Category Archives: oa.cos

The Center for Open Science receives the Einstein Foundation Award for Promoting Quality in Research

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“The Center for Open Science (COS) has been selected as the inaugural institutional recipient of the Einstein Foundation Award for Promoting Quality in Research.

The award “aims to provide recognition and publicity for outstanding efforts that enhance the rigor, reliability, robustness, and transparency of research in the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities, and stimulate awareness and activities fostering research quality among scientists, institutions, funders, and politicians.”

COS is a nonprofit culture change organization founded in 2013 with the mission to increase openness, integrity, and reproducibility of research. COS takes a systems approach to supporting research culture change. COS builds and maintains a free, open source infrastructure for all disciplines of research, called the Open Science Framework (OSF), that enables the adoption of open practices across the research lifecycle. OSF flexibly integrates with other tools and services to make it efficient for researchers to plan, conduct, report on, and discover research within their current workflows. COS collaborates with grassroots organizations that support training and changing communities’ norms toward openness and integrity and provides solutions that empower communities to customize and promote open practices from within. COS works with funders, publishers, societies, and universities to shift incentives and policies to foster culture change toward rigor and transparency. Finally, COS investigates the state of research practices and evaluates the effectiveness of culture change initiatives. These interdependent activities incorporate a theory of change to create sustainable improvements to science as a social system.

The Einstein Foundation’s jury offered its official statement about the institutional award winner: “The Center for Open Science (COS) catalyzes global research culture change via a unique integrated behavior change model. By offering the Open Science Framework (OSF), collaborating with grassroots communities to grow engagement, advocating with stakeholders to adopt new policies and incentives, and evaluating effectiveness, COS helps to make open science the default. The Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines, launched by COS in 2015, and supported by over 5,000 signatories, along with all of the major publishers, have initiated an overdue transformation in the publishing culture.”…”

Open-access science in the misinformation era

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“While open-access science has made research available worldwide, some scholars worry that misinformation, fraud and politicization have become rampant in a system that rewards speed and sparkle….

In a widely discussed Scholarly Kitchen piece published last week, Schonfeld said that misinformation, politicization and other problems embedded in the open-access movement stem from a “mismatch” between the incentives in science and the ways in which “openness and politicization are bringing science into the public discourse.” …

While open access has democratized science, to good effect — making research available to sick patients interested in learning more about their condition or to scientists working in the Global South — it also has had “second-order effects” that are more concerning, he said.

“It’s now easier for scientific literature to be quoted and used in all sorts of political discourse,” Schonfeld said in an interview. “When the methods of scholarly publishing that we use today were first formed, there was no sense that there was going to be a kind of politicized discourse looking for opportunities to misinform the public and intentionally cause disunity.” …”

Open-access science in the misinformation era

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“While open-access science has made research available worldwide, some scholars worry that misinformation, fraud and politicization have become rampant in a system that rewards speed and sparkle….

In a widely discussed Scholarly Kitchen piece published last week, Schonfeld said that misinformation, politicization and other problems embedded in the open-access movement stem from a “mismatch” between the incentives in science and the ways in which “openness and politicization are bringing science into the public discourse.” …

While open access has democratized science, to good effect — making research available to sick patients interested in learning more about their condition or to scientists working in the Global South — it also has had “second-order effects” that are more concerning, he said.

“It’s now easier for scientific literature to be quoted and used in all sorts of political discourse,” Schonfeld said in an interview. “When the methods of scholarly publishing that we use today were first formed, there was no sense that there was going to be a kind of politicized discourse looking for opportunities to misinform the public and intentionally cause disunity.” …”

New OSF enhancements for community-developed, open source infrastructure

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“Not only do researchers use OSF as a tool to accelerate science by collaborating, managing and sharing their research; they’re also stakeholders in its sustainable development through the ability to access, review, interact with, and contribute to OSF’s open source code. 

By its nature, open source infrastructure is community oriented. The transparent OSF code invites the community of researchers and science stakeholders working to increase rigor and reproducibility to contribute code and ideas to enhance functionality, and benefit from the enhanced security and reliability by their involvement and review throughout the development process. These communities of researchers trust the OSF, and support it by maintaining its alignment to their needs by providing feedback and extending its use through third-party integrations. This continuum is propelled as OSF’s community of developers, users, and partners work together toward a shared vision: to accelerate scientific progress.

Together, an inclusive and open technology enables communities to embrace transparent and rigorous research practices with assurance that the infrastructure embodies the same principles of openness, transparency, and inclusion. As such, we prioritize the transparent development of an OSF experience that facilitates sustainability and mitigates technical barriers to the adoption of open and rigorous practices. 

A recent example of these priorities in action is the new Central Authentication Service (CAS) update for OSF, a state-of-the-art authentication framework that enhances the OSF login interface and brings a smoother, faster integration experience with external identity providers like ORCID and research institutions….”

New OSF enhancements for community-developed, open source infrastructure

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“Not only do researchers use OSF as a tool to accelerate science by collaborating, managing and sharing their research; they’re also stakeholders in its sustainable development through the ability to access, review, interact with, and contribute to OSF’s open source code. 

By its nature, open source infrastructure is community oriented. The transparent OSF code invites the community of researchers and science stakeholders working to increase rigor and reproducibility to contribute code and ideas to enhance functionality, and benefit from the enhanced security and reliability by their involvement and review throughout the development process. These communities of researchers trust the OSF, and support it by maintaining its alignment to their needs by providing feedback and extending its use through third-party integrations. This continuum is propelled as OSF’s community of developers, users, and partners work together toward a shared vision: to accelerate scientific progress.

Together, an inclusive and open technology enables communities to embrace transparent and rigorous research practices with assurance that the infrastructure embodies the same principles of openness, transparency, and inclusion. As such, we prioritize the transparent development of an OSF experience that facilitates sustainability and mitigates technical barriers to the adoption of open and rigorous practices. 

A recent example of these priorities in action is the new Central Authentication Service (CAS) update for OSF, a state-of-the-art authentication framework that enhances the OSF login interface and brings a smoother, faster integration experience with external identity providers like ORCID and research institutions….”

Let’s Get Creative about Licensing: Your Questions Answered about How to Retain Copyright While Allowing Others to Copy, Distribute, and Build Upon Your Work

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“Are you an open scholar who would like to grant others select copyright permissions to your creative work? Are the layers of licensing options difficult to navigate? We’re here to help support you in this process and give you the fundamentals of what you need to know when choosing a license. This webinar will cover all of the frequently asked questions about choosing a license and what advantages these licenses offer to both your scholarship and the larger body of growing research.

Join moderator Joanna Schimizzi, Professional Learning Specialist at the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education, along with panelists Brandon Butler, Director of Information Policy, University of Virginia Library and Becca Neel, Assistant Director for Resource Management & User Experience, University of Southern Indiana for an informative discussion on licensing your research. If you have specific concerns or questions about licensing requirements and benefits, please email them in advance and we will do our best to address them.”

Enabling research rigor and transparency, fostering researcher intellectual humility | Templeton World Charity Foundation, Inc.

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“The Center for Open Science (COS) has a mission to promote openness, integrity, and reproducibility in researchers’ everyday behavior. Their focus is to stimulate behavior change in the adoption of preregistration and sharing of research data, materials, and code. The purpose of this mission is to improve the credibility of research, foster intellectual humility among researchers, and, ultimately, accelerate the discovery of knowledge, solutions, and cures.

The COS theory of change presumes that researchers need infrastructure to make behaviors possible; user-centered product design to make behaviors easy; grassroots organizing and visibility to make behaviors normative; and journals, funders, and institutions to shift incentives and policies to make behaviors desirable and required. All five elements are necessary for broad, effective culture change.

Through this grant, the COS, led by project director Brian Nosek, will improve the Open Science Framework (OSF), the open-source infrastructure they maintain, to more fully embody their mission, making it easier for researchers to report outcomes of pre-registered research to reduce publication bias and selective reporting. They will achieve this outcome in three key ways:

incorporating just-in-time training and support tools in workflows to increase the quality of researchers’ open behaviors;
enhancing the collection of research project metadata to improve discoverability and to enable funders and institutions to increase adherence to policies promoting rigor and transparency; and
advancing the sustainability of the infrastructure by increasing earned revenue and mitigating OSF maintenance costs….”

About Metascience 2021

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“The Metascience 2021 Conference is a global virtual gathering to connect the study of science across disciplines, methodologies, and regions. It follows the inaugural Metascience 2019 Symposium held at Stanford University. Metascience 2021 is an initiative of the Center for Open Science (COS), the Association for Interdisciplinary Meta-Research and Open Science (AIMOS), and the Research on Research Institute (RoRI) and is generously supported by the Templeton World Charity Foundation and the RoRI consortium.”

UMD partners on Open Science Framework – News | UMD Libraries

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“The University of Maryland Libraries and the Division of Research are pleased to announce that UMD is now an institutional partner of the Open Science Framework (OSF), an online research management and collaboration platform from the Center for Open Science. The OSF system makes it easier for UMD researchers to manage projects throughout their life cycles and to collaborate with others across institutions, with an overarching goal of making more research outputs and data transparent, discoverable, and reusable. UMD researchers can log into the new OSF portal at https://osf.umd.edu/, using their university credentials….”

Symposium: A critical analysis of the scientific reform movement

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“As the science reform movement has gathered momentum to change research culture and behavior relating to openness, rigor, and reproducibility, so has the critical analysis of the reform efforts. This symposium includes five perspectives examining distinct aspects of the reform movement to illuminate and challenge underlying assumptions about the value and impact of changing practices, to identify potential unintended or counterproductive consequences, and to provide a meta perspective of metascience and open science. It’s meta, all the way up.

Each presenter will provide a 15-minute perspective followed by a concluding discussion among the panelists and a time to address audience questions. Visit cos.io/meta-meta to view session abstracts and speaker info.”

Increasing transparency through open science badges

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“Authors who adopt transparent practices for an article in Conservation Biology are now able to select from 3 open science badges: open data, open materials, and preregistration. Badges appear on published articles as visible recognition and highlight these efforts to the research community. There is an emerging body of literature regarding the influences of badges, for example, an increased number of articles with open data (Kidwell et al 2016) and increased rate of data sharing (Rowhani?Farid et al. 2018). However, in another study, Rowhani?Farid et al. (2020) found that badges did not “noticeably motivate” researchers to share data. Badges, as far as we know, are the only data?sharing incentive that has been tested empirically (Rowhani?Farid et al. 2017).

Rates of data and code sharing are typically low (Herold 2015; Roche et al 2015; Archmiller et al 2020; Culina et al 2020). Since 2016, we have asked authors of contributed papers, reviews, method papers, practice and policy papers, and research notes to tell us whether they “provided complete machine and human?readable data and computer code in Supporting Information or on a public archive.” Authors of 31% of these articles published in Conservation Biology said they shared their data or code, and all authors provide human?survey instruments in Supporting Information or via a citation or online link (i.e., shared materials)….”

Workshop: Building an Open Scholarship Base Together

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“The goal of the Open Scholarship Knowledge Base (OSKB) is to broadly collate and disseminate the excellent content developed by the open scholarship community, helping colleagues adopt and keep up to date with open practices. Hosted by the Center for Open Science, the OSKB is an openly accessible, community-driven resource that sustained by contributions from fellow scholars. We continuously add new material and ideas, and work with the larger open research community to keep track with best practices as they evolve. By building a living resource, the OSKB aims to reduce knowledge gaps and increase the speed with which transparent research practices are adopted in the field.

We work together as a community to gather and share knowledge about the what, why, and how of open scholarship. We collect, review, consolidate, and organize content to support the education and application of open scholarship practices for all aspects of the research lifecycle. All content is available through our OER Commons portal via https://www.oercommons.org/hubs/oskb. In the spirit of openness, we welcome a diversity of ideas, tools, and methods, as well as researchers from a multitude of fields and backgrounds….”