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Barcamp Open Science 2023: So much has happened and so much still needs to happen!

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by Evgeny Bobrov, Christian Busse, Julien Colomb, Tamara Diederichs, Tamara Heck, Renu Kumar, Peter Murray-Rust, Daniel Nüst, Merle-Marie Pittelkow, Lozana Rossenova, Guido Scherp

When we (the Barcamp Orga Team) were planning the ninth Barcamp Open Science, we were faced with the question: back to a face-to-face event or online, and if we choose a face-to-face event, could a hybrid format work at a barcamp? Hybrid works! Especially thanks to the technical progress and the appropriate premises at Wikimedia. A barcamp is a format that can have its best effect when meeting in person. But for us, hybrid also means openness towards those who, for various reasons, cannot come to Berlin. This year, we had 40 participants on site and 60 more taking part online, including people from India. Online participants could follow the barcamp in the main room (opening, ignition talk, session planning), but also participate in sessions in hybrid rooms. In one case, a session was even moderated remotely.

This year, we were particularly pleased that half of the participants took part in the Barcamp Open Science for the first time, and that many of them proposed and moderated a session straight away. The barcamp thus also contributes to enlarging the ‘Open Science bubble’ bit by bit.









There has never been a lack of topics at the Barcamp, though some of the topics are recurring, of course. Every year new aspects are included in the discussion. This year for example, Open Science for climate justice and bringing Open Science into ‘schools’, that is what role can (educational) organisations play in the context of knowledge justice. The traditional ‘Ignition Talk’ also brings new and relevant topics to the table. It was held this year by Peter Murray-Rust on the topic ‘Why do I do Open Science?’. He emphasised how important open knowledge is for society as a whole, especially in tackling the climate crisis. He is therefore actively involved in the #semanticClimate project, in which tools are being developed to make knowledge from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports by the UN semantically available.

Some of the session moderators have summarised their sessions and their results below.

Indicators for Researcher Contributions to Wikidata
by Evgeny Bobrov

Wikidata and more generally knowledge graphs (KGs) hold a lot of promise to make knowledge, prominently including scientific knowledge, available in a structured way for automated applications. With the advent of Large Language Models (LLMs), there is much discussion about the future role of KGs, but in terms of quality-assurance, traceability, and speed KGs are far superior to LLMs. Thus, as Denny Vrandecic describes in his talk ‘The Future of Knowledge Graphs in a World of LLMs’, they will only continue to grow in importance. Positions of ‘Wikimedian in Residence’ are becoming increasingly common, as at the University of Edinburgh or the University of Virginia. Given these developments, we anticipate that entering knowledge generated at research institutions into KGs will become increasingly important for institutions and a standard practice for researchers.

However, if this is to become a common practice, it needs to be rewarded, and the question arises of how to monitor and reward sharing of knowledge in Wikidata and other KGs. This was the main topic of the session, although we ventured into other Wikidata-related topics as well. In particular, one participant was disillusioned with Wikidata, as many necessary relations were as yet undefined, and it was generally still too limited. Thus, entering data into Wikidata came at the cost of simplifying or sometimes even distorting knowledge. The opinion was also voiced, however, that this is legitimate as a start and should not prevent researchers from extending Wikidata. It was also mentioned that the NFDI is considering using Wikidata as an infrastructure, and that the Volkswagen Foundation in its funding for data management tasks might include entering knowledge into Wikidata. A sideline of the discussion, which would warrant more attention, is in how far Wikidata should contain all knowledge, or how else could it be organised, for instance in a federated way.

Specifically regarding monitoring and incentives, the following aspects were discussed:

Own contributions

  • Number of contributions to Wikidata
  • Number of links, own contributions receive in other entries
  • Number of references to entries in scientific works
  • Fraction of entries which have been validated by others

Community work:

  • Number of entries reviewed or validated

There is already work in this direction, for example, to allow a tracking of citations to Wikipedia contributions, and this metric is mentioned in the Metrics Toolkit. However, for Wikidata, there would need to be a method in place to reference sources in a much more granular way than is currently common

Indicators as listed above, which can be conceived of as a type of nanopublication, could then be aggregated and for instance be used in CVs. There was agreement, however, that these metrics are not fundamentally different from article and citation metrics, and can thus lead to an overemphasis of quantity as well as be gamed. However, we could not come up with more unique metrics in this session, which would be less quantitative and/or less easily gamed.

Legislative Measures to Increase Data Availability
by Christian Busse

The central question for this session was whether legislative measures that aim to increase the availability of data held by private or public entities are considered as useful and appropriate from the Open Science perspective. The backdrop to this is a number of ongoing legislative initiatives on the European DataAct – at this point finalised, but not passed yet, European Health Data Space (EHDS) Regulation – still under discussion by the EU Council) and the German federal level (proposed ‘Forschungsdatengesetz’ (German) / Research Data Act – still at a draft stage) for which provisions have been discussed that would/will enforce private and public entities to share their data with researchers.

After a quick overview about the provisions at hand, the participants started with a discussion that covered a broad range of aspects, but had three main key take-aways. First, coercing private entities into data sharing was NOT perceived as a constructive measure by the participants, as providing data (that is complying to the legal requirement) does not guarantee good data quality. Second, the participants saw greater promise in trying to utilise data from public entities, as financial compensation would be less of an issue. However, the participants also agreed that this would require a more service-oriented mindset in the public administration and that empowering and up-skilling public employees (for instance to become data stewards, product owners, and so on) would be helpful. Third, a marketplace solution in which (public and private) entities can offer their data products for research was also considered an interesting option by the participants, although the ultimate outcome would depend on numerous parameters of the marketplace and hence is hard to predict.

New Forms of Communication
by Christian Busse

The social medium X (formerly known as Twitter) has been in turmoil for a while. In this session, the participants discussed whether and how this affects their communication strategies when promoting and discussing Open Science online. There was a consensus among the participants that the goal should be to serve a broad audience and that this will require more channels, now that some people and communities are moving away from X. Mastodon is considered an interesting alternative due to its federated character, but the verdict is still out whether it can serve as a long-term replacement. Moving beyond the individual platforms, the participants then discussed ways to organise (scientific) quality control in media that do not primarily serve science. How can we validate that an account belongs to a given person, that a person is really a member of a given institution and that a person is really an expert in a given field of research? While there are some technical solutions to some aspects of this (for instance Mastodon’s link verification), this requires trusted entry points that are controlled by the community.

An Exit Strategy for Github
by Julien Colomb

In this session, we tried to collect strategies to make Open Science projects independent of GitHub. While GitHub is a very nice platform, it may become less nice at any time (and there may already be some issues with Microsoft tracking all your activities on the platform). We saw with the formerly Twitter that platforms can become unusable, such that relying on one platform for one specific scholarly work can be dangerous.

In order to get less dependent on GitHub and be able to move a community to another platform if needed (or wished for), we collected different strategies:

  • Push the content into GitLab or other alternatives: this makes the code and document easy to access without GitHub, but a lot of community work and ongoing activities would still be lost (issues, PR, forks, discussions,…). This technical solution does not deal with moving the community on a different platform.
  • Get your community on different platforms. For example, use a forum, a chat-application (discourse) on top of GitHub. So if you need to move from one platform to another, the community still has other communication channels that are still working.

We then talked about development in decentralised systems: Forgejo is planning to make different instances interoperable. Indeed, having different GitLab instances in different universities in Germany makes it difficult to have collaborators in other universities (a new account is needed for each instance). Alternatively, we may see the development of European, institutionalised GitLab instances like EUDAT GitLab Repository?

Bringing Open Science Into ‘Education’
by Tamara Diederichs

A group of five people from different backgrounds participated in this session. The basic question was about Open Science and the connection with education. The session, which was also recorded and whose result is available as a transcript in the pad, said that we need a cultural change and that a cultural change to Open Science can happen through education and the organisations there.

The following questions were discussed:

  • What can organisations do to bring Open Science to the world or society?
  • What kind of structures for organisations or what kind of structures can be built with organisations to bring Open Science into the society?
  • Are there Open Science strategies and organisations and which ones?
  • Are there already movements that are taking Open Science in Education?

Some Conclusions:

  • There are different organisations that can promote Open Science, for instance universities or schools.
  • It is important to be transparent yourself and to inform others why transparency is important.
  • Collaboration should be an important approach in knowledge generation.
  • It is difficult to get people outside the Open Science bubble excited about Open Science.
  • Organisations need Open Science strategies.
  • The traditional education and science system can be described as a barrier to Open Science.

Open Scholarship Indicators
by Tamara Heck

Quite a few institutions have passed Open Science policies or guidelines, in which they admit to the principles of Open Science and recommend good practices for their research employees. According to policy templates, each policy may include aspects of ‘monitoring policy compliance’, that are actions on how we can assess the impact of the policy on daily research practices. However, the challenge is to measure Open Science practices properly, which means to make the evaluation fair and transparent, and not availing any non-desirable practices.

Currently, the implementation of an open research culture is not fully measured. The most popular example of assessing the development of Open Science is counting Open Access publications (in relation to closed publications). Current dashboards aim at showing more quantitative data of research output by institutions, like Helmholtz and the Charité.

Looking at the quantified Open Science-related output, it is important to say that not all research practices are easily quantifiable. Moreover, such indicators should be defined according to domain specific aspects and their specific use case. Comparing numbers between different domains or entities can be misleading. Another challenge with semi-automated data collection for such indicators is missing or false metadata in our digital infrastructures. If such difficulties are reduced adequately, these indicators can be measured over longer time periods to see how parameters evolve and to better put the relative numbers into perspective.

Conclusion: Indicators can be used to measure how we evolve in Open Science practices over time. However, the development of such measures needs careful consideration, both on technical aspects like metadata and data collection, and on social aspects like the understanding and appreciation of researchers.

Open Science for Climate Justice
by Peter Murray-Rust and Renu Kumari

This 45 minutes long session was about the role of semantic climate tools used to simplify the chapters from IPCC reports and make these chapters understandable by any person in the world irrespective of their age and education level. The demo was about the tools pyamihtml, pygetpapers and docanalysis. The colab notebook shared in the demo session contains the information to use all the tools and was applied to view one of the output like a word cloud for different useful keywords from the searched literature based on the search query ‘climate justice and Africa’. It nicely explains the terms which are very significant and prevalent for the climate study.

Open Science – Sticks and Carrots for Change
by Daniel Nüst

A transition to Open Science that is sustainable requires a cultural change in all aspects of academic research, even if this requires questioning long-held beliefs and established practices. I proposed that to achieve such a lasting shift in funding, sharing, evaluation, and career building practices that transcends nations and cultures, one needs to think about both incentives and encouragement – carrots – and policy and requirements – sticks!

In the session, the participants started by collecting the stakeholders of a cultural change, and identified rather classical roles in academia across different career stages, for example funders, professors, students, librarians, etc. An excellent resource that was shared in the context is the article ‘Promoting Open Science: A Holistic Approach to Changing Behaviour’ that includes suggestions for these different stakeholders within the academic system. It was noted that bottom-up initialisation of behavioural change works to some degree, but top-down was also needed. This perspective adds another dimension when thinking about cultural change. It was specifically discussed that leadership in organisations and communities needs to be involved, since waiting for a generational change (the Open Science enthusiasts of students today become professors of tomorrow) may take too long. The LIBER Citizen Science working group was pointed out as an initiative that successfully ran a course targeting leadership specifically in the context of Citizen Science, amongst other stakeholder-specific documentation (Citizen Science for Research Libraries – A Guide) – another good idea! With the question of generational change in mind, the discussion then shifted towards the question whether ‘better education’ can implement a cultural change. The experiences here were controversial. One participant reported, that in one field of research, thinking about openness ends with Open Access, whereas another pointed out that the Open Science communities and initiatives quickly tend to focus on education, but these activities don’t seem to have lasting impact: people participate in workshops, but don’t change their practices, and early career researchers don’t have the power to introduce change on the needed large scale. The psychologists in the group pointed out the helpful idea that later career stages struggle to embrace change due to a very human trait and bias: professors think their approach was successful, so it is the right one. Possibly reflecting the career stages of the group members, but also representing experiences as Open Science proponents, the majority was in favour of top-down changes, for instance clear incentives and different evaluation criteria. For such a policy-based approach, major activities such as COARA and DORA were introduced into the conversation and new to some of the participants. The latter was presented as a clever approach to shift institutional policies in a sustainable way. Because the in part abstract goals the declaration pursues can then enable individual members of the signing organisations, who want to advance researcher assessment for example in hiring, to justify changes.

The psychologists also were a bit more exposed in the meeting, as the group shifted their conversation to Psychology as a discipline, which some saw as leading in Open Science practices due to the impactful replication crisis. When realising the questionable replicability of important foundational scientific works, the discipline did shift practices. Maybe ‘having a real crisis’ as a discipline and being lucky that people want to learn from it is the only way for change? Hopefully not.

Finally, the idea that one can draw from the experiences of Citizen Science was put forward but argued against, too. On the one hand, similar to approaches to decolonization, one should think about bringing knowledge back to the public and not just within the world of research. On the other hand, the academic work in Citizen Science was not seen as more advanced in Open Science practices than other disciplines, falling into the same traps of publish or perish, slow change, and further more.

All in all, the session did in some moments reflect a group therapy session. Almost every participant was actively working towards a cultural change, but as individuals or small initiatives, many also often feel quite powerless. The ‘venting’ and sharing that happened during the session was just as important as the useful resources that were shared. The fun and open exchange helped to find new energy to push towards a cultural change in academia, which was seen as needed by all joining and contributing to the discussion.

To wrap up the session, everybody was invited to come up with “the one thing” that one would change to achieve a sustainable shift in academic culture. The following items were mentioned, and shall be listed here in full to value all inputs and give you more food for thought:

  • Incentive structure that gives people the possibility to do good (5 times), like more permanent positions, incentives that understand progress is slow, incentives that work towards a vision for openness, no publication-based dissertations
  • community building / ‘peer pressure’
  • force whole communities to move together
  • establish understanding that ‘open is better’
  • top-down pressure from (public) funders
  • document good practices really well, leading to amplification
  • find an agreement on ‘the right way’ to do research (with the help of technology), making academia a better community
  • more team science

Creating A Shared Definition of Open Science
by Merle-Marie Pittelkow

During the ignition talk, Peter Murray-Rusk asked the audience to raise their hands if they had a clear idea of what Open Science was. In a room full of Open Science enthusiasts and advocates, I was expecting people to confidently throw their hands in the air, but only few raised their hands. This lack of a response inspired this session aiming to create a shared understanding of what Open Science means to the participants of the Barcamp Open Science. My hope was that this would foster and support the following discussions and avoid miscommunication between participants.

While you can find many definitions of Open Science online (e.g., as provided by FOSTER or UNESCO), there are individual differences in how these are interpreted and applied in practice. As a group we concluded that a monolithic, central definition of Open Science is not useful as what constitutes Open Science is context dependent and varies for example per scientific field, institutional context, and policies. Still, we were able to create a working definition of Open Science within the context of this event. The group agreed on the following aspects of Open Science:

  1. Sharing data
  2. Sharing results
  3. Sharing processes and methods (for instance ResearchEquals)
  4. Cocreation of a scientific process – outside of academic journals, more communal
  5. Digital long term storage (like NFDI structure, repositories) with sufficient documentation for the possibility to reuse the data in the long term
  6. Reflexive notes
  7. Preregistration; Registered Reports
  8. Pre-prints
  9. Replication
  10. Ensuring interoperability and then also doing the linking of data (part of FAIR data)

Semantic Annotations
by Lozana Rossenova

In this session, we introduced the ongoing work on semantic annotations for cultural heritage at the Open Science Lab, TIB, part of the NFDI4Culture consortium. The main tools we’re developing are focusing on the annotation of 3D models, and other multi-media cultural heritage representations. Annotations are structured in Linked Open Data (LOD), enriched with a standard authority file data and made accessible via a SPARQL endpoint. The integrated toolchain is called Semantic Kompakkt and consists of Wikibase (for metadata storage as LOD) and Kompakkt (for publishing and annotating 2D, 3D and AV media). OpenRefine is used as main data cleaning, reconciliation and upload tool. The session focused on the open, iterative approach towards the development of the toolchain around specific use-cases with partner institutions of NFDI4Culture. We also discussed the role of Wikidata in facilitating federated queries and the benefits of working with semantic data in general, including the introduction of structured vocabularies and authority file data in the data enrichment process. The final point of discussion touched upon the Antelope service (also from OSL / NFDI4Culture) for terminology search and integration into the annotation workflow. A core focus of the whole session was the use of Open Source software and how further development of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in research contexts can both draw upon and support the maintainer communities. The source code from the NFDI4Culture project is available on GitLab.

Data links in the Semantic Kompakkt toolchain. Credit: Lozana Rossenova, CC-BY.

We Will Continue

We would like to thank all participants for their session proposals, which contributed to exciting discussions and the remarkable atmosphere especially on site, but also online. We are happy about a very active and constructive community. Thus, we will continue the hybrid barcamp and are already looking forward to next year’s tenth anniversary. The Barcamp Open Science is our personal Open Science success story! In spite of all the successes the movement has achieved, so much still needs to happen.

Barcamp Open Science 2023

This year’s Barcamp was again accompanied by the Open Science Radio team, who interviewed numerous session moderators. These episodes are currently being published bit by bit and can be found here.

About the authors:

Evgeny Bobrov is Project Leader for Open Data & Research Data Management at the QUEST Center for Responsible Research, which is a part of the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité. He addresses these topics from diverse perspectives, including researcher consulting, teaching, policy, and monitoring. A major focus currently is defining and evaluating the openness of datasets in a thorough way.

Christian Busse is a team leader at German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ). He has a medical background and holds a PhD in experimental immunology. His current work focuses on comprehensive solutions for the management of immunological data. Christian is co-chair of the Standards working group of the AIRR Community and a member of the NFDI4Immuno consortium. He can be found on Mastodon and ORCID.

Julien Colomb is a former neuro-geneticist (10 years of research on fruit fly memory and behaviour), and has been exploiting his interest in Open Research, working on reproducible data analysis and research data management, as well as more recently on Open Source research hardware. He is presently working on ways (technical and social) to implement the principles of FAIR and Open Data in the lab workflow and ways to foster collaboration between researchers via the SmartFigure Gallery and the GIN-Tonic projects. On the other hand, he is fostering the development of open hardware in academia and beyond, inside the OpenMake project. He can be found on Mastodon.

Tamara Diederichs is Co-CEO at NDT.net and responsible for content and publishing. She has a scientific background with a focus on formal and non-formal adult learning, knowledge transfer, organisational learning and Open Science. She is also a researcher and honorary lecturer at the Department of Educational Sciences at the University of Koblenz. Among others, she can be found on the following channels: LinkedIn and ORCID.

Tamara Heck works at the Information Centre for Education at DIPF | Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education. She investigates how digital infrastructures can facilitate and influence information seeking, and how they can support Open Science practices. Tamara Heck can be found on X and LinkedIn.

Renu Kumari is working as Programme manager at #semanticclimate, NIPGR, New Delhi, India.

Peter Murray-Rust is a chemist currently working at the University of Cambridge. As well as his work in chemistry, Murray-Rust is also known for his support of Open Access and Open Data.

Daniel Nüst is a research software engineer and postdoc at the Chair of Geoinformatics, TU Dresden, Germany. He develops tools for open and reproducible geoscientific research and is a proponent for open scholarship and reproducibility in the projects NFDI4Earth, o2r, KOMET, and CODECHECK. He can be found on Mastodon, LinkedIn, GitHub, ORCID, and many more platforms via Nordholmen.

Merle-Marie Pittelkow is a postdoctoral researcher at the QUEST Center for Responsible Research, Berlin Institute of Health at Charité Berlin. In her work, she focuses on research ethics and increasing transparency in informed decision making. As a former OSCG board member and co-chair of ReproducibilitTEA at the University of Groningen, she has been an advocate of Open Science since her PhD.

Lozana Rossenova is a postdoctoral researcher at the Open Science Lab at TIB – Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology, and works on the NFDI4Culture project, in the task areas for data enrichment and knowledge graph development for cultural heritage research data. She serves as Wikibase community manager within NFDI4Culture and is a co-founder of the Wikibase Stakeholder Group. She can be found on Mastodon.

Guido Scherp is Head of the “Open Science Transfer” department at the ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics. He can be found on Mastodon and LinkedIn.

All photos: Bettina Ausserhofer©

The post Barcamp Open Science 2023: So much has happened and so much still needs to happen! first appeared on ZBW MediaTalk.

Open Access Barcamp 2023: Live and in Colour

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by Danny Flemming

No journey was too far: participants came from Hamburg, Berlin, Austria and Switzerland, among other places, to Konstanz on Lake Constance on 28 March 2023 – despite nationwide train strikes. The enthusiasm was too great to finally be able to discuss Open Access developments and challenges in person, after the online formats of previous years. The Open Access Barcamp 2023 was organized as part of the open-access.network project, which not only operates the portal of the same name , but also plays a key role in networking the Open Access community. The event was held at the Communication, Information and Media Centre (KIM) of the University of Konstanz. Its premises offered ideal conditions for productive face-to-face work and exchange in small and large groups, which formed spontaneously depending on the programme item.

Host Dr Anja Oberländer, deputy director of the KIM, warmly welcomed all participants and, after introductory words, handed over to project coordinator Andreas Kirchner, who broke the ice with an interactive round of getting to know each other and thus laid the foundation for a motivating, relaxed and yet concentrated working atmosphere.

Tailor-made programme with session planning

The actual programme was designed by the participants themselves according to their wishes and preferences using session planning. To this end, project team member Dr Martina Benz visualized all the suggestions for 90-minute long sessions that had been received online in advance, which could then be spontaneously supplemented with additional ideas.

Figure 1: A programme tailored to the wishes of the participants. Photo: Andreas Kirchner©.

In total, nine different sessions with lectures, discussions and workshops on Open Access as well as a library tour came together, from which the participants could choose their respective favorites and the KIM organization team worked out the schedule for the rest of the day.

Keeping track – and setting up a publishing house yourself?

The first session, “Open Access Monitoring (Automate),” was offered by Dr Andreas Walker (Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven) and Christian Berger (Freiburg University of Education). Together with them, participants discussed how best to determine an institution’s Open Access rate. One possible solution mentioned was to take the topic of Open Access into account as early as beginning the establishment of a research information system and to set up a reliable data source through an interface to the institutional repository. This would help the library to generate publication lists and quarterly reports – which in turn would offer added value for the institution’s researchers.

Figure 2: From Session 1: How do we actually know what our Open Access rate is? Photo: Danny Flemming©

In parallel, the session “Founding an Open Access University Press” proposed by Gerhard Bissels (PH Schwyz) took place, in which possibilities for founding university-owned publishing houses were discussed. Here, the example of the publishing house “Berlin Universities Publishing” was mentioned, in which four Berlin universities, FU, HU, TU and Charité, founded a joint publishing house. Based on this, the participants discussed various organizational and financing models and emphasized the importance of cross-institutional, ideally state-wide initiatives.

In the following session, Anke Rautenberg (KIM) outlined the concept of an information budget encompassing all revenues and expenses of a library for scientific information (for the concept of the information budget, see Pampel, Heinz, Auf dem Weg zum Informationsbudget: zur Notwendigkeit von Monitoringverfahren für wissenschaftliche Publikationen und deren Kosten, working paper. Potsdam 2019, (German) and Mittermaier, Bernhard, Das Informationsbudget: Konzept und Werkstattbericht, in o-bib 4 (2022) pp. 1-17. (German), which is already under development at the University of Konstanz. As success factors in the practical implementation, she emphasized the trustful cooperation between the departments involved and the increasing use of automated solutions.

Meanwhile, in the parallel session, Dr Martina Benz presented results from the project “Open4DE: Status and Perspectives of the Open Access Transformation in Germany” (documents, data and results of the project (German)). According to Benz, the further development of the Open Access transformation requires a transformation of Open Access funding, the development of information infrastructures, and a reform of research evaluation.

Speed dating and future perspectives

After the lunch break, a speed dating session ensured movement and individual networking before the participants had to choose between a workshop on the question “How can we better reach researchers?”, a session on financing models for Open Access, and a library tour by KIM subject specialist Livia Gertis.

In the workshop, Dr Danny Flemming (KIM) addressed the challenge of better communicating information and networking services on Open Access to the target group of scientists and scholars. Many experiences and best practices were collected, and it was emphasized that scientists must be offered a service with added value if they are to be persuaded to take a closer look at Open Access.

At the same time, Dr Daniela Hahn (University of Zurich) and Dr Martina Benz presented PLATO and KOALA, two model projects in the field of Diamond Open Access (see also the Action Plan for Diamond Open Access presented in 2022 by Science Europe, cOAlition S, OPERAS and the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR), which is now also available in German).

This area was taken up again in the following session, which raised the question “Open Access funding quo vadis?”. During the discussion on developments and future perspectives of Open Access funding, it became clear that Diamond Open Access is a particularly promising and desirable model.

A long and productive day

At the suggestion of Marc Lange (HU Berlin), another session explored how to counter so-called “predatory journals” – a dubious business model of publishing everything unchecked against payment of often excessive fees. In particular, a Swiss Open Access publisher was hotly debated.

In a third parallel session, Nicolas Bach (Stuttgart Media University) presented a practical example of data-sovereign Open Access publishing. He showed how a decentralized distributed file system and a blockchain supported by the research community can be used to guarantee the integrity and authenticity of a publication.

Figure 3: Concentrated work in a professional atmosphere. Photo: Danny Flemming©

In a closing session, the most important results of all sessions were compiled and feedback on the event was collected. The participants emphasized the pleasant and constructive cooperation, which had noticeably benefited by the exchange in presence. Further barcamps are planned for 2024 and 2025. Locations, times, and registration options will be posted on the open-access.network calendar as soon as they are known. The calendar provides a continuously updated overview of future events.

You may also find interesting:

About the Author:
Dr. Danny Flemming (contact via mail), Graduate Psychologist, received his doctorate from Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen, where he conducted research at the Leibniz Institute for Knowledge Media and is now part of the Open Science team at the Communication, Information, Media Centre (KIM) at the University of Konstanz. He works in the open-access.network project, which promotes competence development and networking in the Open Access field.
Portrait, photographer: Christian Hartz©

Photos: Danny Flemming© and Andreas Kirchner©

The post Open Access Barcamp 2023: Live and in Colour first appeared on ZBW MediaTalk.

10 Years of OERcamp: Community Get-together on Digital and Open Educational Resources

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An interview with Kristin Hirschmann

Around ten years ago, the first Barcamp to focus especially on the topic of Open Educational Resources (OER) was held in Germany. For the anniversary event in October 2022 there were 446 registrations, 19 workshops, 56 Barcamp sessions, 235 minutes of video, keynotes and live podcasts ranging from Austria to New Zealand.

In this interview Kristin Hirschmann, project manager of the OERcamps organised by the J&K – Jöran und Konsorten training agency, reports on the development of the Barcamps and further OERcamp formats.

The anniversary OERcamp took place in autumn 2022 in Hamburg. Which topic did the community explore in particular?

At the OERcamp in October 2022, the main focus was on the OER strategy of the federal government, introduced in the summer by Jens Brandenburg, parliamentary state secretary at the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The third day of the OERcamp was therefore completely dedicated to the strategy: Stakeholders of the OER community discussed and reviewed the different areas of activity of the strategy. We also made it possible for members of the OER community who were not able to be present at the OERcamp to comment on the results realised at the event. This commentary phase took place during the two weeks following the event via a collaborative document; 100 contributions were also added.

By agency J&K – Jöran und Konsorten for the OERcamp 2022 under CC BY 4.0

What’s more, after almost 3 years without face-to-face events, people felt it was important to bring the community together in one place. I received this feedback from many participants: the personal networking and exchange was even more important.

 
 

What were the milestones during ten years of OERcamp?

The first OERcamp took place at Bremen University in 2012. Since then, the OERcamp format has developed further according to current requirements: An OERcamp took place in Berlin every year until 2016. In 2017 there were then two innovations: the OERcamp was extended to four events for the first time: in the north, east, west and south. The OER Award was also established to select the best open educational materials in German-speaking countries. In 2018, the principle of one OERcamp in each of the four points of the compass in Germany was established. In 2019–2020, the OERcamp formats were refined so that the 5 aims of the OERcamp (qualification of OER, OER mainstreaming, networking and exchange, creation of specific materials and enabling a culture of sharing) could be implemented even more successfully. This means that alongside the participatory format of the Barcamp, there are now OERcamp workshops that focus on the creation and publication of OER as well as small, compact OERcamps that are affiliated to other events.

By agency J&K – Jöran und Konsorten for the OERcamp 2022 under CC BY 4.0

In 2020, the OERcamps were held in a virtual format owing to the coronavirus pandemic. With online formats such as the OERcamp webtalks or the OERcamp SummOERschool, we were able to respond to the urgent need of teachers to find, use and create digital teaching and learning materials quickly.

Further milestones that we were pleased about were the „Open Innovation Award 2020“(German) of the OE Awards Committee of “Open Education Global” at the 2020 OERcamp, the recognition of the work of the OERcamps with the 2020 EDUCAUSE Horizon Report the first international OERcamp in December 2021, OERcamp.global. This was, moreover, the first 48-hour festival on OER, and received 1063 registrations from 87 countries.

What makes the OERcamp so unique in your opinion?

At the OERcamps, I am struck time and again by the participants, who are exceptionally enthusiastic. Of course, this comes on the one hand from the participatory format of the Barcamp. On the other hand, the formats of the OERcamp, such as the OERcamp workshop, are very needs-based and offer many more programmes than the participants can use: the participants therefore need the courage and openness to decide what they need for their personal OER journey from the abundance of programmes.

By agency J&K – Jöran und Konsorten for the OERcamp 2022 under CC BY 4.0

I also enjoy the great mix of people: those who are attending the OERcamp for the first time, and OER connoisseurs and pros. Experience has shown that around half the participants at the events are OERcamp newbies. The exchange that takes place there is very fruitful and also serves the aim of making OER accessible to a wider group of people.

In the OERcamp workshop, great focus is placed on the creation as well as the publication of OER. This is owing to the concept, because OER newbies receive a low-barrier start to working with OER thanks to the concrete utilisation of OER. This very specific learning-by-doing thereby enables them to experience the culture of sharing. I find this experience in particular a very important basis for continuing to engage with OER, and therefore also using the potentials of the OER community. The fact that we promote this active engagement with OER through the OERcamp format is something special, in my opinion.

The members of the OER community are not merely participants at an OERcamp who consume one-sidedly, but also central components who give input, ensure exchange and networking, thereby also ensuring the further development of OER and its dissemination.

Are there comparable events at international level?

From an international point of view, OER has even greater relevance than in German-speaking countries. The CC summit of Creative Commons, the Open Education Global Conference with the Open Education Week, the Open Education Policy Forum, the OER22 Conference, the Open Science Conference and the OpenEd are just a few events that focus on OER. At the events, it also becomes clear that OER plays a role on all continents. There is even more value placed on OER as a correct step towards more educational fairness and, above all, equity and social inclusion.

What are your tips for employees in libraries who want to get started with OER?

There is already a wide range of materials available for getting started in OER. This includes the #OERklärt video series (German), which explains the OER basics. This is published via OERinfo (German), the information centre for Open Educational Resources. The platform iRights.info (German) focuses on OER from a legal perspective. And the OERcamps themselves have published diverse materials that can also be further used. The campus of the OERcamps (German), for example, offers 12 online courses with know-how on OER. These include “100 great sources for OER”, “videos and audios as OER” or “online courses with and as OER”.

For librarians in particular, I recommend Fachstelle Öffentliche Bibliotheken NRW (German) – which emerged from the “oebib” blog, which has already been very active since 2015.

This text has been translated from German.

This might also interest you:

We were talking to:

Kristin Hirschmann is a cultural and educational scientist. She works as project manager for the J&K – Jöran und Konsorten (German) training agency – a “think and do tank” for contemporary training. In this context, she designs and organises educational events for all educational fields and works in a content-related capacity on the topic of Open Education/Open Training.
Portrait: Kristin Hirschmann©

The post 10 Years of OERcamp: Community Get-together on Digital and Open Educational Resources first appeared on ZBW MediaTalk.

Open Science & Libraries 2023: 25 Tips for Conferences, Festivals & Co.

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In fact, for the first time since the onset of the Corona pandemic, the event horizon for 2023 looks like 50% of events will take place on-site. The other half is split roughly equally between hybrid and online events.

Below you will find a selection of conferences, workshops, barcamps, festivals and other events that you should not miss in 2023. You can find more interesting events in the extensive ZBW MediaTalk events calendar.

#01 – Roundtable | 19.01. | Online
Organised by: Special Interest Group “User Experience in Libraries” at the German professional association for employees in libraries “Berufsverband Information Bibliothek“ (BIB)
UX Roundtable: Annual Planning UX
“The aim of the UX Roundtable is to exchange ideas on user experience and usability in libraries and at universities across institutional boundaries in the German-speaking world and thereby make libraries and information facilities more human-centred.”

#02 – Conference | 01.02. – 03.02. | Bonn (Germany)
Organised by: Transforming Research through Innovative Practices for Linked Interdisciplinary Exploration (TRIPLE)
TRIPLE Conference 2023 – Improving Discovery and Collaboration in Open Science
“Since 2019 the TRIPLE project has been developing the multilingual discovery platform GoTriple, aiming to facilitate interdisciplinary research and foster collaboration. The platform provides a central access point for users to explore, find, access and reuse Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) materials at European scale (data and publications, researcher’s profiles, projects).
The final TRIPLE conference focuses on the potential, challenges and possibilities that arise out of these endeavors for Open Science in SSH and beyond. It will focus on the following topics: Innovation and innovative services in SSH; Multilingualism in SSH; (Crowd)Funding in Open Science; Sustainability, Research Infrastructures and Open Science; Collaboration; Metadata and Data Quality; any other topics related and of importance to Collaboration and Discovery in Open Science.”

#03 – Conference | 13.02. – 17.02. | On Site, virtuell or hybrid
Organised by: Research Data Alliance Deutschland (RDA), Helmholtz Open Science Office
RDA Germany Conference 2023
“The RDA community in Germany wants to contribute to increasing the exchange of data and making the reuse of data more efficient. The location (on site, virtual or hybrid) will be decided at a later date.”

#04 – Conference | 13.02. – 17.02. | Online
Organised by: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR)
International Love Data Week: Data: Agent of Change
“The theme this year is Data: Agent of Change. Love Data Week is about inspiring your community to use data to bring about changes that matter. Policy change, environmental change, social change… we can move mountains with the right data guiding our decisions. This year, we are focused on helping new and seasoned data users find data training and other resources that can help move the needle on the issues they care about.”

#05 – Conference | 01.03. – 03.03. | Heidelberg (Germany)
Organised by: Project bw2FDM, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, University of Konstanz, Heidelberg University.
E-Science-Days 2023: Empower Your Research – Preserve Your Data
“The E-Science Days are an interdisciplinary conference series centered around the topics of research data management and Open Science – with diverse offerings for professional exchange between science and technology. Save the date in your calendar now – more info coming soon!”

#06 – Unconference | 09.03. – 10.03. | Online
Organised by: Center for Open Science with support from the National Science Foundation award
Unconference 2023: Open Scholarship Practices in Education Research
“Collaborate, Learn, and Share as We Advance Open Science Practices in Education Research: The 2023 Unconference will be a virtual participation event featuring participant-led sessions analysing the current state of Open Scholarship practice seeking solutions to identified problems. Participants will assess barriers to adoption of Open Scholarship practices unique to the education community and brainstorm strategies for promoting greater awareness. Sessions will provide a broader and more educational focus for attendees who are seeking to expand their knowledge about Open Science.”

#07 – Conference | 21.03. – 22.03. | Online
Organised by: ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics
Open Science Retreat: Reform on Research Assessment in the context of Open Science
“Only together can we successfully change the way we work scientifically. Only together can we advance Open Science. WE does not mean scientists only. WE incorporates scientists, science communicators, data stewards, librarians, publishers, editors, and other stakeholders involved in Open Science developments. With the Open Science Retreat, the ZBW wants to bring together international Open Science supporters from different stakeholder groups. For two afternoons in a row, the aim is to dive deep into the topics that are of burning interest to all of us.”

#08 – Conference | 21.03. – 23.03. | Gothenburg (Sweden) & Online
Organised by: Research Data Alliance (RDA)
RDA 20th Plenary, Gothenburg – Research Data Alliance 10th Anniversary Plenary meeting
“The Research Data Alliance will celebrate its 10th Anniversary Plenary Meeting in March 2023 in Sweden, going back to where RDA was launched in March 2013. Following on from the success of the 19th Plenary meeting held in a hybrid format for the first time, P20 will take place in Sweden’s second-largest city – Gothenburg. The three-day hybrid conference will once again bring together researchers, data scientists, policymakers, and data stewards from disciplines from all over the world to share new ideas and explore best practices in using data.”

#09 – Conference | 27.03. – 28.03. | Online
Organised by: Consortium for the Social, Behavioural, Educational and Economic Sciences (KonsortSWD)
Conference on Social and Economic Data (KSWD)
“Social and societal developments can only be understood and explained with the help of good and up-to-date data. But this must be done in strict compliance with data protection. The KSWD is the German forum for an interdisciplinary exchange on the topic of research data. The KSWD is open to all those interested in research data from science, politics and data production, as well as representatives of research funding agencies and research infrastructures. The guidelines for the work of the German Data Forum (RatSWD) are discussed here. The dialogue serves to build and further develop the research infrastructure for the social, behavioural, educational and economic sciences. During the conference, the appointment proposals for the representatives of the social, behavioural, educational and economic sciences in the RatSWD are also elected.”

#10 – Conference | 03.04.| Kochel am See (Germany)
Organised by: Open Science Freelancers, Access 2 Perspectives
Open Science Retreat
“Whether you are just getting started with Open Science or are already an open hero. Whether you are a researcher or provide research services. If you are ready for a week of new ideas, productivity and rebooting: this retreat is for you! The Open Science Retreat is an event from Open Science enthusiast for Open Science enthusiasts. The main goals are: Learning – Getting stuff done – Networking – Reflecting – Rebooting.”

#11 – Conference | 24.04. – 25.04. | Hannover (Germany)
Organised by: German Council for Scientific Information Infrastructures (RfII), Volkswagen Foundation
Shaping Data Spaces in Germany and Europe – Impulses From Science
“What needs to be done to establish research data infrastructures in a sustainable, networked and quality-assured manner? The aim of the event is to initiate an interdisciplinary exchange that explores the need and the necessary prerequisites and competences for the use of data infrastructures and focuses on actively helping to shape the future scientific landscape.”

#12 – Festival | 26.04. – 28.04. | Online & various locations in Germany
Organised by: Hochschulforum Digitalisierung, Stiftung Innovation in der Hochschullehre
University:Future Festival – Heads Up!
“The festival will deal with topics related to the future of higher education: technology, didactics, strategy development, competences, architectures and much more. It will take place in the physical as well as in the digital space. The principle is: Digital first! The event in all its diversity can only be experienced online. Physical stages at various locations in Germany will enable encounters and networking in person. The festival is bilingual in German and English.”

#13 – Festival | 14.05. – 16.05. | Aarhus (Denmark) & Online
Organised by: The Next Library (Aarhus Public Libraries)
Next Library 2023
“We invite library innovators from all over the world to join next year’s festival and we hope to see many of you. Next Library 2023 is currently in the process of becoming a hybrid festival so it will be possible for people all around the world to tune in on the conversation. We are still working on the format and the programme, so please stay tuned for more updates, questions and ideas for Next Library 2023.”

#14 – Conference | 23.05. – 26.05. | Hannover (Germany)
Organised by: Verein Deutscher Bibliothekarinnen und Bibliothekare e.V. (VDB), Berufsverband Information Bibliothek e.V. (BIB)
111th German Librarians’ Day: Forward to Far
“The motto of the largest and central continuing education event for German and European librarianship in 2023 is ‘forward to far’. Lectures, panel discussions and posters will focus on the following topics: Topic 1: Shaping everyday working life: Workflows, practical relevance, management, controlling, statistics, new work, new services, job profiles
Topic 2: Qualifications in education and occupation: study programmes, initial, continuing and further training, recruitment, job profiles, internationalisation of qualifications
Topic 3: Building and Learning, Architecture and Pedagogy: New Construction, Conversion, (Hybrid) Learning Places, Resources, Sustainability, Didactics, Educational Partnerships
Topic 4: Services and Community Building: Portfolio, Networking, Participation, Democracy Promotion, Internationalisation, Rural Areas, Bookmobiles
Topic 5: Data and Publications: Editions, Linked Open Data, Digital humanities, Bibliometrics, Open Access, Scientific Publishing, Search Spaces, Standardisation, Open Science
Topic 6: Digital and Analogue Infrastructures: NFDI, FID, Long-Term Archiving, Research Data Management.
The detailed lecture programme will be available here from February 2023.”

#15 – Workshop | 05.06. | Online
Organised by: ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics
INCONECSS Community Meeting
“A couple of times each year, we invite you to take a closer look at a current topic and to share your experiences with others. More details will follow, as we get closer to the date.”

#16 – Conference | 06.06. – 08.06. | Brighton (UK)
Organised by: UX in Libraries
UXLibs 2023: Connections & Collaborations
“The 2023 theme will be ‘Connections & Collaborations’. We will be encouraging attendees to think about how they connect and collaborate with others both inside and outside of libraries when engaged in User Experience work: How might we collaborate in order to make our services more useful, usable and desirable to our users? How might we work with specific user groups to establish and co-create more relevant and inclusive library services? How might we forge connections with external groups or individuals in order to improve both our processes and results?”

#17 – Festival | 03.07. – 05.07.
Veranstaltet von: ZB MED – Information Centre for Life Sciences
Open Science Festival 2023
“The Open Science Festival offers space for exchange and impulses on Open Science practices with international experts, practical workshops and a marketplace for networking activities. SAVE THE DATE.”

#18 – Conference | 05.07. – 07.07. | Budapest (Hungary)
Organised by: Association of European Research Libraries (LIBER)
LIBER 2023 Annual Conference: Open and Trusted – Reassessing Research Library Values
“The topics of the conference are: Supporting the pillars of Open Science, developing independent and inclusive collections, building sustainable infrastructures, managing data and information for a new kind of intelligence, addressing the post-pandemic challenges in education, engaging with libraries’ communities, enabling autonomy in scholarly publishing.

#19 – Conference | 21.08. – 25.08. | Rotterdam (The Netherlands)
Organised by: International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA)
88th World Library and Information Congress (WLIC) 2023: Let’s work together, let’s library
“The goals of the IFLA Global Vision will be the central theme during this Congress. With the motto Let’s work together, let’s library, we explore how libraries can contribute to an inclusive society, one in which everyone has the opportunity to participate. Key topics include personal development, the stimulation of reading, the development of language and digital skills, free access to culture, digital knowledge and innovation.”

#20 – Conference | 11.09. – 13.09. | Berlin (Germany)
Organised by: hbz – Wissen Information Innovation, ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics
SWIB23
“SWIB conference (Semantic Web in Libraries) is an annual conference, being held for the 15th time. SAVE THE DATE!”

#21 – Conference | 13.09. – 15.09. | Cologne (Germany)
Organised by: Technology Arts Sciences TH Köln, Stiftung Innovation in der Hochschullehre
TURN Conference 23: Prototype Future – Sharing Solutions for Transformative Teaching
“At TURN Conference 2023, you will share teaching practice and learning materials with colleagues from your discipline and beyond. In fixed time slots and supported by writing consultants and other experts, you can further develop your concepts and studies for further dissemination and easy adaptation by colleagues. Our aim is to create products at the conference itself, i.e. prototypes of the teaching of the future in the form of didactic design patterns or Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) projects, as material for teachers (which can include learning material for students), which will be uploaded to the conference website and can be further used by others also thanks to open licensing as OER. In the aftermath of the conference, further distribution channels will be opened up. Those who launch promising new or further developments during the concept sprints are candidates for a sprint award at the end of the conference.”

#22 – Fair | 25.09. – 27.09. | Madrid (Spain)
Organised by: OpenAIRE, Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT)
4th Open Science Fair (OSFair2023)
“Open Science (also referred to as Open Scholarship) is at a crossroads. Implementation and adoption are progressing, with researchers, research institutions, funding agencies, service providers and infrastructures all engaging at various levels. However, different models are emerging which produce a seemingly fragmented ecosystem and achieve small steps on top of traditional scholarly communication system. In order to enable international and interdisciplinary research, we need to ensure interoperability across communities and services while still maintaining our ability to support diversity of workflows and knowledge systems. OSFair2023 aims to bring together and empower Open Science communities and services; to identify common practices related to Open Science; to see what are the best synergies to deliver and operate services that work for many; and to bring experiences from all around the world and learn from each other.”

#23 – Conference | 27.09. – 29.09. | Berlin (Germany)
Organised by: Open-Access-Büro Berlin, twelve Berlin universities and colleges
Open-Access-Days 2023: Open Access – Shaping Visions
“In 2003, the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities and Cultural Heritage was adopted. Where the ‘vision of a comprehensive and freely accessible representation of knowledge’ began in 2003, 20 years later the universities are working closely networked and in exchange with non-university research and cultural heritage institutions on the topic of Open Access. On the basis of this long-standing cooperation, Berlin’s universities will bring Open Access back onto the stages of the German capital in 2023.”

#24 – Conference | 23.10. – 26.10. | Salzburg (Austria) & Online
Organised by: International Science Council’s Committee on Data (CODATA), World Data System (WDS), Research Data Alliance (RDA)
International Data Week 2023: A Festival of Data
“International Data Week (IDW) brings together a global community of data scientists and data stewards; researchers from all domains; data, interoperability and informatics experts from all fields; industry leaders, entrepreneurs and policymakers. This event will be an inclusive and celebratory Festival of Data, with in-person and virtual components, highlighting the opportunities for the positive transformation of our world in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic and other global challenges. IDW 2023 will combine the RDA Plenary Meeting, the biannual meeting of this international member organisation working to develop and support global infrastructure facilitating data sharing and reuse, and SciDataCon 2023, the scientific conference addressing the frontiers of data in research organised by CODATA and WDS.”

#25 – Conference | 06.12. – 07.12. | Online
Organised by: TIB – Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology and University Library, Berufsverband Information Bibliothek (BIB), Leibniz Association
#vBIB23
“The #vBIB is the virtual conference for digital library and information topics. SAVE THE DATE.”

 

Events 2023: How to stay up to date

These are our event tips for the Open Science and library world for 2023. Of course, there will be more exciting festivals, fairs, barcamps and other formats in the course of the year. We will collect these for you in our event calendar on ZBW MediaTalk!

To stay up to date on interesting events, you can drop by there or subscribe to our newsletter. There, we will inform you about new highlights on the Open Science and library event horizon approximately every fortnight: Sign up for the ZBW MediaTalk newsletter.

Are you missing an event?
Do you have an event tip that is not yet listed here or in our event calendar? Then we would be pleased if you let us know:

Submit event tip

This text has been partly translated from German.

Decision-making aids for event attendance: Highlights 2022

Despite the still ongoing pandemic-related obstacles, there were already many worthwhile conferences, workshops, festivals, barcamps & co. in 2022. We have reported on some of them in more detail here on ZBW MediaTalk. So if you are thinking about attending one of the events we recommended, our review will certainly help you in your decision-making:

Further reading tips for event organisers:
Do you organise events yourself and are looking for tips on how to make them even better? We have been dealing with this more frequently lately:

The post Open Science & Libraries 2023: 25 Tips for Conferences, Festivals & Co. first appeared on ZBW MediaTalk.

Open Science & Libraries 2022: 22 Tips for Conferences, Barcamps & Co. – Part 2

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by Claudia Sittner

Of our event tips for the 2nd half of 2022, it is mainly the events in summer and early autumn that take place onsite (eleven of them). The later the year, the more they move back into the digital world (eight of them). Only a total of three events will be held in the new hybrid format on-site and online. It seems that organisers all over the world are not enthusiastic about the hybrid format after all.

In our event tips for July to December 2022, you will find all facets of the new event world: purely digital, hybrid and, above all, classic on-site event formats. Below you will find a selection of conferences, workshops, barcamps, festivals and other events that you should not miss in the second half of 2022. You can find more interesting events in the ZBW MediaTalk event calendar.

#01 – Open Space | 05.07. | Berlin (Germany)
Organised by: Forum for Open Innovation Culture (innOsci)
Open Science und Open Innovation – Pretty Best Friends?!
“This Open Space is intended to be an ‘open space’ in the truest sense of the word for the topics that are close to the hearts of our community. The title forms the bracket and is intended to invite us to take a deeper look at the question of how we can bring together Open Science & Open Innovation for the benefit of all and perhaps also think in a completely new way in order to meet the social challenges of our time and shape transformation.“

#02 – Conference | 06.07. – 08.07. | Odense (Denmark)
Organised by: Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes de Recherche – Association of European Research Libraries (LIBER) and University Library of Southern Denmark / Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek
LIBER Annual Conference 2022
“LIBER 2022 Annual Conference Theme: Libraries in the Research and Innovation Landscape — Supporting, Partnering, Leading. The upcoming LIBER 2022 Annual Conference will address the following topics: Libraries as research institutions; Citizen science and research communication; Partnering with other organisations and the private sector; Community building for researchers; Research libraries as publishers; Role of research libraries in bibliometrics; Special collections in research libraries.”

#03 – Summer School | 11.07. – 15.07. | Zurich (Switzerland)
Organised by: University of Zurich
Open Science Summer School 2022
“Are you unsure what FAIR data is, or how to write a data management plan? Are you wondering about copyright, or how to manage sensitive data properly? Do you want to know more about the various Open Access roads, and how you can avoid predatory journals? You will have the opportunity to gain a deeper insight into the world of open data, research data management, and open access.”

#04 – Conference | 13.07. – 16.07. | Leiden (Netherlands)
Organised by: Leiden University, the Municipality of Leiden, Leiden University of Applied Sciences, and the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC)
EuroScience Open Forum 2022: Crossing the borders, engaged science, resilient society
“The main objective of ESOF2022 is to strengthen the trust in the various ways society is influenced by science and, on the other hand, how science is influenced by choices, dilemmas and responsibilities that arise in society. ESOF2022 will be about the creation of a sense of urgency in scientists, policy makers, media, and the general public to deliberate more actively on science. ESOF2022 in Leiden will reinforce the societal dimension of European research-recognising that citizen engagement is intrinsic to the support of science and to appreciate the benefits of science for the economy and quality of life. ESOF2022 conference with the theme ‚Crossing the borders, engaged science, resilient society‘ is embedded in a 365-day programme of Leiden European City of Science where we will celebrate arts, science, and technology, targeted to reach out to the general public and truly connect science with society.”

#05 – Conference | 26.07. – 29.07. | Dublin (Ireland)
Organised by: International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA)
87th IFLA World Library and Information Congress: Inspire, Engage, Enable, Connect
“An abundance of innovative and thought-provoking sessions awaits you, including: Digital skills on fire workshop – Fighting fake information at your library – Agile in the library: methods and tools for project management, collaboration and innovation – Inspire: how the SDGs can change your life – Equity, diversity, inclusion: intersectional issues in libraries – Librarians as evidence intermediaries during times of crisis – Climate Action in libraries: creating a more sustainable future by engaging and inspiring youth – Telling the next chapter: marketing libraries of the future – Infodemic management: strategies for combatting health mis/dis/malinformation – Truth, evidence and memory: Academic Libraries as cultural rights defenders – Information access through cooperation: models from libraries serving persons with print disabilities – European libraries in a time of war: responses to the crisis in Ukraine – Artificial intelligence: new horizons and implications for libraries.”

#06 – Conference | 30.08. – 31.08. | Hannover (Germany)
Organised by: Leibniz University Hannover (LUH) and TIB – Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology and University Library
Das erste deutsche Open Science Festival: Meet. Share. Inspire. Care.
“Exchange and impulses on Open Science practices with (inter)national experts – A place to network with other scientists – Practice-based workshops – A marketplace with information on local and international initiatives and services.”

#07 – Conference | 01.09. | Amsterdam (Netherlands)
Organised by: National Program Open Science (hereafter: NPOS)
Netherlands National Open Science Festival: Meet / Share / Inspire / Care
“This year the festival contains two tracks: Track 1: Open Science in Practice (all day) invites active researchers working in the Netherlands. The parallel track 2: Open Science in Policy (afternoon) invites everyone interested in Open Science policy. Join us to learn more about Open Science practices in research and current policy in the Netherlands. Plus, you’ll get to meet researchers in the Netherlands who already work openly or want to get started as well as Open Science policy makers.”

#08 – Conference | 13.09. – 14.09. | Online
Organised by: Technical University of Applied Sciences Wildau
14th Wildau Library Symposium: Best of Failure
“Everyone agrees that a culture of innovation requires a willingness to take risks and an error culture. But what specifically can help to live both in practice in everyday library life? Under the working title ‚Best of Failure” (or ‚Failing Beautifully‘, ‚Protypes Create Types‘, ‚FuckUp Night‘), we will first collect together with the participants what can be included in an overview. Then we will work out how acceptance and transparency can find a permanent place for it. The goal is a systematic collection that can be used as a ‘lesson learned’ for project-initiated library work. There should be enough failed ideas/projects/solutions. They are a treasure if one draws the right conclusions from them for similar approaches, whether e.g. in the use of discovery tools, lending operations, QR codes, media acquisition, RFID devices, etc.”

#09 – Conference | 19.09. – 21.09. | Bern (Switzerland)
Organised by: University Library Bern
Open-Access-Tage 2022: Kollaboration
“The developments in the publication system towards more openness lead to an increase in the number of actors, institutions, infrastructures, interests, technologies, professions, etc. involved, who bring their own demands, requirements, interpretations, needs, standards, languages, etc. with them. One of the current challenges for OA is therefore how these actors and interests interact and how they can be included and taken into account. This raises questions such as: Which collaborations are desirable? What positive and negative experiences have we had? How should collaborations be designed in the sense of Open Access and Open Science? Do collaborations change the institutions in which we work? Which collaborations are particularly valuable strategically? Which ones should we strive for? What forms of collaboration exist? The following dimensions of collaboration are particularly important to us at the Open Access Days: Collaboration among people: different languages, assessments, prerequisites, competencies, interests and values – Collaboration between machines: Interoperability, services, infrastructures, exchange of (meta-)data, dashboards – Collaborative structures and mechanisms: different institutions, cultures, processes, goals and requirements.”

#10 – Conference | 19.09. – 23.09. | Berlin (Germany)
Organised by: QURATOR Bündnis
QURATOR 2022 – Third Conference on Digital Curation Technologies
“The Qurator conference provides a forum on the use of digital curation technologies in application domains for, e.g., media, journalism, logistics, cultural heritage, health care and life sciences, energy, industry. Of particular relevance are submissions that demonstrate the applied use of digital curation technologies and tools in domain-specific use cases and that bridge traditional boundaries between disciplines such as Artificial Intelligence and Semantic Web, data analytics and machine learning, information/content and knowledge management systems, information retrieval, knowledge discovery, and computational linguistics.”

#11 – Conference | 20.09. – 22.09. | Online
Organised by: Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA)
OASPA Online Conference on Open Access Scholarly Publishing 2022
“The 2022 online conference will encourage participants to think Beyond Open Access to equitable open scholarship and science practices and will address many timely and fundamental topics relating to open scholarly communication. These include, and are not limited to: The University Leadership Role in Delivering Equitable Open Access; Connecting Vision to Practice: what needs to happen to ensure recent recommendations are met; Common Good and Open Access; Humanities and Open Scholarship; Indigenous Knowledge; Open Science Knowledge Amongst Researchers; Has open science failed to influence research assessment?; Pathways to Open Access: Values-based publishing models.”

#12 – Conference | 28.09. – 30.0.9 | The Hague (Netherlands) & Online
Organised by: Europeana Foundation
EUROPEANA 2022
“We aim to explore how we can collaboratively build a common data space for cultural heritage and raise voices from across the sector to empower digital transformation and explore the role digital cultural heritage plays in today’s and tomorrow’s world.”

#13 – Workshop | 12.10. – 13.10. | Online
Organised by: Landesinitiative für Forschungsdatenmanagement (fdm.nrw)
Train-the-Trainer Workshop zum Forschungsdatenmanagement
“The two-day workshop is aimed at people who want to teach the basics of research data management in their field of work or at their institution and, based on this, want to set up or expand RDM services for their locations. In addition to didactic approaches, methods and the seminar structure, the following topics will be covered: Research data life cycle – Research data policies – Data management plan – Structuring of data – Documentation – Storage and backup – Long-term archiving – Access security – Publication of research data – Post-use of research data – Legal aspects.”

#14 – Conference | 17.10. – 20.10. | Online
Organised by: Open Education Conference Board of Directors
Open Education Conference 2022: Rise to Action
“The Open Education Conference (‚OpenEd‘) is an annual convening for sharing and learning about Open Educational Resources, Open Pedagogy, and Open Education Initiatives. This dynamic gathering celebrates the core values of Open Education that strive to realise education ecosystems that are accessible, affordable, equitable and inclusive to everyone, regardless of their background. As of 2022, the conference transitioned to leadership by a community-elected board of directors, guided by a strategic vision.”

#15 – Conference | 18.10. – 19.10. | Online
Organised by: Science Europe AISBL
Science Europe Open Science Conference 2022
“At the Open Science conference, we will provide a comprehensive overview of the current policy initiatives, research assessment reforms, and financial measures that support the transition to Open Science, and look forward at new trends. We will also explore the impact of the transition on the daily reality of researchers, their teams, and institutions, and discuss ways to make the transition to Open Science fair and equitable.”

#16 – Conference | 19.10. – 21.10. | Brno (Czech Republic)
Organised by: European Commission; Masaryk University; the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic under the auspices of the Czech Presidency of the Council of the European Union; and CEITEC – Central European Institute of Technology
International Conference on Research Infrastructures (ICRI 2022)
“A major worldwide event providing an opportunity for strategic discussions about international cooperation in research infrastructure. A variety of experts and stakeholders discuss challenges and emerging trends, highlighting the essential role of research infrastructures. Every two years since 2012, ICRI has hosted about 500 delegates, who discuss topics concerning research infrastructures on the international level.”

#17 – Webinar | 25.10. – 26.10. | Online
Organised by: Technology Arts Sciences TH Köln – University of Applied Sciences
Agenda 2030 – Libraries on the Road to Environmental Sustainability
“With the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN Agenda 2030 adopted in 2015 and the new edition of the German Sustainability Strategy of the Federal Government, libraries are also called upon to make their contribution to sustainable development. Only recently there have been further clear impulses in the library world (Libraries4Future, Network Green Library). In this seminar, experiences are to be conveyed on how one can contribute to sustainable development in and with libraries. The focus is less on structural aspects and more on what can be influenced practically and in everyday life in libraries: Energy saving, cleaning and maintenance, green IT, services for library users, library administration, the green library office, library strategy and marketing.”

#18 – Conference | 26.10. – 28.10. | Leiden (Netherlands)
Organised by: FAIR Digital Objects Forum
1st International Conference on FAIR Digital Objects: Turning the Internet into a meaningful data space
“We need to act now. We have been living a data revolution for decades now. Every day, peta bytes of information of all kinds are generated and made accessible on the Internet. The amount of data is indeed so massive and varied that it is not feasible for humans to make sense of it using current processes and standards. What to do then? We can keep on creating and publishing information but will we manage it, use it, interpret it and exchange it efficiently? Turning the Internet into a meaningful data space. Successful management, exchange and interpretation of knowledge in an ever-growing information tsunami will depend on highly automated methods dealing with combined data. This will require artificial intelligence but also robust and informative ways to store and disseminate data and metadata. Here is where one crucial concept shows up: FAIR Digital Objects (FDOs).”

#19 – Conference | 03.11. – 04.11. | Online
Organised by: Kiel University of Applied Sciences and Kiel University
TURN Conference 2022: Shaping Change – Teaching and Learning Today, for the Challenges of Tomorrow
“We all know: The world is changing. Fast. In many areas. Students and graduates should be able to tackle and master the challenges of the present and the future and thus actively shape social change. Universities are thus faced with tasks and requirements on a strategic and cultural level as well as on a structural and practical level, which will be discussed at the TURN Conference 2022. In addition to all members of higher education institutions, we also cordially invite social actors and others interested in the topic to participate in Kiel. Participation in the TURN Conference 2022 is free of charge.”

#20 – Conference | 14.11.- 17.11. | Prague (Czech Republic) & Online
Organised by: European Open Science Cloud (EOSC)
EOSC Symposium 2022
“The next EOSC Symposium It will bring updates from across the EOSC ecosystem. It will coincide with the Second EOSC Tripartite Event . Stay tuned for the full programme with exciting speakers and topics.”

#21 – Conference | 29.11. – 01.12. | Tromsø (Norway) & Online
Organised by: The Arctic University of Norway (UiT )
17th Munin Conference on Scholarly Publishing 2022
“The Munin Conference is an annual conference on scholarly publishing and communication, primarily revolving around open access, open data and open science. This year the Munin conference has a special focus on interactivity and discussions. Submissions will be published before the conference to allow for a ‚flipped conference‘ format. Participants will have to get acquainted with the content of submissions before the conference, whereas during the conference the focus will be on discussions and other interactive work with the content. (…) The (..) three main topics for this year’s Munin conference: Economics and equity in Open Science infrastructures; Open Science policies; Connecting the building blocks of Open Science.”

#22 – Conference | 07.12. – 08.12. | Online
Organised by: TIB – Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology and University Library, Berufsverband Information Bibliothek (BIB) and Leibniz Association
#vBIB22 – Virtual Conference for Digital Library and Information Topics
“We are committed to openness and exchange. Curiously looking beyond one’s own nose enriches and broadens one’s own horizon. That is why we are focusing on digital perspectives with #vBIB22! (…) In 2022, there will again be exciting keynotes on this year’s main themes of change, future and sustainability. Specifically, it will be about futurology and work 4.0 – but more is not yet revealed. The other half of the programme is all yours – the #vBIB community. And we wouldn’t be the #vBIB if we didn’t try something new again this time.”

Events 2023: How to stay up to date!

These were our event tips for the Open Science and library world for 2022. Of course, there will be more exciting conferences, workshops, barcamps and other formats in the course of the year. We will collect these for you in our event calendar on ZBW MediaTalk!

To stay up to date on interesting events, you can drop by there or subscribe to our newsletter. There we will inform you once a week about new highlights on the Open Science and library event horizon.

Sign up for the ZBW MediaTalk Newsletter

Missing an event?

Do you have an event tip that is not yet listed in our event calendar? Then we would be pleased if you let us know.

Event Tip

Despite the pandemic-related obstacles, there were already many worthwhile conferences, workshops, festivals, barcamps & co. in the first half of 2022. We have already recommended 22 of them in the first part of this article: Open Science & Libraries 2022: 22 Tips for Conferences, Barcamps & Co.. We have reported on some of them in more detail here on ZBW MediaTalk. So if you are thinking about visiting one of the events we recommended, our review of them will certainly help you in your decision-making:

Further reading tips for event organisers:

Do you organise events yourself and are looking for tips on how to make them even better? We have been dealing with this more frequently lately:

About the Author:

Claudia Sittner studied journalism and languages in Hamburg and London. She was a long time lecturer at the ZBW publication Wirtschaftsdienst – a journal for economic policy, and is now the managing editor of the blog ZBW MediaTalk. She is also a freelance travel blogger (German), speaker and author. She can also be found on LinkedIn, Twitter and Xing.
Portrait: Claudia Sittner©

The post Open Science & Libraries 2022: 22 Tips for Conferences, Barcamps & Co. – Part 2 first appeared on ZBW MediaTalk.

Open Access Barcamp 2022: Where the Community Met

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by Hannah Schneider and Andreas Kirchner

This year’s Open Access Barcamp took place online once again, on 28 and 29 April 2022. From 9:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. on both days, the roughly 50 participants were able to put together their own varied programme, and engage in lively discussions about current Open Access topics.

Open Access Barcamp 2022 Agenda

What worked well last year was repeated this year: The innovative conference tool Gather was again used to facilitate online discussions, and the organisers prioritised opportunities to have discussions and to network when designing the programme. They integrated a speed-dating format into the programme and offered an open round at topic tables. In the context of the open-access.network project, the Communication, Information and Media Centre (KIM) of the University of Konstanz once again hosted the Barcamp. While interactively planning the sessions on the first day, it became clear that the Open Access community is currently dealing with a very wide range of topics.

Illustration 1: open-access.network tweet about the topic tables

The study recently published by the TIB – Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology University Library entitled “Effects of Open Access” (German) was presented in the first session. This review of literature examined 61 empirical papers from the period 2010-2021, analysing various impact dimensions of Open Access, including aspects such as attention garnered in academia, the quality of publications, inequality in the science system or the economic impact on the publication system.

The result on the citation advantage of Open Access publications was discussed particularly intensively. Here, the data turned out to be less clear than expected. However, it was also noted that methodological difficulties could occur during measurement in this field. The result of the discussion was that a citation advantage of Open Access can continue to be assumed and can also be cited in advisory discussions. “All studies that show no advantage do not automatically prove a citation disadvantage,” as one participant commented.

Tools and projects to support Open Access

Various tools to support Open Access publishing were particularly popular this year. With “B!SON”, a recommendation service was presented that is helpful for many scientists and scholars in finding a suitable Open Access journal for articles that have already been written. The title, abstract and references are entered into the tool, which then displays suitable Open Access journals on this basis, and awards them a score which can be used to determine a “match”. B!SON was/is developed by the TIB and the Saxon State and University Library Dresden (SLUB).

Another useful service with a similar goal was introduced in the form of the “oa.finder”, developed by the Bielefeld University Library in the context of the open-access.network project. Authors can use this research tool to find suitable publication locations by entering their own role in the submission process, as well as the scientific institution where they work. It is possible to tailor the result to suit individual needs using different search and filter options. Both tools are currently in the beta version – the developers are still particularly keen to receive feedback.

A further session was dedicated to the question of what needs to be considered when converting from PDF to PDF/a in the context of long-term archiving, and which tools can be drawn upon to validate PDF/a files. This provided an opportunity to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of tools such as JHOVE, veraPDF and AvePDF.

The KOALA project (building consortial Open Access solutions) showed us which standards (German) apply for journals and publication series that participate in financing through KOALA consortia. Based upon these standards, the project aims to create an instrument that contributes to safeguarding processes and quality in journals and publishing houses. The project is developing sustainable, collaborative funding through scientific libraries, in order to establish an alternative to the dominant APC model.

Illustration 2: Results on the User Experience of the open-access.network website

In addition, the open-access.network project gave the Barcamp participants the opportunity to give feedback on its services. On the one hand, they evaluated the range of information and discussed the newly designed website. On the other, they focussed on the project events, discussing achievements and making suggestions for improvement. Here, the breadth of the different formats received particular praise, as did the fact that offers such as the “Open Access Talk” series have become very well established in the German-speaking countries.

Open Access communication: Reaching the target audience

Many members of the community are still working on how best to bring OA issues to different audiences. One of the sessions emphasised that, although the aspect of communication in Open Access work was regarded as very important, the required skills are often lacking – not least, because it has hardly played a role in library training to date. One of the central challenges in reaching the individual target groups is that different communication routes need to be served, which in turn requires strategic know-how. In order to stabilise and intensify the exchange, the idea of founding a focus group within the framework of the open-access.network project was proposed; this will be pursued further during a preparatory meeting at the end of June 2022.

Illustration 3: Screenshot of MIRO whiteboard for documenting the Barcamp

Another session also considered the question of communicative ways to disseminate Open Access. Here the format of low-threshold exchange formats was discussed. The Networking and Competence Centre Open Access Brandenburg relocated its own “Open Access Smalltalk” series (German) to the Barcamp – very much in the spirit of openness, and initiated a discussion on how to get interested people around the table. In particular, it was argued that virtual formats offer a lower barrier to participation in such exchanges and that warm-ups can really lead to mobilising participants.

Challenges faced by libraries

The issues and challenges of practical day-to-day Open Access at libraries were also discussed a great deal this year. The topic of how to monitor publication costs found great resonance, for example, and was discussed both in a session and in one of the subsequent discussions one of the topic tables. Against the backdrop of increasing Open Access quotas and costs, libraries face the urgent challenge of getting an overview of the central and decentral publication costs. Here they are applying various techniques, such as de-centrally using their own inventory accounts, but also through their own research and with the help of the Open Access monitor.

A further session explored the topic of secondary publication service, specifically looking at which metadata can be gathered on research funders in repositories, and how. The discussion covered specific practical tips for implementation, including recommendations for the metadata schemata Crossref and RADAR/DataCite, for example.

One of the final sessions at the Barcamp explored the issue of how libraries can ensure that they provide “appropriate” publication opportunities. In doing so, reference was made to the “Recommendations for Moving Scientific Publishing Towards Open Access” (German), published by the German Council of Science and Humanities in 2022. To find out which publication routes researchers want and need, it is necessary to be in close contact with the various scientific communities. The session considered how contacts could be improved within the participants’ own institutions. Various communication channels were mentioned, such as via subject specialists, faculty councils/ representatives or seminars for doctoral candidates.

Illustration 4: Screenshot of feedback from the community

Conclusion

We can look back on a multifaceted and lively Open Access Barcamp 2022. The open concept was well received, and there was considerable willingness from the participants to actively join in and help shape the sessions. The jointly compiled programme offered a wide range of topics and opportunities to discuss everyday Open Access issues. In this virtual setting, people also joined in and contributed to the collegial atmosphere. After the two days, the community returned to everyday life armed with new input and fresh ideas; we would like to thank all those who took part, and look forward to the next discussion.

You may also be interested in:

Barcamp Open Science 2022: Connecting and Strengthening the Communities!

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by Yvana Glasenapp, Esther Plomp, Mindy Thuna, Antonia Schrader, Victor Venema, Mika Pflüger, Guido Scherp and Claudia Sittner

As a pre-event of the Open Science Conference , the Leibniz Research Alliance Open Science and Wikimedia Germany once again invited participants to the annual Barcamp Open Science (#oscibar) on 7 March. The Barcamp was once again held completely online. By now well-versed in online events, a good 100 participants turned up. They came to openly discuss a diverse range of topics from the Open Science universe with like-minded people.

As at the Barcamp Open Science 2021, the spontaneous compilation of the programme showed that the majority of the sessions had already been planned and prepared in advance. After all, the spectrum of topics ranged from very broad topics such as “How to start an Open Science community?” to absolutely niche discussions, such as the one about the German Data Use Act (Datennutzungsgesetz). But no matter how specific the topic, there were always enough interested people in the session rooms for a fruitful discussion.

Ignition Talk by Rima-Maria Rahal

In this year’s “Ignition Talk”, Rima-Maria Rahal skilfully summed up the precarious working conditions in the science system. These include, on the one hand, temporary positions and the competitive pressure in the science system (in Germany, this is currently characterised by the #IchBinHanna debate, German), and on the other hand, the misguided incentive system with its focus on the impact factor. Not surprisingly, her five thoughts on more sustainable employment in science also met with great approval on Twitter.

Rima-Maria Rahal: Fünf Thoughts for More Sustainable Employment

Those interested in her talk “On the Importance of Permanent Employment Contracts for Research Quality and Robustness” can watch it on YouTube (recording of the same talk at the Open Science Conference).

In the following, some of the session initiators have summarised the highlights and most interesting insights from their discussions:

How to start an Open Science community?
by Yvana Glasenapp, Leibniz University Hannover

Open Science activities take place at many institutions at the level of individuals or working groups, without there being any exchange between them.

In this session we discussed the question of what means can be used to build a community of those interested in Open Science: What basic requirements are needed? What best practice examples are there? Ideas can be found, for example, in this “Open Science Community Starter Kit”.

Die The Four Sages of Developing an Open Science Community from the „Open Science Community Starter Kit “ (CC BY NC SA 4.0)

There is a perception among many that there is a gap between the existing information offered by central institutions such as libraries and research services and the actual implementer community. These central bodies can take on a coordinating role to promote existing activities and network participating groups. It is important to respect the specialisation within the Open Science community. Grassroots initiatives often form in their field due to specific needs in the professional community.

Key persons such as data stewards, who are in direct contact with researchers, can establish contacts for stronger networking among Open Science actors. The communication of Open Science principles should not be too abstract. Incentives and the demonstration of concrete advantages can increase the motivation to use Open Science practices.

Conclusion: If a central institution from the research ecosystem wants to establish an Open Science community, it would do well to focus, for example, on promoting existing grassroots initiatives and to offer concrete, directly applicable Open Science tools.

Moving Open Science at the
institutional/departmental level
by Esther Plomp, Delft University of Technology

In this session all 22 participants introduced themselves and presented a successful (or not so successful!) case study from their institution.

Opportunities for Open Science

A wide variety of examples of improving awareness or rewarding Open Research practices were shared: Several universities have policies in place on Research Data or Open Access. These can be used to refer researchers to and are especially helpful when combined with personal success stories. Some universities offer (small) grants to support Open Science practices (Nanyang Technological University Singapore, University of Mannheim, German). Several universities offer trainings to improve Open Science practices, or support staff who can help.

Offering recommendations or tools that facilitate researchers to open up their workflows are welcome. Bottom-up communities or grassroots initiatives are important drivers for change.

Conferences, such as the Scholarship Values Summit, or blogs could be a way to increase awareness about Open Science (ZBW Blog on Open Science). You can also share your institute’s progress on Open Science practices via a dashboard, an example is the Charité Dashboard on Responsible Research.

Challenges for Open Science

On the other hand, some challenges were also mentioned: For example, Open Science is not prioritised as the current research evaluation system is still very focused on traditional research impact metrics. It can also be difficult to enthuse researchers to attend events. It works better to meet them where they are.

Not everyone is aware of all the different aspects of Open Science (sometimes it is equated with Open Access) and it can also be quite overwhelming. It may be helpful to use different terms such as research integrity or sustainable science to engage people more successfully with Open Science practices. More training is also needed.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution! If new tools are offered to researchers, they should ideally be robust and simplify existing workflows without causing additional problems.

Conclusion: Our main conclusions from the session were that we have a lot of experts and successful case studies to learn from. It is also important to have enthusiastic people who can push for progress in the departments and institutes!

How can libraries support researchers for Open Science?
by Mindy Thuna, University of Toronto Libraries

There were ten participants in this session from institutions in South Africa, Germany, Spain, Luxembourg and Canada.

Four key points that arose:

1. One of the first things that came up in dialogue was that Open Science is a very large umbrella that contains a LOT of pieces/separate things within it. Because there are so many moving parts in this giant ecosystem, it is hard to get started in offering supports, and some areas get a lot less attention than others. Open Access and Open Data seem to consistently be flagged first as the areas that generate a lot of attention/support while Open Software and even Citizen Science received a lot less attention from libraries.

2. Come to us versus go to them: Another point of conversation was whether or not the researchers are coming to us (as a library) to get support for their own Open Science endeavours. It was consistently noted that they are not generally thinking about the library when they are thinking, e.g., about research data or Open Access publishing. The library is not on their radar as a natural place to find this type of support/help until they have experienced it for themselves and realise the library might offer supports in these areas.

From this starting point, the conversation morphed to focus on the educational aspect of what libraries offer – i.e. making information available. But it was flagged that we often have a bubble where the information is located that is not often browsed. So the community is a key player in getting the conversation started, particularly as part of everyday research life. This way, the library can be better integrated into the regular flow of research activities when information/help is needed.

3. The value of face-to-face engagement: People discussed the need to identify and work with the “cheerleaders” to get an active word-of-mouth network going to educate more university staff and students about Open Science (rather than relying on Libguides and webpages to do so more passively). Libraries could be more proactive and work more closely with the scientific community to co-create Open Science related products. Provision of information is something we do well, but we often spend less time on personal interactions and more on providing things digitally. Some of the attendees felt this might be detrimental to really understanding the needs of our faculty. More time and energy should be spend on understanding the specific needs of scientists and shaping the scientific communication system rather than reacting to whatever comes our way.

4. The role of libraries as a connecting element: The library is uniquely placed to see across subject disciplines and serve in the role of connector. In this way, it can help facilitate collaborations/build partnerships across other units of the organisation and assist in enabling the exchange of knowledge between people. It was suggested that libraries should be more outgoing in what they (can) do and get more involved in the dialogue with researchers. One point that was debated is the need for the library to acknowledge that it is not and cannot really be a neutral space – certainly not if Open Science is to be encouraged rather than just supported.

Persistent identifiers and how they can foster Open Science
by Antonia Schrader, Helmholtz Open Science Office

Whether journal article, book chapter, data set or sample – these results of science and research must be made openly accessible in an increasingly digital scientific landscape, and at the same time made unambiguously and permanently findable. This should support the exchange of information within science from “closed” to “open” science and promote the transfer of findings to society.

Persistent identifiers (PIDs) play a central role here. They ensure that scientific resources can be cited and referenced. Once assigned, the PID always remains the same, even if the name or URL of an information object changes.

The participants in the spontaneous barcamp session all agreed on this central importance of PIDs for the digital science landscape. All of them were familiar with the principle of PIDs and have contact points in their daily work, especially with DOIs and ORCID iDs (Open Researcher and Contributor iD). In addition to the enormous potential of PIDs, however, the participants also saw challenges in their use and establishment. It became clear that there are still technical as well as ethical and data protection issues to consider.

There was consensus that these questions must be accompanied by a broad education on PIDs, their purpose and how they work; among the scientific staff of research institutions as well as among researchers. Websites tailored to the topic from ORCID DE (German) or Forschungsdaten.org (German) offer a good introduction.

Translating scholarly works opens science
by Victor Venema, Translate Science

Translating scholarly works opens science for more contributors (who do important work, but are not proficient in writing English), avoids double work and it opens the fruits of science to larger communities. Translated scientific articles open science to science enthusiasts, activists, advisors, trainers, consultants, architects, doctors, journalists, planners, administrators, technicians and scientists. Such a lower barrier to participating in science is especially important on topics such as climate change, environment, agriculture and health.

In this session we discussed why translations are important, tools that could help making and finding translations and foreign language works. An interesting thought was that currently blogs are important for finding foreign scientific articles, which illustrates how much harder it is to find such works and suggests allies to work with. The difficulty of finding foreign works emphasises the importance of at least translating titles and abstracts. Search engines that include automatically translated keywords can also help discovery.

The slides of the session “Translating scholarly articles opens science” can be found here.

Open Data before publication
by Mika Pflüger, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research

In this session we discussed approaches and tools to collaborate on scientific data openly. The starting point of the discussion was the assessment that publishing scientific data openly is already quite well supported and works smoothly thanks to platforms like Zenodo. In contrast, open pre-publication collaboration is difficult because the available platforms impose restrictions, either on the size of the datasets or on the research area supported. Self-hosting a data collaboration platform like gin – Modern Research Data Management for Neuroscience is one solution, but usually not feasible for individual researchers or working groups.

We also talked briefly about experiences with open pre-publication collaboration. Experiences are limited so far, but fruitful collaboration can establish when the datasets in question are useful to a broader group of scientists and contribution is easy and quick. Furthermore, adapting data workflows so that intermediate results and workflows are openly accessible also has benefits for reproducibility and data organisation in general.

Conclusion of the Barcamp Open Science 2022

The Barcamp once again proved to be a suitable opportunity to meet both Open Science veterans and newcomers and to engage in low-threshold conversation. Particularly popular this time were the extensive rounds of introductions in the individual sessions, which not only minimised the inhibition threshold for speaking, but also helped all those present to classify their video conference counterpart in a professional manner and, if desired, to make a note of the contact for later. Topics were dealt with in breadth by many or in depth by a few. Sometimes two people are enough for the latter. In the end, it became clear that the most important thing is to network representatives from the different communities and to promote their exchange.

Thank you and see you next year!

Behind the scenes this year, the organising team had taken up feedback from the community that had arisen in the context of a survey on the future of the Barcamp Open Science. For example, there was an onboarding session especially for newcomers to the Barcamp to explain the format and procedure again and to “break the ice” beforehand. Even though we would like to hold the Barcamp in presence again, and this is also desired, there is also a clear vote for an online format. This is more inclusive and important for international participation. Ultimately, our goal is to further develop and consolidate the format together with the community. And we are open to new partners.

This text has been translated from German.

Web links to the Barcamp Open Science

More tips for events

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About the authors (alphabetical)

Dr Yvana Glasenapp is a research officer specialising in research data management and Open Science at Leibniz University Hannover (LUH). Her professional background is in biology. She can be found on XING, LinkedIn and ORCID.
Portrait: Yvana Glasenapp©

Dr Mika Pflüger works in the research software engineering group at Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. He currently works on a better integration of simple climate models into the PIAM suite of integrated assessment models. Mika Pflüger can be found on Twitter.
Portrait: PIK/Klemens Karkow©

Dr Esther Plomp is a Data Steward at the Faculty of Applied Sciences, Delft University of Technology, in the Netherlands. She works towards contributing to a more equitable way of knowledge generation and facilitating others in working more transparently through her involvements in various open research communities including The Turing Way, Open Research Calendar, IsoArcH and Open Life Science. Esther Plomp can be found on Twitter, LinkedIn and GitHub.
Portrait: Esther Plomp©

Dr Guido Scherp is Head of the “Open-Science-Transfer” department at the ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics and Coordinator of the Leibniz Research Alliance Open Science. He can also be found on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Portrait: ZBW©, photographer: Sven Wied

Antonia Schrader has been working in the Helmholtz Open Science Office since 2020. There she supports the Helmholtz Association in shaping the cultural change towards Open Science. She promotes the dialogue on Open Science within and outside Helmholtz and regularly organises forums and online seminars (German) together with her colleagues. Antonia Schrader is active in ORCID DE, a project funded by the German Research Foundation to promote and disseminate ORCID iD (German), a persistent identifier (PID) for the permanent and unique identification of individuals. Antonia Schrader can be found on Twitter, LinkedIn and XING.
Portrait: Antonia Schrader, CC BY-ND

Claudia Sittner studied journalism and languages in Hamburg and London. She was a long time lecturer at the ZBW publication Wirtschaftsdienst – a journal for economic policy, and is now the managing editor of the blog ZBW MediaTalk. She is also a freelance travel blogger (German), speaker and author. She can also be found on LinkedIn, Twitter and Xing.
Portrait: Claudia Sittner©

Mindy Thuna has been a librarian since 2005. Before, she has worked as an educator in a variety of eclectic locations, including The National Museum of Kenya in Nairobi. Wearing her librarian hat, Mindy has had numerous fabulous librarian titles including the AstraZeneca Science liaison librarian, the Research Enterprise Librarian, Head of the Engineering & Computer Science Library and her current role as the Associate Chief Librarian for Science Research & Information at the University of Toronto Libraries in Canada. Her research is also rather eclectic but focuses on people’s interactions with and perception of concepts relating to information, with her current focus being on faculty and Open Science practices. Mindy Thuna can also be found on ORCID and Twitter.
Portrait: Mindy Thuna©

Victor Venema works on historical climate data with colleagues all around the world where descriptions of the measurement methods are normally in local languages. He organised the barcamp session as member of Translate Science, an initiative that was recently founded to promote the translation of scientific articles. Translate Science has a Wiki, a blog, an email distribution list and can be found on the Fediverse.

The post Barcamp Open Science 2022: Connecting and Strengthening the Communities! first appeared on ZBW MediaTalk.

Open Science & Libraries 2022: 22 Tips for Conferences, Barcamps & Co.

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by Claudia Sittner

After the coronavirus years 2020 and 2021 were practically a total failure for on-site events and everything actually took place online, a cautious trend towards a return to on-site events can be observed for 2022. Since even the most creative tools and formats have shown: Nothing can replace a face-to-face conversation on site or a chance encounter during a coffee break for networking. Nevertheless, there are still many “online only” events. But new hybrid event formats in particular are on the rise. So is hybrid becoming the new normal?

In our event tips for 2022, you will find all these facets of the new event world: purely digital, hybrid and classic on-site event formats. Below you will find a selection of conferences, workshops, barcamps and other events that you should not miss in 2022. You can also always find more interesting events in the ZBW MediaTalk events calendar.

#1 3rd ESFRI RIs -EOSC Workshop: What does EOSC bring to RI users?
Workshop | 25.01. – 26.01. | Hybrid
“The main objective of the workshop is to bring together ESFRI [European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures], ESFRI RIs [Research Infrastructures] and EOSC [European Open Science Cloud] stakeholders, in order to showcase and better comprehend the EOSC concept, including the Open Science and ‘FAIR’ policy agenda, and the vision for the future, along with the EOSC value proposition for its users, and ensure an optimal federation of clusters and RIs with EOSC.

The event will focus on the current state of EOSC and how the thematic RIs and ESFRI clusters fit into the developing landscape, including the partnership with the newly established EOSC Association. The main focus of the 3rd workshop is on how the RI communities and researchers can use and benefit from EOSC, getting added value. Besides the general benefits of EOSC towards open science and ‘FAIRification’ of data and services, it is considered that the daily use of EOSC Exchange and concrete tools by the RI users for intra and interdisciplinary research will also greatly benefit EOSC, in becoming useful and effective, contributing towards its sustainability.”
Organised by: ESFRI Task Force on EOSC, the EOSC Cluster projects, EOSC Association, EOSC Future and the StR-ESFRI2 Project, in close cooperation with ESFRI and the EC


#2 What Is Web 3.0? The Decentralized Web: An Introduction
Workshop | 27.01. | Online
“What is the decentralized web, why is it important, and where is it along the path of development? How does Web 3 differ from Web 2? How does blockchain and cryptocurrencies fit into the ecosystem? Who are the players working to realize this vision? Why is the Internet Archive, a library, a leader in the decentralized web movement?”
Organised by: Metropolitan New York Library Council


#3 WissKom2022: How do you do it? – Public and academic libraries in dialog (German)
Conference | 21.06. – 23.06. | Jülich (Germany)
“Academic and public libraries mostly operate in separate world[s], but they have more in common than is apparent at first glance. Many libraries face the same challenges. Some have successfully addressed them, while others can only sing a song about the hurdles. What do academic libraries and public libraries have in common? What distinguishes them in their paths and goals for the future? How and what can libraries learn from each other? From the perspective of both types of libraries, current topics will be presented and discussed at WissKom2022. The contributions are to follow the ‘lessons learned’ idea and thus stimulate an exchange about the presentation of one’s own activities and their feedback. How can libraries work together and for each other? You can expect experience values and success models among the topics: digital strategy; Open Access; sustainability; Open Space in libraries; user groups; information and advice.”
Organised by: Cental Library of the Forschungszentrum Jülich and the Cental Library of the Public Library Düsseldorf
Hashtag: #WissKom2022


#4 Paris Open Science European Conference (OSEC)
Conference | 04.02.22 – 05.02.22 | Paris (France) & Online
“One of the main topics addressed during this conference will be the transformation of the research and innovation ecosystem in Europe, as well as issues of transparency in health research, the necessary transformation of research evaluations, the future of scientific publishing, and the opening of codes and software produced in a scientific context.”
Organised by: Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation, the French Academy of Sciences, the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS),the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm), the High Council for Evaluation of Research and Higher Education (Hcéres), the University of Lorraine and the University of Nantes


#5 Open Science Retreat: Dialogue on Openness, Transparency and Science Communication in the Digital Age
Workshop | 15.02.22 – 16.02.22 | Online
“Only together can we successfully change the way we work scientifically. Only together can we advance Open Science. WE does not mean scientists only. WE incorporates scientists, science communicators, data stewards, librarians, publishers, editors, and other stakeholders involved in Open Science developments. With the Open Science Retreat, the ZBW wants to bring together international Open Science supporters from different stakeholder groups. For two afternoons in a row, the aim is to dive deep into the topics that are of burning interest to all of us.”
Organised by: ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics
Hashtag: #OpenScienceRetreat


#6 2022 Unconference on Open Scholarship Practices in Education Research
Conference | 24.02.22 – 25.02.22 | Online
“We will analysing the current state of open scholarship practice and interactive hackathons seeking solutions to identified problems. Participants will assess barriers to adoption of open scholarship practices unique to the education community and brainstorm strategies for promoting greater awareness.”
Organised by: Center for Open Science – Charlottesville, Virginia


#7 Open Data Day 2022
Conference | 24.02.22 – 25.02.22 | Online
“Open Data Day is an annual celebration of open data all over the world. Groups from around the world create local events on the day where they will use open data in their communities. It is an opportunity to show the benefits of open data and encourage the adoption of open data policies in government, business and civil society. All outputs are open for everyone to use and re-use.

The focus this year is on five priority areas on which Open Data has a positive impact: environmental data, tracking public money flows, open mapping, data for equal development, ocean data for a thriving planet.”
Organised by: Open Knowledge Foundation


#8 Barcamp Open Science 2022
Barcamp | 07.03.22 | Online
“The Barcamp Open Science is a barcamp dedicated to the Open Science movement. It is open to everybody interested in discussing, learning more about, and sharing experiences on practices in Open Science. We would like to invite researchers and practitioners from various backgrounds to contribute their experience and ideas to the discussion. The barcamp will bring together both novices and experts and its open format supports lively discussions, interesting presentations, development of new ideas, and knowledge exchange. Though, previous knowledge on Open Science is not mandatory. The barcamp is open to all topics around Open Science that the participants like to discuss.”
Organised by: Leibniz Research Alliance Open Science
Hashtag: #oscibar


#9 Open Science Conference 2022
Conference | 08.03.22 – 10.03.22 | Online
“The conference offers insights into both practical and technical innovations that serve the implementation of open practices as well as current and pioneering developments in the global Open Science movement. Such developments are, for example, the increasing plea for open practices as lessons learned from global crises as well as recent discussions on the relation of Open Science and knowledge equity. Furthermore, the conference offers many opportunities for networking and exchange.

The annual conference is dedicated to the Open Science movement and provides a unique forum for researchers, librarians, practitioners, infrastructure providers, policy makers, and other important stakeholders to discuss the latest and future developments in Open Science.”
Organised by: Leibniz Research Alliance Open Science
Hashtag: #osc2022


#10 Open Access Barcamp 2022
Barcamp | April 2022 | Online
“The Open Access Barcamp offers the community the chance to exchange ideas, network and learn from each other. The barcamp format is designed to be more open than a classic conference and deliberately does not use a pre-determined programme. Instead, the participants can suggest topics and hold sessions on issues of their choice. All topics related to Open Access are welcome.”
Organised by: Communication, Information, Media Centre (KIM) of the University of Konstanz as part of the open-access.network project


#11 2022 Library Publishing Forum
Pre-conference in the week of 16 May 2022 (days to be determined, probably one to two afternoons) | Online
“We are committed to expanding the diversity of perspectives we hear from at the Library Publishing Forum. Working towards some of the “Continuing Initiatives” from the LPC Roadmap for Anti-Racist Practice, this year we ask all proposals to explicitly address how they are inclusive of multiple perspectives, address DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion], or incorporate anti-racist and anti-oppressive approaches.

The Library Publishing Forum is an annual conference bringing together representatives from libraries engaged in or considering publishing initiatives to define and address major questions and challenges; to identify and document collaborative opportunities; and to strengthen and promote this community of practice. The Forum includes representatives from a broad, international spectrum of academic library backgrounds, as well as groups that collaborate with libraries to publish scholarly works, including publishing vendors, university presses, and scholars.”
Organised by: Library Publishing Coalition (LPC)


#12 International Conference on Economics and Business Information- INCONECSS
Conference | 17.05.22 – 19.05.22 | Online
“This conference wants to address issues relating to economics and business information. Main topics: Research Data, Reshaping of skills and structures, Research support, Open Access. The main target groups are librarians and other information specialists supporting researchers in Economics and Business Studies.

The uniqueness of the conference lies in its international scope in combination with the focus on Economics and Business Studies: bringing together best practices from different countries, establishing a platform for stimulating discussion, exchanging opinions, helping participants to improve and enhance their local services.”
Organised by: ZBW – Leibniz Informationszentrum für Wirtschaft
Hashtag: #INCONECSS


#13 Open Education Global Conference
Conference | 23.05.22 – 25.05.22 | Nantes (France)
“Specialised sessions will address unique approaches to OER such as the best way to implement OER in Russia, or Z-degrees at community colleges in California and also provide practical advice on things like OER diversity and accessibility. Thematic sessions highly relevant to the future of open education will also be held. We will specifically encourage sessions linked with the usage of technology for open education including linguistic tools, artificial intelligence, repository management, and blockchain. Sessions will be tied to UNESCO OER Recommendation action areas.

The Congress in Nantes will host learning labs to provide opportunities to acquire skills and knowledge associated with successfully implementing an open education initiative. Learning labs will address a wide range of topics such as advocating for OER, creating OER content, open licensing, policy for OER, open practices associated with disseminating, using, and sharing OER, open pedagogy, etc. Learning labs will be tied to UNESCO OER Recommendation action areas.”
Organised by: Open Education Global und Université de Nantes


#14 8. Library Congress Leipzig 2022: #FreiräumeSchaffen (German)
Conference | 31.05.22. – 02.06.22 | Leipzig (Germany) online
“Our motto #FreiräumeSchaffen (this means: create free spaces) connects the digital with the analogue space. The pandemic experience has shown how important such a connection is. How we want to fill the free space of libraries has to be explored again and again: in stock management, in digital services, in our learning and event offers and not least in the way we lead the library company into the future. So far, we have succeeded in striking a balance between digital services, analogue knowledge repository and genuine meeting place. The concrete ‘what we want’ is constantly changing. That is what ‘free spaces’ stand for. The idea of a free, equal society remains. That is what libraries stand for. So #FreiräumeSchaffen is also an appeal to the innovative power of our sector. The 8th Library Congress is also the 110th German Librarians’ Day.”
Organised by: Library and Information in Germany (BID) – Federal Union of German Library Associations
Hashtag: #FreiräumeSchaffen


#15 6th annual international User Experience in Libraries conference (UXLIBS VI): UX and Organisational Culture
Conference | 06.06.22 – 08.06.22 | Newcastle-Upon-Tyne (Great Britain)
“User experience (UX) research techniques are wonderfully accessible and offer us unparalleled access to the worlds of our users. In turn, UX design offers us an established process to follow to take the resulting research insights gathered, transforming them into action through prototyping and iteration. BUT absolutely none of the above matters if your organisation is not ready for, or not interested in, UX. […] If you don’t have the support and understanding of your colleagues and senior management all your UX hopes and dreams will come to nought. Some institutions are simply not interested in centring their services and activities around user needs and behaviours, while others just don’t realise yet that this is what UX research and design is all about. Doing UX is one thing, but getting it embedded and accepted, and the opportunities understood is quite another! If you don’t address the culture issue, like the Big Bad Wolf, it will come and gobble you up.At UXLibsVI we want to offer talks and presentations that speak to this challenge, which explore how the threat of organisational culture and closed traditional mindsets and approaches can be tackled head on.”
Organised by: UX in Libraries


#16 IASSIST 2022: Data by Design: Building a Sustainable Data Culture
Conference | 07.06.22 – 10.06.22 | Gothenburg (Sweden)
“The conference theme, ’Data by Design: Building a Sustainable Data Culture’, emphasizes two core values embedded in the culture of Gothenburg and Sweden: design and sustainability. We invite you to explore these topics further and discuss what they could mean to data communities. As a member of IASSIST, you are already part of at least one data community. Your other data communities may be across departments, within organizations, or among groups in different countries. How are these groups helping design a culture of practices around data that will persist across organizations and over time?”
Organised by: Swedish National Data Service (SND)


#17 re:publica 2022: “Any Way the Wind blows” (German)
Conference | 08.06. – 10.06. | Berlin
“All further information on the event will follow shortly on the republica channels.”
Organised by: republica GmbH
Hashtag: #rp22


#18 Open Science Retreat: Dialogue on openness, transparency and science communication in the digital age
Workshop | 14.06. – 15.06. | Online
“Only together can we successfully change the way we work scientifically. Only together can we advance Open Science. WE does not mean scientists only. WE incorporates scientists, science communicators, data stewards, librarians, publishers, editors, and other stakeholders involved in Open Science developments. With the Open Science Retreat, the ZBW wants to bring together international Open Science supporters from different stakeholder groups. For two afternoons in a row, the aim is to dive deep into the topics that are of burning interest to all of us.”
Organised by: ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics
Hashtag: #OpenScienceRetreat


#19 LIBER Annual Conference 2022
Conference | 06.07. – 08.07. | Odense (Denmark)
“LIBER 2022 Annual Conference Theme: Libraries in the Research and Innovation Landscape — Supporting, Partnering, Leading. The upcoming LIBER 2022 Annual Conference will address the following topics: Libraries as research institutions; Citizen science and research communication; Partnering with other organisations and the private sector; Community building for researchers; Research libraries as publishers; Role of research libraries in bibliometrics; Special collections in research libraries.”
Organised by: LIBER, University Library of Southern Denmark / Syddansk University Library
Hashtag: #LIBER2022


#20 EuroScience Open Forum 2022: Crossing the borders, engaged science, resilient society
Conference | 13.07. – 16.07. | Leiden (Netherlands)
“The main objective of ESOF2022 is to strengthen the trust in the various ways society is influenced by science and, on the other hand, how science is influenced by choices, dilemmas and responsibilities that arise in society. ESOF2022 will be about the creation of a sense of urgency in scientists, policy makers, media, and the general public to deliberate more actively on science. ESOF2022 in Leiden will reinforce the societal dimension of European research-recognizing that citizen engagement is intrinsic to the support of science and to appreciate the benefits of science for the economy and quality of life.

ESOF2022 conference with the theme “Crossing the borders, engaged science, resilient society” is embedded in a 365-day programme of Leiden European City of Science where we will celebrate arts, science, and technology, targeted to reach out to the general public and truly connect science with society.”
Organised by: Leiden University, the Municipality of Leiden, Leiden University of Applied Sciences, and the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC)
Hashtag: #ESOF2022


#21 87th IFLA World Library and Information Congress: Inspire, Engage, Enable, Connect
Conference | 26.07. – 29.07. | Dublin (Ireland)
“In conjunction with the Irish National Committee, IFLA will be […] publishing more information as the Congress plans develop.”
Organised by: International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA)


#22 Open Access Days 2022: Kollaboration (German)
Conference | 19.09. – 21.09. | Bern (Switzerland)
“The Open Access Days are the major annual conference on Open Access and Open Science in the German-speaking world. The 2022 motto of the Open Access Days is Collaboration.” The Open Access Days are aimed at all those who would like to get to grips with the many facets of scientific publishing, for example, employees of libraries and other institutions of the science infrastructure and of publishing houses; but also scientists and members of the science administration.”
Organised by: University Library of Bern
Hashtag: #OAT22


This text has been translated from German.

Events 2022: How to stay up to date

These are our event tips for the Open Science and library universe for 2022. Of course, there will be more exciting conferences, workshops, barcamps and other formats in the course of the year. We collect them for you in our events calendar on ZBW MediaTalk!

To keep up to date with interesting events, you can either drop by there or subscribe to our newsletter, in which we will regularly inform you about new highlights on the Open Science and library event horizon: sign up for the ZBW MediaTalk newsletter.

Is an event missing? Do you have an event tip that is not yet listed in our events calendar? Then we would be happy if you would let us know.

Decision-making aids for event attendance: highlights 2021

Despite the second year of the Corona pandemic, there were many conferences, workshops, barcamps & co. worth visiting in 2021. We wrote about some of them in ZBW MediaTalk. So if you are thinking about attending one of the events we recommend, our review will certainly help you make your decision:

For Event Organisers

Do you organise events yourself and are looking for tips on how to make them even better? We have been dealing with this more frequently lately:

About the author:

Claudia Sittner studied journalism and languages in Hamburg and London. She was a long time lecturer at the ZBW publication Wirtschaftsdienst – a journal for economic policy, and is now the managing editor of the blog ZBW MediaTalk. She is also a freelance travel blogger (German), speaker and author.
Portrait: Claudia Sittner©

The post Open Science & Libraries 2022: 22 Tips for Conferences, Barcamps & Co. first appeared on ZBW MediaTalk.

Open Access goes Barcamp, Part 2: How to organise networking online

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by Hannah Schneider (KIM), Andreas Kirchner (KIM) und Maximilian Heber (KIM)

You normally get together for a Barcamp event on site in a relaxed atmosphere, write ideas on whiteboards, pinboards or flipcharts and switch back and forth between the sessions as you see fit. You also naturally get into conversations with others in the kitchenette, in the corridors, during breaks or when having dinner together. All these elements enliven Barcamps and make them what they are. So how do you succeed in transferring a physical setting of this kind into a virtual space while staying true to the character of a Barcamp event?

Choose the right tools for the online Barcamp event

As we wanted the virtual Open Access Barcamp to reflect not only the exchange of information and ideas but also the networking character online, we decided to use gather.town as the technical basis. In our opinion, this tool is better than other videoconferencing software, such as Zoom or BigBlueButton, at facilitating quick conversational exchanges and the independent formation of small groups. A special feature of gather.town is that it offers users the option of moving around freely as a small figure in a space specially created for the respective event. As soon as you approach others, the camera and microphone are activated. This helps participants make a variety of contacts – just like at real meetings. We also considered using wonder.me, but since it does not provide for flexible room design, we ultimately decided against it.

Screenshot 1: The Gather.town room (CC BY 4.0)

We also used the online whiteboard Miro to collaboratively collect topics and for documentation purposes. This gave participants the opportunity to catch up on the contents of the sessions they could not attend. We chose Miro because it offers both a voting function and enough space for different groups to work in different corners at the same time.

Since technical issues and problems are to be expected when using such interactive tools, there were also two people in the conference room who provided technical support throughout the event, in addition to a central helpdesk email address. This proved to be very helpful, especially at the beginning of the event. An illustrated guide on how to use the tools was sent out in advance to help participants prepare for the event.

Screenshot 2: The Miro whitheboard (CC BY 4.0)

A central point of the programme at the beginning of each Barcamp event is the session planning to collectively set the agenda. The aim was to fill the five 45-minute sessions with up to three parallel events. To do so, we first collected topics on Miro and then presented each topic for one minute in an elevator pitch. A vote integrated into Miro then determined which topics should be included in the agenda. Care was taken to ensure that they did not overlap in order to allow as many people as possible to participate in the most popular sessions. The scheduling preference of the people giving the sessions was also taken into account.

Illustration 3: Session planning (CC BY 4.0)

To sweeten the break for the participants while the organisation team finalised the programme, a conference bag containing Open Access items and chocolates was sent to their home office in advance as a “care package”. For this purpose, we had asked the participants to provide their addresses on a voluntary basis during registration and most of them accepted the offer.

Illustration 4: Carepaket (CC BY 4.0)

How to create networking opportunities online

Since networking with other people is often more difficult at online events than at on-site meetings, and brief conversations during the coffee break usually don’t happen during virtual events, we specifically scheduled times for socialising.

Participants were given time to get to know each other better on the first day. For this purpose, three organisational questions were asked, according to which everyone in the gather.town room was asked to line up (for example, “I have already been to a Barcamp event” ? line up in ascending order from never to very often). The resulting groups were then given the opportunity to chat.

A kind of “speed dating” activity also took place allowing participants to talk to one person for five minutes, after which the interlocutors changed partners in order to ensure that each participant could have several different conversations.

We also deliberately left a time slot open on the second day for topics that either had not made it onto the agenda or required more extensive discussion. During this time slot, everyone could gather around “topic tables” to discuss aspects that concern them personally in their everyday work with Open Access. In keeping with the motto “bring-your-own-problem”, this facilitated practice-oriented discussions in smaller groups, for example on the topics of secondary publications, publication funds or Open Access consulting services.

During the evening programme, likewise held in gather.town, the participants were first given the opportunity to put their general knowledge to the test in a pub quiz. They then also had a chance to make or consolidate contacts with other Open Access enthusiasts in an informal setting. Although all the participants had spent the whole day sitting in front of the screen, about 25 people met up again in gather.town in the evening. Even though the quiz could have been a little shorter according to the feedback from some participants, it was a relaxed get-together despite the virtual setting.

The online Barcamp thrived on the active participation

We feel that the virtual Open Access Barcamp was a successful experiment all things considered and are pleased that the community had a lively exchange of ideas in our innovative setting. The two-day online event thrived on the contribution and collaboration of everyone and the active engagement of the participants. Numerous practical aspects and challenges in the everyday work with Open Access were addressed and discussed, and participants looked for solutions together.

We would like to point out that the vast majority of participants saw the video conferencing tool gather.town as very suitable, despite initial technical difficulties. It not only challenged and supported participants with their activities, but also facilitated conversations in the virtual kitchenette or socialising time slots. The combination with an online whiteboard such as Miro has also proven successful for session planning as well as for collaboration and documentation during the Open Access Barcamp. It should be noted, however, that the technical performance of online events is highly dependent on the internet connection and other technical conditions that are difficult to influence as an organiser. The virtual format nevertheless offers all interested parties the opportunity to exchange ideas easily with the Open Access community, regardless of location and without having to travel far or implement other logistical planning measures.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all participants for their active and lively engagement in the programme. We would also like to thank them for their openness to the unconventional online format and their patience with technical problems. A big thank you also goes out to the entire open-access.network project team for their great teamwork. We are looking forward to #OABarcamp22 next year!

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This text has been translated from German.

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Open Science & Libraries 2021: 20 Tips for Conferences, Barcamps & Co.

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by Claudia Sittner

After the Corona Year 2020 threw the event industry off track worldwide, event organisers have adapted to the “new normal” in 2021 and developed new digital formats. The advantage: the event world has become smaller. Events that used to take place out of reach in Sydney or Bangkok can now often be attended conveniently from the home office.

Many organisers have also used the year to rethink their event prices, reduce fees or eliminate them altogether – which is entirely in the spirit of the Open Science idea. That is why it was not difficult for us to put together a list of conferences, workshops, barcamps and other events that you should not miss in 2021.

JANUARY 2021

Open Science Barcamp
14.01.21, Online-Event
“A session in the series leading up to the Netherlands National Open Science Festival on February 11th 2021.”
Organised by: National Platform Open Science Netherlands


Webinar Serie: German-Dutch dialogue on the future of libraries: Sustainability and libraries – agenda 2030
18.01.21, Online-Event
“Libraries are not only sustainable institutions per se, but they also make an intensive contribution to raising awareness of the need for a sustainable society. To this end they provide information, organize projects and support sustainable engagement. Why libraries in the Netherlands and in Germany play an important social role here, how they can contribute to this and what examples are available will be presented and discussed. How the international library associations like IFLA and EBLIDA support this global challenge will also be a topic in this online-seminar.”
Organised by: Erasmus University Library Rotterdam


ALA Midwinter Meeting & Exhibits
22.01.21 – 26.01.21, Online-Event
“Symposium on the Future of Libraries, offering sessions on future trends to inspire innovation in libraries, “News You Can Use” with updates that highlight new research, innovations, and advances in libraries.”
Organised by: American Library Association


PIDapalooza 2021: The Open Festival of Persistent Identifiers
27.01.21, Online-Event
“Festival of persistent identifiers. Sessions around the broad theme of PIDs and Open Research Infrastructure.”
Organised by: CDL, Crossref, DataCite, NISO and ORCID


FEBRUARY 2021

Education for Data Science
07.02.21 – 09.02.21, Jerusalem (Israel)
“How Data Science should be taught in academic institutions and what kind of training and retraining can help support the need for new professionals in the data science ecosystem.”
Organised by: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, CODATA


Fake News: Impact on Society 4/4
08.02.21, Online-Event
“This event offers research into the concept of fake news and its impact in modern society:
Strengthening information literacy in the time of COVID-19: the role and contributions of the National Library of Singapore. News analytics in LIS Education and Practice.”
Organised by: News Media, Digital Humanities, FAIFE, and CLM


Open Science Festival
11.02.21, Online-Event
“Open Science stands for the transition to a new, more open and participatory way of conducting, publishing and evaluating scholarly research. Central to this concept is the goal of increasing cooperation and transparency in all research stages. The National Open Science Festival provides researchers the opportunity to learn about the benefits of various Open Science practices. It is a place to meet peers that are already working openly or that are interested to start doing so. Key to this day is sharing knowledge and best practices.”
Organised by: NPOS project Accelerate Open Science


Barcamp Open Science 2021
16.02.21, Online-Event
“Discussing and learning more about, and sharing experiences on practices in Open Science.”
Organised by: Leibniz Research Alliance Open Science


Open Science Conference 2021
17.02.21 – 19.02.21, Online-Event
“This conference will especially focus on the effects and impact of (global) crises and associated societal challenges, such as the Corona pandemic or the climate change, to open research practices and science communication in the context of the digitisation of science. And vice versa, how open practices help to cope with crises. Overall, the conference addresses topics around Open Science such as: Effects and impact of current crises on open research practices and science communication – Learnings from crises to sustainably ensure the opening of science in the future – Innovations to support Open Science practices and their application and acceptance in scientific communities – Scientific benefit of Open Science practices and their impact in society such as coping with crises – Open Science education and science communication to different target groups in the broad public.”
Organised by: Leibniz Research Alliance Open Science


MARCH 2021

3. Workshop Retrodigitalisierung: „OCR – Prozesse und Entwicklungen“
01.03.21, Online-Event
“Digitalisierung bietet neue Erschließungsmöglichkeiten, auch und vor allem durch gute Texterkennungsprogramme. Die Optical Character Recognition (OCR) ist ein Werkzeug, von dessen Qualität die Durchsuchbarkeit von Texten maßgeblich beeinflusst wird. Der Workshop befasst sich daher mit Prozessen und Entwicklungen in der OCR – einem wichtigen Bestandteil aller Digitalisierungsprojekte.”
Organised by: ZB MED, TIB, ZBW and Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz


Open Data Day 2021
06.03.21, Online-Event
“Open Data Day is an annual celebration of open data all over the world. Groups from around the world create local events on the day where they will use open data in their communities. It is an opportunity to show the benefits of open data and encourage the adoption of open data policies in government, business and civil society.”
Organised by: Open Knowledge Foundation


2. Bibliothekspolitischer Bundeskongress: Bibliotheken im digitalen Wandel: Orte der Partizipation und des gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalts
26.03.21, Online-Event
“Bibliotheken im digitalen Wandel: Orte der Partizipation und des gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalts“ – miteinander über bibliothekspolitische Fragen ins Gespräch zu kommen.”
Organised by: German Library Association (dbv)


APRIL 2021

Webinar Serie: German-Dutch dialogue on the future of libraries: Central services for public libraries
12.04.21, Online-Event
“The national library (KB) in the Netherlands offers central digital services to public libraries and to patrons as well. How these services were initiated in the past and how the situation is currently will be presented and compared with the situation in Germany. Because of the political system and the cultural sovereignty of the federal states, the support of smaller public libraries in Germany is not centralized, but so called “Fachstellen” in various federal states offer services to their libraries. This system, its tasks and services are presented – decentralised or centralised support for public libraries – what are the advantages and disadvantages? And what effects will the pandemic have to these services in the future? How will the idea of the third place be connected with the need to offer mobile services for the library users during and after corona?”
Organised by: Erasmus University Library Rotterdam


MAY 2021

IASSIST 2021: Data by Design – Building a Sustainable Data Culture
May, Online-Event
“The conference theme, “Data by Design: Building a Sustainable Data Culture”, emphasizes two core values embedded in the culture of Gothenburg and Sweden: design and sustainability. We invite you to explore these topics further, and discuss what they could mean to data communities. As a member of IASSIST, you are already part of at least one data community. Your other data communities may be across departments, within organizations, or among groups in different countries. How are these groups helping design a culture of practices around data that will persist across organizations and over time?”
Organised by: Swedish National Data Service (SND)


Library Publishing Virtual Forum
10.05.21 – 14.05.21 Online-Event
“This is an annual conference bringing together representatives from libraries engaged in (or considering) publishing initiatives to define and address major questions and challenges; to identify and document collaborative opportunities; and to strengthen and promote this community of practice.”
Organised by: Library Publishing Coalition (LPC)


JUNE 2021

Deutscher Bibliothekarstag: forward to far
15.06.21 – 18.06.21, Bremen (Germany)
“Alternative room concepts, Inventory management, Library management, Library education, Blended Library Concepts, Community building, Digitale editions, Digitization of the teaching, Discovery and eBooks, Electronic Resource Management – and much more.”
Organised by: The Association of German Librarians (VDB – Verein Deutscher Bibliothekarinnen und Bibliothekare) and Berufsverband Information Bibliothek e.V. (BIB)


IASSIST 2021/CESSDA: Data by Design – Building a Sustainable Data Culture
30.06.21 – 02.07.21, Gothenburg (Sweden)
“The conference theme, “Data by Design: Building a Sustainable Data Culture”, emphasizes two core values embedded in the culture of Gothenburg and Sweden: design and sustainability. We invite you to explore these topics further, and discuss what they could mean to data communities. As a member of IASSIST, you are already part of at least one data community. Your other data communities may be across departments, within organizations, or among groups in different countries. How are these groups helping design a culture of practices around data that will persist across organizations and over time?”
Organised by: Swedish National Data Service (SND)


JULY 2021

ICOSRP 2021: International Conference on Open Science Research Philosophy
19.07.21 – 20.07.21, Helsinki (Finland)
“All aspects of Open Science Research Philosophy.”
Organised by: International Research Conference


SEPTEMBER 2021

OA-Tage 2021
27.09.21 – 29.09.21 Bern (Switzerland)
“Open Access und Open Science.”
Organised by: open-access.network


OCTOBER 2021

FORCE2021
18.10.21 – 20.10.21 San Sebastián (Spain)
“At a FORCE11 annual conference stakeholders come together for an open discussion, on an even playing field, to talk about changing the ways scholarly and scientific information is communicated, shared and used. Researchers, publishers, librarians, computer scientists, informaticians, funders, educators, citizens, and others attend the FORCE11 meeting with a view to supporting the realization of promising new ideas and identifying new potential collaborators.”
Organised by: Force11


Events 2021: How to stay up to date

These are our event tips for the Open Science and library world for 2021. Of course, there will be more exciting conferences, workshops, barcamps and other formats in the course of the year. We will collect them for you in our event calendar on ZBW MediaTalk! To keep up to date with interesting events, you can either check there from time to time or subscribe to our newsletter, in which we will regularly inform you about new highlights on the Open Science and library event horizon: sign up for the ZBW MediaTalk newsletter.

Is an event missing?

Do you have an event tip that is not yet listed in our event calendar? Then we would be happy if you would let us know.

Further reading tips for event organisers:

Do you organise events yourself and are looking for tips on how to make them even better? We have been dealing with this more frequently lately:

Decision-making aids for event attendance: highlights 2020

Despite Corona, there were many conferences, workshops, barcamps & co. worth visiting in 2020. We wrote about some of them in ZBW MediaTalk. So if you are thinking about attending one of the events we recommend, our review will certainly help you make your decision:

References Portrait: Photo Claudia Sittner©

This text has been translated from German.

The post Open Science & Libraries 2021: 20 Tips for Conferences, Barcamps & Co. first appeared on ZBW MediaTalk.The post Open Science & Libraries 2021: 20 Tips for Conferences, Barcamps & Co. first appeared on Leibniz Research Alliance Open Science.

Barcamp@GeNeMe’2020: Open Science in Times of Crisis

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by Sabine Barthold, Loek Brinkmann, Ambreen Hamadani, Shweata Hegde, Franziska Günther, Peter Murray-Rust, Guido Scherp and Simon Worthington

On 7 October 2020, the TU Dresden Media Centre and the Leibniz Research Alliance Open Science invited Open Science scholars and activists to the first “Barcamp Open Science@GeNeMe 2020” (Barcamp@GeNeMe’2020). It served as pre-event of the conference “Communities in New Media – GeNeMe 2020” and was also the first satellite event of the established Barcamp Open Science.

Like so many other events this year, we took up the challenge of organising the Barcamp in a purely online format. At the same time, however, this challenge was an opportunity to further open up the Barcamp for international participation and to invite Open Science enthusiasts from all over the world to join us and exchange ideas, discuss new developments and share their experiences in the proliferation of open, collaborative and digital science. In the end, among 40 Open Science enthusiasts we had contributors from countries like the United Kingdom, Russia, India, Iran, Germany, Chile and the Netherlands.

From the crisis of science to science for times of crisis?

The barcamp topic ‘From the crisis of science to science for times of crisis?’ was inspired by the global fight against the spread of the novel coronavirus that dominates the social, economic and cultural life of most countries in the world since spring 2020. The current crisis experiences also brought other societal threats such as climate change or global environmental destruction back into the public consciousness. The enormous importance of scientific knowledge for the handling of the ongoing crisis highlighted the value of the core ideals of Open Science – transparency, collaboration, rapid and open publication of research and data, and importance of effective science communication to translate research into social and political action. The question we wanted to discuss was: what role can Open Science play in addressing this crisis in particular, but also other global crises, like climate change, in general? We asked some of the session moderators to summarise their highlights and personal impressions of the event.

 
 

Start your own Open Science Community

by Loek Brinkmann

Grassroots Open Science Communities (OSCs) and initiatives play a crucial role in the transition to Open Science. OSCs are breeding grounds for Open Science initiatives and showcase cutting-edge Open Science practices amongst colleagues, to instigate a culture change amongst researchers. Most Dutch universities have an OSC in place and its format is now also catching on abroad. Collectively, the communities have published an Open Science Community Starter Kit, which we presented in our session.

INOSC Starter Kit: The four stages of developing an Open Science Community, this work is licensed under [CC BY NC SA 4.0].

We invite researchers around the globe (that’s you!) to start their own OSC and connect it to the International Network of Open Science Communities (INOSC).

These communities are places where newcomers can learn from their colleagues and ease into Open Science. Moreover, OSCs provide tools and training to interact with societal stakeholders, so that researchers can increase the societal impact of their work. For example, by including stakeholders from government, industry or civil societies early on in the research cycle, to optimise research questions and output formats for relevant and meaningful implementations in society.

During the barcamp, we had a fruitful discussion on how to articulate the benefits of Open Science for societal impact and how Open Science Communities can inspire researchers to engage more with societal stakeholders. Very nice experience! Thank you for all your input!
 
 

openVirus, Citizen Science and curiosity

by Ambreen Hamadani and Shweata Hegde

The COVID-19 crisis was thought-provoking. It taught us that our common enemy can only be defeated if all of us come together and share our intellectual resources. openVirus epitomises this idea and has embarked on a mission to create a system for mining open literature to draw useful inferences so that viral epidemics can be prevented and controlled. It aims to build a better world through citizen collaboration. openVirus encourages the exchange of ideas and welcomes volunteers even from the remotest and most cut off regions of the world. This is crucial for building an incorrigibly curious community determined to fuel science with new and revolutionary ideas.

The Barcamp@GeNeMe’2020 provided the openVirus team with a perfect platform to achieve these goals. The event was indeed an intellectual treat and we are immensely grateful for the opportunity to host a session on openVirus and Citizen Science. It gave us a chance to demonstrate the immense potential of open toolkits, Open Knowledge and citizens’ contributions to science. It was also a wonderful opportunity to learn, to share ideas, and to have more volunteers join our diverse group. We not only got to meet new people with similar interests but also got a chance to know more about great Open Science initiatives and projects. Physical presence is often impossible for such global events and the Barcamp@GeNeMe’2020 was a great solution to that!
 
 

Experiences with training materials on Open Science

by Franziska Günther

The contributors discussed training on Open Science focusing on different topics: Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and their platforms, training, and practices on Open Science in different subject areas. In the latter case, one contributor pointed out that practices and training on Open Science highly depend on the subject area. Other ways of learning about Open Science, such as informal learning or through commitments in projects, were also of interest in the session. As the discussion moved on, contributors focused on how sustainable and continuous Open Science training can be provided. They agreed that Open Science should be part of the curricula for university graduates. The last issue in the session was whether Open Science is only related to the academic world and where non-academics can receive Open Science training to become part of this practice.

I enjoyed being part of the Barcamp@GeNeMe’2020. The discussions were interesting and fruitful. For me, this was mostly due to the fact of the diverse background of the participants. People from all over the world could participate and at the end also did. I got new perspectives on Open Science topics and therefore I am grateful.
 
 

Global issues of Open Science: equality, resources, goals

by Peter Murray-Rust

I was very grateful to be able to take part in Barcamp@GeNeMe’2020 as it’s a completely new way of people getting together. Both technically and socially it worked very well. It was great to have contributors from all over the world, especially India.

We face massive global challenges such as infectious diseases (viral pandemics, antibiotic resistance), food security, and climate change. To tackle this we need a global response, with a large multicultural contribution from Open Science, based on community action and inclusion, equity and diversity. All citizens (not just rich universities and companies) are needed to contribute to solutions, and a major way is through scientific research and practice. Science is based on equity (anyone can be a scientist) but this is often warped by a dominant Anglophone capitalist North. In the digital age Open Knowledge is an essential tool and we must work to create a shared resource – creation, dissemination, re-use – that everyone can take part in.

I hope that the Barcamp@GeNeMe’20 leads to a different way of scientific conferencing. We didn’t have to spend two days travelling, and spending lots of money. There are downsides – the informal meetings/coffee, the chance encounters – but for me (retired) and openVirus (students, India) there is no way that we could have done this last year!
 
 

Open Science and Climate Change

by Simon Worthington

The session was revealing how the work of individual researchers, working groups, and communities asking Open Science questions can make a difference. It makes you realise we can all redirect some of our time to climate issues.

Inspiring is the researcher Joachim Allgaier who asks in the GenR interview “YouTube – Fix Your AI for Climate Change! An Invitation to an Open Dialogue”. When you search for Climate Change on YouTube it will return 50% as anti-climate change content, which can be attributed to YouTube financially rewarding and so recruiting these content producers. What needs to happen with social media networks like YouTube is a good dose of Open Science transparency and regulation of their content algorithms.

The project Open Climate Knowledge FORCE11 Working Group advocates for 100% open research for climate change. In research literature we see less than 30% of the papers being Open Access. Greta Thunberg says, she “wants you to listen to the scientists” – but how can the public do this when it’s paywalled?

Enhancing Climate Change Research With Open Science, Travis C. Tai and James P. W. Robinson

As a research community the Open Energy Modelling Initiative (openmod), mainly coming out of Germany, works on new energy systems for a low carbon future. It has enthusiastically embraced Open Science practice. As yet, no future low carbon economic plans are reliable and have not been reliably tested with energy models using Open Science practices – essentially we are currently trapped – “planlos” (without a plan).
 
 

Online barcamps: Can they work?

The most important thing: A barcamp works virtually. You have already seen this at other barcamps, but it is different to have this experience as an organiser. And the contributors have to adapt to this new environment, too. To lighten up the atmosphere, simple elements like a social break with relaxation exercises or a pub quiz can help. And as with face-to-face events, digital retreat areas (coffee kitchens) are also needed. The great advantage of a virtual event is obvious: people from all over the world, who could not be reached with a face-to-face event, take part. This was very nice to see on the Barcamp@GeNeMe’20, whereby time zone differences naturally make participation only possible to certain time slots. In addition, compared to previous face-to-face barcamps, we could observe a higher fluctuation. It is easy to disconnect and reconnect, and you are more selective as participation in online events is generally a bit tiring.

Virtual barcamps may not (yet) come close to the spirit of a local barcamp, because certain possibilities of social interaction and exchange are simply missing. But we will certainly see more online formats (possibly as a supplement to offline formats) in the future. However, a hybrid barcamp seems to be a bit unimaginable at the moment.

Barcamp recommendations for 2021

The upcoming Barcamp Open Science (16 February 2021) as pre-event of the Open Science Conference -will be completely virtual-. Here we would also like to point out the Barcamp in the context of the Open Science Festival (14 January 2021) which is organised by colleagues in the Netherlands.

This might also interest you:

Authors:

Sabine Barthold (Media Centre, TU Dresden), Loek Brinkmann (Assistant professor in Open Science, Utrecht University, and community coordinator/co-founder @ Open Science Community Utrecht), Franziska Günther (Media Centre, TU Dresden), Ambreen Hamadani (SKUAST-Kashmir), Shweata Hegde (Regional Institute Of Education, Manasagangothri, Mysuru), Peter Murray-Rust (University of Cambridge and @TheContentMine), Guido Scherp (Open Science Transfer, ZBW, and Coordinator Leibniz Research Alliance Open Science), Simon Worthington (Open Science Lab, TIB, and GenR Editor-in-chief).

References portrait photos:
Loek Brinkmann: Ivar Pel© | Ambreen Hamadani: Ambreen Hamadani© | Shweata Hegde: Shweata Hegde© | Franziska Günther: Kirsten Lassig© | Peter Murray-Rust: Slowking – Own work, GFDL 1.2 | Simon Worthington: TIB / Christian Bierwagen©.

The post Barcamp@GeNeMe’2020: Open Science in Times of Crisis first appeared on ZBW MediaTalk.

The post Barcamp@GeNeMe’2020: Open Science in Times of Crisis first appeared on Leibniz Research Alliance Open Science.