Utrecht University aims at a publishing climate in which academic authors publish fully open access (OA). The Executive Board of Utrecht University has agreed to a new OA policy to realise this ambition.
Job description
Utrecht University external link has the ambition to lead the way in Europe in the field of open science. These developments in science present new opportunities and possibilities for the University Library external link to use its knowledge and expertise in making research and education output FAIR. One area that is developing strongly is FAIR research data, code & software.
You will work within the Academic Services sector of the University Library, whose services are flexibly adapted to the changing needs of researchers, lecturers and students. In the coming years, Academic Services (approx. 35 FTE) will continue to develop and innovate the products and services in direct interaction with the customers. The services focus on supporting education and research, as well as open science. The department works in a result-oriented manner. This means that you will have a great deal of freedom to organize your own work. To strengthen the team, we are looking for a Scientific Information Specialist.
Function
You will work on developing and implementing open science services such as open access, research data, reproducible code and software, and research evaluation. On behalf of the library, you will be the point of contact for researchers, lecturers and students within the Faculty of Science external link. In addition, you and your colleagues are committed to providing the faculties of Veterinary Medicine, Medicine and Geosciences with the best possible support in research and education.
You are able to engage in constructive communication with the stakeholders, and use this skill to advice researchers on scientific information provision and processing, open science and scientific communication. You will work on developing and implementing open science services such as: open access, research data, reproducible code and software, publishing rights issues, and research assessment. You provide training in the field of FAIR data, open science, and information skills such as systematic reviews.
Your tasks
Building and maintaining a relevant network of relationships within the Faculty of Science and with colleagues inside and outside the University Library;
giving online and on site trainings and workshops and iteration of (online) training modules;
supporting your Faculty of Science colleague by selecting literature and databases, together with scientists;
ensuring the proper provision of information and stimulating the optimal use of the University Library services for research and education;
informing, advising and supporting researchers on developments and solutions on open science and scientific communication, with an emphasis on FAIR data, code & software and open access;
contributing to the (further) development and innovation of new services for the creation, management and (re)use of research data and information in academic research and education.
Qualifications
You have a Master’s degree in a relevant field and at least two years of relevant work experience.
You are strong in transferring and sharing knowledge, both to groups and individually. Experience with building and providing training or education is a plus.
You have good advisory skills and you understand the perspective of academic researchers, lecturers and students and you have a strong affinity with the process of scientific communication in an academic environment.
You have affinity with digital research and you want to contribute to developments on open science, open access, FAIR data, FAIR code and software.
(Basic) knowledge of programming (preferably Python or R) is a plus or you are willing to develop in this area.
You have experience in building and maintaining a professional network, preferably in an academic environment. You know how to represent our organization in the network of collaborating partners. Because of the network you will be building, this is a role to maintain for several years.
The position requires strong communication skills and personal characteristics such as: customer orientation, analytical skills, result orientation, organizational sensitivity, networking, and team skills. You have an excellent command of English. For international candidates, we require a minimum command of the Dutch language (level B2).
Offer
We offer a temporary appointment for a period of one year, with the prospect of an extension for an indefinite period if proven suitable. The gross salary – depending on your education, experience and the specific tasks you will perform – ranges between €2,968 and €4,474 per month for a full-time appointment (salary scale 9 or 10 of the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities).
You wil
From Google’s English: “Utrecht University works with an open mind, open attitude and open science on solutions that have a positive impact on society. What does that mean for university education? This important question, which partly arises from the Strategic Plan, is being investigated in the new track Open Science in Education, which will be launched shortly. In the run-up to this, the Open Science Program is organizing a broad work session – open to everyone – to exchange ideas.
In the work session, participants jointly look for ways in which Open Science and Education are connected. Because what knowledge and open science skills do we want to impart to students? What does an open attitude mean for reflection on and debate about your own discipline? How do you value education and guidance and what does that mean for the new Recognition and Valuation? What is already going well at UU, what can be improved and where are there still opportunities? These – but not only these – questions lie ahead. The input of the participants is used in further shaping the Open Science in Education track….”
Loek Brinkman, Judith de Haan, Daniël van Hemert, Joost de Laat, Dominique Rijshouwer, Sander Thomaes, & Ruth van Veelen. (2021). Open Science Monitor 2020. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5725178
This is the first version of the Open Science monitor on awareness, attitudes and behaviours in relation to 10 open science practices. The monitor was conducted among academics at Utrecht University and UMC Utrecht (the Netherlands) in the summer of 2020 with the aim to gain insight in academics’ attitude and behaviours towards various open science practices, the opportunities these practices may provide for the scientific community and the barriers in implementing open science practices the researchers may experience.
With this monitor the university hopes to gain insight into what can be done to facilitate and support open science among academics at Utrecht University.
“In the agreement between VSNU (Association of Universities in the Netherlands) and publisher Springer Nature (2018-2021) an annual maximum of scientific articles is agreed upon that may be published open access by corresponding authors of Dutch universities and University Medical Centres. That maximum number has been reached.
This means that articles can no longer be published free of charge up until the end of 2021. The alternative is to share your article via Utrecht University Repository. Based on article 25fa of the Dutch copyright law, sharing is possible after a reasonable period of six months. You need to register for this option. Please consult the Open Access Journal Browser external linkto check the open access options per journal….”
Sicco de Knecht, Martijn van der Meer, Loek Brinkman, Manon Kluijtmans, & Frank Miedema. (2021). Reshaping the Academic Self: Connecting Education & Open Science (Version 2). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5345573
The transition towards Open Science will drastically alter our approach to academic life. It will change the ways in which we reward and recognise university employees and reshape the relationship between education and research. This should be reflected in how a new generation of academics and citizens are educated. Not only through the qualifications our students receive to become productive members of society, but also by dint of the values and attitudes we teach our pupils. The aim of university education should be preparing future graduates to share their (inter)disciplinary knowledge, engage with societal stakeholders, and shape tomorrow’s society. Now is the time to explore how.
This manifesto is a thought exercise that explores the (possible) relationships between Open Science and education. It attempts to point out the overlap, parallels, synergy, and possible conflicts between Open Science attitudes and practices, and contemporary views and practices in education. We aim to provoke a perspective on the different aspects of how Open Science relates to education and propose several concrete directions forward and possible corresponding interventions. After explaining why education from an Open Science perspective needs to be explored and strengthened, we differentiate four faces of open education: the Open Science mindset, Open Science skillset, open educational resources, and how these activities should be recognised and rewarded. We subsequently illuminate three possible paths on how to strengthen open education, ranging from content to form and system. We hope that this will spark a broader national and international conversation on the relationship between Open Science and education.
“Dutch academics are putting their foot on the gas in the rebellion against the uncritical use of journal impact factors to recognise and reward researchers, which was set in motion by the 2012 San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment, or DORA.
From early next year, Utrecht University in the Netherlands will officially stop using the so-called ‘impact factor’ in all its hiring and promotions and judge its researchers by their commitment to open science, teamwork, public engagement and data sharing.
And despite opposition from some Dutch professors, the sweeping changes are gathering pace, with Leiden University among the Dutch institutions also pledging their support with their Academia in Motion paper….”
Utrecht University (UU) has the ambition to lead the way in Europe in the field of open science. These developments in science presents new opportunities and possibilities for the University Library (UB) external link to use its knowledge and expertise in making research and education output findable, accessible, interoperable and (re)usable (FAIR). One area that is developing strongly is FAIR research data.
You will work within the Academic Services sector of the University Library. The sector adapts its services flexibly to the changing needs of researchers, lecturers and students. In the coming years, Academic Services (approx. 35 FTEs) will continue to develop and innovate its products and services in direct interaction with its customers. The services focus on supporting education and research, as well as open science. The department works in a result-oriented manner. This means that you have a great deal of freedom to organize your own work.
To strengthen the team, we are looking for a specialist in science and (bio)medical sciences.
Function
On behalf of the library, you will be the point of contact for researchers, lecturers and students within the Faculty of Medicine and the Biology programme. In addition, you and your colleagues are committed to providing the faculties of Veterinary Medicine and Science with the best possible support in research.
You are able to engage in constructive communication with your stakeholders, and use this skill to advice researchers on scientific information provision and processing, open science and scientific communication. You will work on developing and implementing open science services such as: open access, research data, reproducible code and software, publishing rights issues and research assessment. You provide training in the field of research data management and information skills, such as systematic reviews.
Your tasks:
building and maintaining a relevant network of relationships within the Faculties of Medicine and the Biology programme and with colleagues inside and outside the University Library;
ensuring proper information provision and stimulating optimal use of the University Library services for research and education;
informing, advising and supporting researchers on developments and solutions on scientific information provision strategies and scientific communication, for all phases of the research cycle;
you provide advice in the field of research data management within both faculties;
you give online and offline training courses and workshops and you work together with stakeholders and colleagues on this;
contributing to the (further) development and innovation of new services for the creation, management and (re)use of research data and -information in academic research and education.
Qualifications
You have a master’s degree in (bio)medical sciences and at least three years of relevant work experience.
You know the perspective of academic researchers, lecturers and students and you are creative in translating the wishes of these users into appropriate (technical) solutions.
You have demonstrable experience and knowledge in the field of digital research and affinity with open science, particularly in the field of research data management. (Basic) knowledge of programming (preferably Python or R) is a plus or you are willing to develop in this area.
You have experience in building and maintaining a professional network. You have good advisory skills. You know how to represent our organization in the network of collaborating partners and in particular within the Faculty of Medicine and the Biology degree programme.
You have a strong affinity with the process of scientific communication in an academic environment. You know how to transfer and share knowledge, both in groups and with individuals.
You are strong in transferring and sharing knowledge, both to groups and individually.
This position requires strong communication skills and personal characteristics such as: customer-orientation, analytical skills, result-orientation, organizational sensitivity, networking and team skills. You have an excellent command of English. For international candidates, we require a minimum command of the Dutch language (level B2).
Offer
We offer a temporary position for a period of one year, with the prospect of an extension for indefinite period if proven suitable. The salary – depending on your education, experience and the specific tasks you will perform – is at least €2,790 and a maximum of €4,402 gross per month for a full appointment (salary scale 10 of the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities).
You will receive a laptop and smartphone from the University Library. You can also count on attractive fringe benefits, such as 8% holiday pay and an end-
“A Dutch university says it is formally abandoning the impact factor — a standard measure of scientific success — in all hiring and promotion decisions. By early 2022, every department at Utrecht University in the Netherlands will judge its scholars by other standards, including their commitment to teamwork and their efforts to promote open science, says Paul Boselie, a governance researcher and the project leader for the university’s new Recognition and Rewards scheme. “Impact factors don’t really reflect the quality of an individual researcher or academic,” he says. “We have a strong belief that something has to change, and abandoning the impact factor is one of those changes.” …”
cOAlition S received a total of 11 proposals for the tender for a study to explore collaborative non-commercial Open Access publishing models for Open Access (a.k.a Diamond OA) published in March 2020. We are pleased to announce that the tender was awarded to a consortium coordinated by OPERAS, including Sparc Europe, Utrecht University, DOAJ, UiT The Arctic University of Norway as partners, and LIBER, OASPA, ENRESSH, Redalyc-AmeliCA and CSI as associate partners.
The study will be delivered by the end of 2020, and regular public updates on progress are planned along the way. The study is financially supported by Science Europe.
“Utrecht University Library will host the 3rd edition of the summer school course ‘Open Science and Scholarship – changing your research workflow.’…”
Abstract: Research into publication cultures commissioned by VSNU and carried out by Utrecht University Library has detailed university output beyond just journal articles, as well as the possibilities to assess open access levels of these other output types. For all four main fields reported on, the use of publication types other than journal articles is indeed substantial. For Social Sciences and Arts & Humanities in particular (with over 40% and over 60% of output respectively not being regular journal articles) looking at journal articles only ignores a significant share of their contribution to research and society. This is not only about books and book chapters, either: book reviews, conference papers, reports, case notes (in law) and all kinds of web publications are also significant parts of university output.
Analyzing all these publication forms and especially determining to what extent they are open access is currently not easy. Even combining some the largest citation databases (Web of Science, Scopus and Dimensions) leaves out a lot of non-article content and in some fields even journal articles are only partly covered. Lacking metadata like affiliations and DOIs (either in the original documents or in the scholarly search engines) makes it even harder to analyze open access levels by institution and field. Using repository-harvesting databases like BASE and NARCIS in addition to the main citation databases improves understanding of open access of non-article output, but these routes also have limitations. The report has recommendations for stakeholders, mostly to improve metadata and coverage and apply persistent identifiers.
“Utrecht University aims to be at the forefront of open science. Therefore the executive Board initiated the Utrecht University Open Science Programme. A programme that aims to stimulate and facilitate researchers to put open science into practice….”