The academic publishing system is broken. I think we can all agree on that. But what if you want to have an academic career and at the same time stick to your values of openness? Here's my pragmatic take. I understand the fear of not publishing in established journals. We all want to have a good career and feel like publishing our papers in the journals that our peers and employers deem worthy seems like an important step. As a pragmatic open scientist, I generally recommend not to be too...
29 days ago • 3 min read
Have you complained about the inefficiency of public administration before? I think, you're not alone. In this post I want to share my journey with trying to help increase efficiency through data literacy in the public sector. I am a person who likes to solve problems. Most of my time is spent solving problems in academia, but I decided to leave my usual grounds for a special project where I can help solving problems in the public sector. Why do I care about solving problems in the public...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
We are finally in the process of incorporating the Digital Research Academy and just when we need it least, I get a notice that my office lease will be terminated by end of July...and with that we are losing the headquarters of the DRA. Munich is a difficult city to find affordable offices, so I am hoping that you can help us. I love my office. It not only comes with a stable internet connection, but also with nice office neighbors (who are also looking for a new space), a nice view into the...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Students and early PhD candidates often don't understand all the talk about Open Science. They think Open Science is just "normal" science. The older researchers are the ones who teach them otherwise. Let's change that! In the process of publishing my first PhD paper, the journal asked whether I would like to publish open access. For me that was a no-brainer. When I talked to my supervisor, he said something along the lines of "you're gonna be an expensive PhD student". I want to mention that...
2 months ago • 3 min read
Spaces where you can gather with like minded people to discuss, learn, and collaborate can be really powerful. Could a space like this exist for Open Science? Walking along the little stream back to Dagstuhl castle (during the seminar on Research Software Engineering: Bridging Knowledge Gaps), I thought about how inspiring this place is, how perfectly set up for collaborating, learning from each other and also for having just a fabulous time. All the rooms, from the regular meeting rooms to...
2 months ago • 1 min read
The Open Science Retreat 2024 was a full success. We co-created so many things and had a wonderful time at the Dutch dunes. Read on to learn what came out of the retreat. The Open Science Retreat follows an unconference model. Except for the plenary sessions, all activities are optional. The edition 2024 was mainly organised by OSC-NL. Here's a few of the things we did: Unconference sessions: Collaborate on diverse topics from measuring open science to FAIR code (more below) Walks: Whether...
3 months ago • 1 min read
What are good strategies to develop an Open Science Policy? Here's our opinionated guide. This post was co-created with Sander Bosch, Open Science Programme Coordinator at VU Amsterdam. At the Open Science Retreat 2024 Sander and I had a conversation about his experience in policy development. Since we believe that his experience is valuable for a lot of people out there, we decided to write down three simple rues to create an Open Science policy: Develop output policies first and combine...
3 months ago • 3 min read
Guest post: Meet Dr Elisabeth Kugler, director of Zeeks – Art for Geeks. In this post she will share her career path and how her work connects with open science now that she is an entrepreneur. I am Dr Elisabeth Kugler, director of Zeeks – Art for Geeks – a company that transforms how people think about data. We achieve this by data analysis, visualization, and communication. And our speciality is image-based data and strategies. In this article, I aim to discuss Zeeks' perspective on open...
4 months ago • 2 min read
Making your research or code project FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) and reproducible can feel like a chore. But if you have access to the right templates and resources, it can be quite the simple and rewarding task. Let's make it easy for ourselves to do the right thing! So today let me share some templates for setting up #FAIR and #reproducible projects. I asked folks on social media what suggestions they had and got so many that I was not able to put them all here...
5 months ago • 2 min read