services for researchers and other stakeholders, pooling resources in dedicated platforms and creating communities of practice to lead the cultural shift towards Open Science from the bottom up.
The Agora Platform is a powerful tool for HEI alliances to combine the two and create a digital space for sharing ideas, exploring and offering acceleration services and partnering with other stakeholders, thereby facilitating institutional transformation and Open Science alike. Finally, and in the spirit of Open Science, the Agora platform does not seek to reinvent the wheel, but to bring together, promote, and disseminate best practices to improve science as a whole.
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata201618