Embracing openness: an introduction to Open Science practices

Scope

The course “Embracing openness: an introduction to Open Science practices” is composed of five modules based on various teaching activities, including lectures, podcasts, guided discussions/debates, and exercises. PhD candidates and other early career researchers will finish the course with an Open Science plan for their own work.

Learning goals

At the end of the course, participants are able to:

1. Define Open Science and understand its relevance;
2. Describe different Open Science practices and principles.
3. Understand the difference between preregistration and registered reports, explain their benefits and limitations and create a preregistration.
4. Describe issues in the context of Open Reproducible Research and identify existing reproducibility tools.
5. Differentiate between traditional metrics and Open Science based approaches to evaluate researchers and research articles.
6. Apply open practices at different stages of the research cycle.

Course description

A key goal of science is to help society solve today’s wicked challenges. This requires require reliable, trustworthy, and high-quality research. Open Science (OS) strongly contributes to achieving these requirements since it aims to make research more verifiable, transparent, and reusable. However, OS is currently not the norm in academia due to cultural (e.g., lack of awareness) and technical (e.g., lack of skills) obstacles. Next to this, embracing open science practices helps both researchers and practitioners to become more future-proof by, for instance, increasing the visibility and impact of their work and getting started with some of the most in-demand job skills.
This course provides a conceptual and a practical overview of OS principles so that you can kickstart your path towards openness. In line with the Dutch and the EU’s OS policies, as well as the UNESCO Recommendation on OS, we will cover the following topics:

1. Introduction to OS, including key incentives and challenges, national (National Plan OS) and international (OS Communities) initiatives.
2. Preregistration and Registered Reports.
3. Open Data, its relevance and guiding principles.
4. Open Reproducible Research.
5. Rewards and Recognition in OS.

Tentative Program

Day 1 (morning): Introduction to Open Science
– Lecture and discussion
– Exercises & self-study
Day 2 (morning): Pre-registration and Registered Reports
– Lecture and discussion
– Exercises & self-study (incl. video lecture and podcast)
Day 3 (morning): Open Data
– Reporting exercise pre-registration and registered reports
– Moderated group discussion & invited speaker
– Exercises & self-study (incl. video lecture)
Day 4 (morning): Open Reproducible Research
– Moderated group discussion
– Exercise
Day 5 (morning): Rewards & Recognition
– Lecture, discussion & debate
– Self-study: final assignment

Course fee

• PhD candidates SENSE and WUR*: €250 (early bird) / €300 (regular)
• PhD candidates from other graduate schools: €290 (early bird) / €340 (regular)
• Other SENSE staff: €290 (early bird) / €340 (regular)
• Postdocs and early-career researchers: €290 (early bird) / €340 (regular)
• All others: €330 (early bird) / €380 (regular)

*PhD Participants from Wageningen University are eligible for a reduced fee: WUR PhD candidates pay €125, and your graduate school subsidises the other €125.

Registration

Deadline:

• Early bird: 4 September 2023
• Regular: 18 September 2023

Go to registration form

Contact person

For more information about this course you can contact Elackiya Sithamparanathan.