Category Archives: oa.belgium

Open Science to Increase Reproducibility in Science – Research Data Management

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“OSIRIS will investigate, trial and implement interventions to improve reproducibility in science

While over the past decade many interventions to improve reproducibility have been introduced, targeted at funders, publishers or individual researchers, only few of them have been empirically tested. OSIRIS will do just that, testing existing and newly developed interventions, including Open Science practices, through controlled trials. The underlying drivers, barriers and incentives of reproducibility will also be studied in a systematic way. Aim is to deliver and disseminate guidance about evidence-based interventions that can improve the reproducibility of scientific findings….”

Open Science services supported by KU Leuven – Open Science

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“KU Leuven promotes a sustainable implementation of Open Access and Open Science, and especially sponsors non-profit and community-led initiatives through the KU Leuven Fund for Fair OA. On the one hand, the fund supports various publishing initiatives and infrastructures. On the other hand, the fund joins collective funding programs in the field of open scholarship. On this page you can find an overview of everything that KU Leuven endorses….”

Uses of the Journal Impact Factor in national journal rankings in China and Europe – Kulczycki – Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology – Wiley Online Library

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Abstract:  This paper investigates different uses of the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) in national journal rankings and discusses the merits of supplementing metrics with expert assessment. Our focus is national journal rankings used as evidence to support decisions about the distribution of institutional funding or career advancement. The seven countries under comparison are China, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Norway, Poland, and Turkey—and the region of Flanders in Belgium. With the exception of Italy, top-tier journals used in national rankings include those classified at the highest level, or according to tier, or points implemented. A total of 3,565 (75.8%) out of 4,701 unique top-tier journals were identified as having a JIF, with 55.7% belonging to the first Journal Impact Factor quartile. Journal rankings in China, Flanders, Poland, and Turkey classify journals with a JIF as being top-tier, but only when they are in the first quartile of the Average Journal Impact Factor Percentile. Journal rankings that result from expert assessment in Denmark, Finland, and Norway regularly classify journals as top-tier outside the first quartile, particularly in the social sciences and humanities. We conclude that experts, when tasked with metric-informed journal rankings, take into account quality dimensions that are not covered by JIFs.

 

Knowledge Unlatched: A New Funding Round and Work with FID Benelux

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“Knowledge Unlatched head of publisher relations Neil Christensen has announced a partnership with a “specialized information service” called FID Benelux Low Countries Studies, based in Münster. In this project, FID Benelux has paid to make 28 titles from the field of Dutch, Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg studies available as open access. The resulting ebooks have been made openly accessible in partnership with Knowledge Unlatched (KU) and its “KU Reverse” model….”

KU LEUVEN CENTRE FOR IT & IP LAW: RESEARCH FELLOW (M/F – SENIOR/JUNIOR) WITH FOCUS ON IP LAW

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“As a legal research fellow you will assist the PI(s) in the analysis, impact and opportunities of IP regulations, in particular copyright, in relation to a variety of topics/projects including Open Science, Open Data/PSI, trade secrets, and more generally to emerging issues of data governance from a property/IP perspective. You will be assisting in research projects either as a researcher or as a coordinator (depending on junior/senior) in the aforementioned areas employing a wide range of methodological approaches (case scenarios, EU comparative analysis, historical development of legal regulations, etc) and you should be able to develop their work in close collaboration with the PI, but also show the ability to perform specific tasks with a certain degree of autonomy.  As the research may also develop in other areas of law (e.g. fundamental rights, competition law, consumer protection, property law, unfair competition), your familiarity with (some) of these topics will be an asset duly considered….”

Open Science day 2022 – Open Science

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“The 2022 edition is conceived as a forum for discussion. After an outline of KU Leuven’s Open Science strategy by vice rector research policy Jan D’hooge, researchers will have the opportunity to discuss with him and an expert panel. The rest of the day will be devoted to two interactive panel sessions and a poster session.

The panel sessions will be dedicated to the reproducibility and replication of research on the one hand, and preprints and (open) peer review on the other hand.

As for the poster session, we welcome every topic related to Open Science, both theoretical studies and more practical contributions. Researchers can also address their own research subject, and explain how it is affected by Open Science, how they put openness into practice, or why they oppose the tendency to open up all elements of the research cycle. …”

Societal impact of university research in the written press: media attention in the context of SIUR and the open science agenda among social scientists in Flanders, Belgium | SpringerLink

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Abstract:  Transferring scientific knowledge to non-academic audiences is an essential aspect of the open science agenda, which calls for scholars to pursue a popularization of their research. Accordingly, purposefully introducing scientific insights to the public at large is almost univocally deemed commendable. Indeed, in today’s models of research evaluation, the objects and activities considered are being extended beyond peer-reviewed journal articles to include non-scholarly popular communication. Although altmetrics offer one instrumental way to count some interactions with lay audiences, their reliance on social media makes them susceptible to manipulation, and mostly reflect circulation among niche audiences. In comparison, attention from non-scholarly media like newspapers and magazines seems a more relevant pathway to effectuate societal impact, due to its recognition in qualitative assessment tools and its broad, societal reach. Based on a case study of social scientists’ attention by newspapers and magazines in Flanders (northern Dutch-speaking region of Belgium) in 2019, this paper highlights that frequent participation in the public debate is reserved for high-status researchers only. Results show highly skewed media appearance patterns in both career position and gender, as eight male professors accounted for almost half of all 2019 media attention for social scientists. Because media attention is highly subject-dependent moreover, certain disciplines and fields offer easier pathways to popularization in media than others. Both the open science agenda and research assessment models value presence of researchers in popular media, adding written press attention to existing evaluation assessments however would disproportionately disadvantage early career researchers and exacerbate existing inequalities in academia.

 

 

FREE UKSG webinar – Library funding for Open Access at KU Leuven | UKSG

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“At KU Leuven we believe that it is essential to apply library budgets to foster a greater diversity in the market of academic publishing. With this purpose in mind we have founded the KU Leuven Fund for Fair Open Access, which is exclusively devoted to stimulating the development of non-profit and community-led publishers, infrastructures and initiatives. During this presentation I will share some insights about the operation of such a fund, the type of open scholarship infrastructures and OA programmes we support, and explain our decision to cease financing article processing charges, even in a Fair OA business model….”

Belgium discloses penalties for failing to report clinical trial results

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“In the latest move to crack down on wayward clinical trial sponsors, Belgium may now fine companies, hospitals, and universities that fail to publicly disclose study results, a sign that more European regulators are growing concerned about a lack of transparency surrounding medical data….”

Senior Research Fellowship ‘Open Data for Open Science and Society’ @ Vrije Universiteit Brussel. End of play: April 15, 2022

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1 – Working at the VUB

For already 50 years, the Vrije Universiteit Brussel has stood for freedom, equality and connectedness. These values are strongly present on our campuses, in our students as well as our staff. At the VUB, you’ll find a diverse collection of personalities: pure innovators and especially people who are 100% their authentic selves. With about 3.500 employees, we are the largest Flemish-speaking employer in Brussels, an international city with which we are all too happy to be connected, and around which our four campuses are located.

Our education and research are grounded in the principles of free research with an eye on human progress. We disapprove of every purely authoritative argument and guarantee the free formation of judgement that is necessary for this basic principle to be incorporated in the community.

The VUB is autonomous and managed democratically. As such, we guarantee fundamental freedoms within our university, as well as the right of the university community to be involved in making and checking university policy.

The mission of the university includes:

the development, the transfer and the application of high-standing academic education and scientific research, free from any prejudice;
community integration of this in a spirit of social compassion;
critical development of everyone in light of the responsibilities borne in the community.

2 – Position description

The Faculty of Social Sciences & Solvay Business School, Department Communication Sciences, is looking for a full-time professor. 

More concretely your work package contains: 

Education and Research domain:

Communication Science: Open Data for Open Science & Society

Education tasks:

You are responsible for teaching courses at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Solvay Business School, for an equivalent of 6 ECTS (credits) per semester in the field of Open Data for Open Science & Society.
The course(s) will address how open data is transforming scientific knowledge and practice – making it more transparent, accessible, democratic, and societally relevant;
You supervise a limited number of bachelor’s and master’s theses.

Research tasks:

You conduct research in the domain of Open Data for Open Science & Society and develop an interdisciplinary, multi-track, internationally oriented research programme on the subject area. More specifically, you focus on topics such as:

Data brokerage, data stewardship and data governance. Research into new levers for data access, re-use and collaboration, e.g. innovative tools and methods, knowledge and capacity development, and policy requirements;
Replicability, transparency, trust and ethics in open science, e.g. in a context of the use of big data and artificial intelligence;
Economic and social impact: cost-benefit analyses of open data and open science policies and programmes, e.g. the evaluation of metrics used to document impact, and the exploration of new deliberation mechanisms to establish a “social contract” related to open data and open science;

You supervise PhD students;
To implement this programme, you combine fundamental and applied research tracks and acquire external funding on a global (private foundations and international organizations), regional (SBO/FWO/ICON), national (BELSPO) and European (Horizon, ERC, Marie Curie, European Science Cloud) level;
You embed the research in the Data & Society programme of the Centre for Studies on Media, Innovation and Technology (SMIT), seeking connection to VUB-wide valorising initiatives such as the AI Institute for the Common Good (FARI), the AI Experience Centre and the Knowledge Centre Data & Society.

Other tasks:

You are responsible for research related service tasks at the level of the research group, the department, the faculty and/or the university;
You develop and maintain an international research network;
You contribute to creating external visibility for the research group, the department, the faculty and the university.
Additionally, you actively contribute to the faculty and the university’s open science and open data initiatives (incl. the University’s Open Science Board), and represent the research group and university in high-level impact forums and communities.

For this function, our Brussels Humanities, Sciences & Engineering Campus (Elsene) will serve as your home base. 

3 – Profile

What do we expect from you?

You hold a PhD award

Library funding for open access at KU Leuven

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Abstract:  As main buyers of scholarly literature, research libraries have always provided essential economic support for sustaining the market of academic publishing. With the switch to open access (OA), libraries are now faced with transitioning this support from the demand (subscriptions) to the supply (publications) side. The way in which this is currently done, in general, risks strengthening the preponderance of the for-profit approach to scholarly communication. We therefore believe that it is essential to apply library budgets to foster a greater diversity. That is exactly the purpose of the Fund for Fair Open Access, set up by KU Leuven Libraries in 2018, which is exclusively devoted to stimulating the development of non-profit and community-led initiatives. This is achieved by library memberships to sustain open scholarship infrastructure, by supporting diamond OA programmes and by subsidizing OA books published by Leuven University Press. In this article, we will demonstrate the accomplished successes of the fund and share some insights we have gathered along the way, such as our decision to cease financing article processing charges, even in a Fair OA business model.

 

KU Leuven launches a platform to facilitate access to scientific data – News

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“KU Leuven has launched a new platform that makes access to research data safer for fellow researchers around the world. The University of Leuven announced this Thursday.

The new platform is the RDR platform, which stands for Search Data Warehouse, meaning as much as a “search data warehouse”. On the new platform, researchers will be able to access an archive where data is securely stored. Openness is guaranteed as much as possible, while respecting the legal framework relating to privacy. Using the metadata, researchers from all over the world can find relevant publications and documents.”

New deposit obligation as of 1 January 2022 – Open Science

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“As of 1 January 2022 the KU Leuven deposit obligation has been extended: in addition to journal articles, KU Leuven authors are now also required to deposit in Lirias a full text of every book chapter and conference proceeding they publish. Uploading the full texts of other publication types is strongly encouraged. When you select the ‘public access’ license, the Open Access Support Desk will monitor the publisher’s OA policy and the Belgian OA legislation and will apply the correct accessibility. …”

Who we are – ENJOI – Science communication

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“ENJOI (ENgagement and JOurnalism Innovation for Outstanding Open Science Communication) will explore and test engagement as a key asset of innovation in science communication distributed via media platforms, with a strong focus on journalism. Through a combination of methodologies and in collaboration with producers, target users and stakeholders of science communication, ENJOI will co-create and select a set of standards, principles and indicators (SPIs) condensed to a Manifesto for an Outstanding Open Science Communication.

ENJOI will deploy a series of actions via Engagement Workshops, Labs, field and participatory research, evaluation and testing phases. It will also build an Observatory as its landmark product to make all results and outputs available to foster capacity building and collaboration of all actors in the field. ENJOI will work in four countries: Belgium, Italy, Portugal and Spain, taking into account different cultural contexts.

ENJOI’s ultimate goal is that of improving science communication by making it more consistently reliable, truthful, open and engaging. Contextually, ENJOI will contribute to the active development of critical thinking, digital awareness and media literacy of all actors involved in the process….”