Community

I am a firm believer in Open and Team Science and one of the founder members of the Open Science Community Twente. In that capacity, I regularly contribute to the activities of INOSC, the International network of Open Science communities. I also contribute to the recently created Citizen Science & Open Science Community of Practice. Together we will make Open Science the norm.

I already support Open Science (OS) and Open Access since the Budapest Initiative in February 2002. Various declarations and initiatives followed. My engagement lies in the fact that researchers all over the world should be able to benefit from science results and as such from progress in science which is important for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. I have organized sessions at ITC on related topics to Open Science like there are FAIR data and PlanS. I have experienced the importance of Open Science in the Global South in different projects. Besides that, I am a member of the UNESCO Expert Group on OS where we work on developing a new global standard-setting instrument on OS. A first draft is finished by now. I am also a member of the ITC Library Committee

Before I came to ITC to work as an Open Science Officer, I worked at the Institute for Geoinformatics (University of Münster) in the project Opening Reproducible Research. In this project, I finished my dissertation "Publishing Reproducible Geoscientific Papers: Status quo, benefits, and opportunities".

After completing her PhD in Developmental Biology at the University of Nottingham, Connie joined 4TU.ResearchData which is an international data repository for science, engineering and design disciplines. Her primary focus is to engage researchers about data management, and bring discipline-specific communities together to stimulate the creation of FAIR data.

I believe science should be open and accessible for all. That motivates me to be a part of the Open Science Community Twente where science is discussed, without barriers, acknowledging the source, documented, shared, and nurturing science.

Myself being an alumni of ITC, Netherlands, is engaged in transport research studies in general in Asian countries, with particular reference to South Asian countries. Traffic congestion had been an economic burden for these countries, and enhancing capacities by way of adding new infrastructure, consumes colossal amounts of borrowed capital, and economics of these countries couldn’t bear these financial burden. Today an alternative approach, had been to make use of data driven approaches mainly intelligent mobility solutions, these emerging interventions could manage traffic congestion and to facilitate mobility related decisions. I believe by joining the open science community I would be able to listen and understand this very same problem, how others manage it, so we could have a trans-disciplinary approach. I am so glad to be associated with diverse group of professionals so with diverse views

I’m a research data steward for BMS and ITC at UT. In my work, I help addressing research data management related questions from researchers, and provide support and advice on how to make research data FAIR. However, making data FAIR is not an easy job, because in practice researchers encounter all kinds of obstacles preventing them from going FAIR. Since FAIR data falls within the scope of Open Science, joining the OSC will give me a chance to learn the best practices from other colleagues and researchers, and more importantly to hear the needs from researchers.

As information specialist, I get to help a lot of researchers with their amazing projects. I know how proud most people are of their efforts (and rightly so), and that it can be scary or costly to ensure your work is 100% open. I do believe, though, that the world would be a better place if all scientific research and data would be publicly available. It would allow for more collaborations, innovations, and applications. It would bridge gaps between universities, between continents even. It improves connectivity and transparency, increases the usability and ultimately.. the impact of your hard work. I’m sure we can overcome any obstacles on the road to such a world.

In my job I meet different researchers every day, and their opinions on Open Science differ a lot. I’m interested in hearing people’s arguments on why to join Open Science, or why not. I once heard a teacher say: “The work you are proud of should never be hidden, so Open Science is the way to present your work to the world.” I agree with that and therefore I am joining the OSC Twente!

When I think of open science and open access, I always think of Newton’s quote on how knowledge progresses: ‘If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants‘ (letter to Robert Hooke, 1675). That is exactly how science works: We build upon what others have done before us. But if those shoulders are only accessible to those who pay, and we can’t exactly see what others have done, then we aren’t using science to its fullest potential. Just imagine the progress in knowledge if people all over the world are truly able to see and understand and build upon each other’s work.

At the UT, I’m part of the library team on open access. We try to make open-access publishing as easy and understandable and affordable as possible for UT authors. How? Check out www.utwente.nl/openaccess. I’m also a member of the UKB working group on open access where open-access specialist from all Dutch universities work together on reaching 100% open access.

One of the items in my function as data librarian at LISA is Open Science, or more specifically, FAIR data. Although it does not mean that data should always be open to anyone, it is important that data are somehow findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable. In my view this is the bottom line in the context of open science because it makes science verifiable and reproducible. I hope that more UT researchers will regard Open Science and FAIR data as the norm in their work.

While studying applied physics at University of Twente my campus room got an internet connection which started me on first open standards, then the semantic web and eventually data visualisation. As the open web was started for science communication, I was surprised by how closed science still was years later. I'm glad open science and FAIR data are now terms many researchers have at least heard of, and I love explaining how people can quickly turn them to their advantage. Also, I have experience as a carpentries-"We teach foundational coding and data science skills to researchers worldwide"-instructor and throw FAIR-related braindumps on Github sometimes, e.g. dataCentricFileExploring , pre-Excel-present and Train-Of-Thought. At Saxion Research Services I usually take on the more data-oriented or software-related support tasks.

In my work as a research data steward (ET and S&T faculty at University of Twente) I help researchers with data management and making their data FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable). I am interested in experiences from others regarding Open Science and FAIR data.