Category Archives: Open Research

Edinburgh Open Research Conference 2024

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This is a guest blog post from Emma Wilson, Emma is a final year PhD student in the Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences. She is currently interning with the Library Open Research Team.

On 29th May 2024, we held the third annual Edinburgh Open Research Conference online and in person at the John McIntyre Conference Centre. Over 300 people attended the hybrid event, from Edinburgh and further afield, to listen to a jam-packed programme of talks and posters on all things open research.

This year’s theme was culture change, and thinking about how open research principles can steer us towards healthy and inclusive research environments.

Panel host Dominic and panel speakers Rowena, Nick, Katie, and Malcolm sit on a stage in front of the conference audience

Plenary panel – photo credit: Eugen Stoica

The events kicked off with a plenary panel featuring Nick Wise (University of Cambridge), Rowena Lamb, Malcolm Macleod, and Katie Nicoll Baines (all University of Edinburgh) discussing the ways in which we can drive healthy and sustainable culture change and how this applies in the context of open research.

Marisa de Andrade delivering her keynote

Marisa de Andrade delivering her keynote – photo credit: Eugen Stoica

Presentations and lightning talks touched on the topics of education and skills, research culture change, and next generation metrics. We heard from a diverse range of perspectives including technicians, researchers in both STEM and the humanities, and professional services staff. Equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) was a strong theme running throughout each of the presentations.

The keynote lecture was delivered by Marisa de Andrade on ‘The Madness of Metrics and Possibilities of Pause in Open Research’, which offered perspective on research metrics, what they really mean, and what really matters.

Maria Juliana Rodriguez Cubillos presenting her poster during the drinks reception

Poster session – Photo credit: Eugen Stoica

Following a busy day, the conference closed with a drinks reception and posters. Each presenter gave a quick-fire summary of their poster in a round of ‘Minute Madness’.

We want to thank everyone who attended the conference, our fantastic presenters, and of course our organisers Kerry Miller and Nel Coleman for making the day enjoyable and insightful. And if you missed it, be sure to come along next year!

Stay up to date on open research activities and future conference announcements by signing up to the Edinburgh Open Research Newsletter and joining our Edinburgh Open Research Initiative Microsoft Teams group.

Edinburgh Open Research Conference 2024

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Join us on May 29th for the 2024 edition of the Open Research Conference. This year we are addressing the big challenge: culture change. It is not simply enough to facilitate open access and FAIR Data. We need to embed all aspects of Open Research into our everyday practices.

Join us to consider the broad themes of culture change, along with the role of next generation metrics, education, training and skills development in this process. We will also look to other contexts in which positive shifts in culture are actively taking place: EDI, healthy working lives, and research integrity. We ask what we can learn from these contexts, and how can we collaborate to make a more equitable and open research environment?

In addition to talks on the themes of research integrity, next generation metrics, and open research education & skills, there will be rapid-fire lightning talks, a poster session, and drinks reception along with plenty of opportunities to expand your network.

Registration for in-person attendance closes on May 19th and for online it’s May 24th, full details of the conference have been published.

If you would like to keep up with Open Research news, please sign up for the newsletter, and you can also follow Edinburgh Open Research on EventBrite to find out about our future events.

We look forward to welcoming you to the conference!

Kerry Miller,
Research Data Support Officer & Open Research Coordinator

 

New Open Research Tool: Open Science Framework

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Awesome news! The Research Data Service has a fantastic new addition to its Open Research toolbox! Fresh from the Centre for Open Science (COS) comes our institutional membership to Open Science Framework (http://osf.io): a powerful tool for supporting staff and students at the University of Edinburgh.

OSF is a free, open platform that provides full integration and sharing across the entire data lifecycle. Among many other things, it streamlines workflows with customisable project organisation and automated version control. It also enhances collaborative research, making it easy to find and connect with other UoE users and their research projects. But wait, there’s more! OSF enables easy management of private and public aspects of a project, so sharing with project teams as well as the wider research community couldn’t be simpler; it’s ideal for sharing preprints and preregistered reports. Best of all, with centralised storage for documents, data, and code, it eliminates the need to scramble around hunting for that one file you need right now: no more trawling through email chains to recover lost data!

To launch the new platform we’ve been running Free Lunch Lunchtime sessions, with Free Lunch in the Main Library. The Centre for Research Collections were kind enough to let us use their rooms on the 6th floor, so obviously, all our attendees used the stairs and worked up a proper appetite for their Free Lunch.

The first event was held on August 30th to a packed house, or room. After the Free Lunch and a bit of professional mingling, Gretchen Gueguen from the Centre for Open Science Zoomed in to give us a brief introduction to and overview of OSF: what it is, how it works, and why it’s such an excellent addition to any research toolbox. Gretchen was followed by Emma Wilson, PhD student, UoE representative for ReproducibiliTea, and Open Research Intern extraordinaire. Emma provided the first of two user-perspectives, talking about her experience of using OSF for her projects, presentations, and posters. The second pair of boots on the ground belonged to Mark Lawson, Data Governance Manager for the Childlight project currently being run out of Moray House School of Education and Sport. Being another long time-user of OSF, as well as being a fan of such tools, Mark spoke with great enthusiasm about the use of OSF to support the data management and project management aspects of his work.

Emma Wilson presenting during the OSF introduction event in August.

The second event wasn’t quite as packed as the first, but it was still nice to see those who managed to make it through the December wind and rain. Once again, Gretchen was there to provide the introduction and overview; and Emma, likewise, returned to talk about her experience as an OSF user. This time, the afternoon was rounded off by Gillian Currie who outlined the OSF training she and Eirini Theofanidou were ready and able to deliver. Before the close of the session Gillian had secured several bookings for her training sessions. Sadly, and despite having organised the event – and the Free Lunch – RDS won’t receive any commission for these bookings.

However, we will soon be in vigorous competition with Gillian and Eirini because we’re preparing to offer OSF Winter and Summer Schools. These sessions will be delivered remotely by COS to an in-person cohort of researchers over two or three days. If all goes to plan, we may even be recording the session recordings for future use. And yes, in case you’re wondering, there will, once again, be a Free lunch for attendees.

To learn more about the University OSF membership go to: https://edin.ac/47aGU0S. Questions about OSF? Email us: data-support@ed.ac.uk.

Dr Simon Smith – Research Data Support Officer
Research Data Support, Library & University Collections

Research Data Support team and DCC to host Skills4EOSC Fellow

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University of Edinburgh has been chosen as one of 12 European institutions to host sponsored short secondments for data professionals in Open Science, as part of the Skills4EOSC Horizon Europe project. Whilst the Digital Curation Centre is a partner in the Skills4EOSC project (EOSC is the European Open Science Cloud), the Research Data Support team has been asked to be the primary host for the secondment, so the ‘fellow’ can participate and engage in the team’s day-to-day activities in supporting and training researchers in an academic setting.

Promotional image for Skills4EOSC fellowship

The project aims to develop common methodologies, activities and training resources to unify the current training landscape into a collaborative and reliable ecosystem and to provide dedicated community-specific support to leverage the potential of EOSC for open and data-intensive research. A number of enquiries have already been received and plans are currently underway with Library Research Support and the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) to support the application of a European candidate to work with the team for a month in either April or July, 2024, with a deadline for the application of 31 October. More information is at https://www.skills4eosc.eu/participate/fellowship-programme.