Libraries have gone a long way to facilitating research workflows, and more recently on fostering open access to science and openness in a broader sense. Science is evolving: research practices, resources and tools are opening up and going beyond a publication based model, to a new open environment of research data and digital research tools, social media and collaborative platforms. There is a compelling need for libraries to encompass these changes. The challenges are not only technological but also cultural and attitudinal and require a clear effort to engage and develop the necessary skills and knowledge involved in this Open Science environment.

This introductory course is addressed to librarians at different levels and positions that are committed to supporting researchers and their research processes at their institutions, and would like to gain understanding of the implications of Open Science for them, the potential opportunities and possible challenges, and check on existing best practices to deal with them.

Learning outcomes:

The learning outcomes of this course are:

  • Understand the relevance of Open Science in relation to research integrity, reproducibility and impact
  • Identify the implications and opportunities for libraries in the development and support of Open Science
  • Know existing initiatives and best practices on Open Science
  • Identify suitable resources and tools to further develop library services on Open Science

Greater insight on how to implement Open Data and Research Data Management, Open Access, copyright and e-infrastructures into the scholarly lifecycle and grant proposal preparation, can be found in the other FOSTER courses and training resources.

Credits: Cover image : Tim Green at Flickr . House of Knowledge, a sculpture by Jaume Plensa

You are not logged in, in order to take the course you need to login

This lesson provides a short introduction to Open Science including a simple definition and some links to other explanations, including two short videos.

This lesson provides a better insight on the benefits of Open Science from different points of view, and to many stakeholders, with a brief article and a short video.

In this lesson the main challenges to the success of Open Science at its various dimensions are presented, together with the main boundaries and limits of openness of research. and the main strategies that have to be developed and put into practice to fulfill its vision.

In this lesson the role of Libraries on Open Science is discussed by referring to the main reports and strategies and how Libraries are identified as one of the main stakeholders of Open Science, primarily as enablers. The focus is placed on Research Data Management, as the most prominent role for Libraries together with Open Access.

  • Libraries: roles and opportunities on Open Science

    This article introduces the role of Libraries on Open Science as it adds up to the general debate on the roles of libraries and librarians in the digital age.

  • A prominent role for libraries: research data management

    This section makes some reflections on the opportunities for libraries in research data management, on the basis of the data life cycle and the main data issues, and recalling the LIBER 10 Recommendation on Getting Started in RDM.

  • Librarians’ Competencies for Open Science

    The joint Task Force on Librarians’ Competencies in Support of E-Research and Scholarly Communication has recently published two Competency profiles that highlight the role of librarians on Open Science, in particular, in Research Data Management and Open Access.

In this last section of the course, some key resources are presented as answers to the question What can my library do now?

  • Explore Open Science and its building blocks

    A first step to take would be to identify key resources and directories of resources in the topic of Open Science and its components (Open Access, Open Data, Open Notebooks, Open source, Open Educational Resources, Citizen Science) and get involved in them.

  • Check how open is your institution's research

    A second step to take would be to the “How Open is your research?” checklist designed by SPARC (s). With this checklist, you can assess quickly the openness of your research institution and teaching outputs. It covers the whole process of undertaking and disseminating scholarly and scientific research, and teaching, including for instance the adoption or development of, and adherence to, policies and strategies. An overall institutional visualisation is given as a radar chart.

  • Take a look at ‘23 Library things for Research Data’

    As a third step, take a look at the free online resources selected at **23 Things: Libraries for Research Data** (Michael Witt, RDA Libraries for Research Data Interest Group), that can be used to incorporate research data management into the practice of librarianship. They are organised around the following topics: ,Learning Resources; Data Reference and Outreach; Data Management Plans; Data Literacy; Citing Data; Data Licensing and Privacy; Digital Preservation; Data Repositories and a Community of Practice .

  • Learn more and reuse it for training! Take this course at the FOSTER portal

    And finally, if you want to learn more and reuse it for training, we recommend you to start by taking a look at this course at the FOSTER Portal. (Notice: This link opens another course available at the FOSTER portal).

Bibliographic references of publications cited in this course.