Group name: Open Data by default in Graduate Training
Meeting title: Open Data by default in Graduate Training

The BoF Meeting was postponed. Stay tuned for further announcements!

As Open Science becomes the norm one mandate at a time, funders are seeking smarter ways to evaluate individual researchers that successfully apply Open Science. Over the coming 4 years, a suite of European Commission research projects will focus on educating academia about the synergies between Open Science and Open Innovation, and will actively encourage more effective and inclusive collaboration outside of academia in attempting to address societal challenges. These efforts will be enhanced by “developing measures beyond traditional bibliometrics” and “put[ting] Open Science to work” by focusing on an academia-wide culture change and a new way of performing and evaluating research.

These ambitions are not yet reflected in most researchers' own career development plans largely due to the fact that the anachronistic “publish or perish” culture and related evaluation processes (e.g. REF) still dominate researcher reward systems. Subsequently, there is insufficient motivation to spur researchers to hone their Open Science skills at this point in time. In parallel, the majority of graduate training initiatives have not kept pace with the rise of the open science ecosystem. Indeed, there is a real risk that current PGRs could be facing a mid-career disadvantage due to the fact that their education has neglected training on how to embrace open science practices.

In order to capitalise on the move towards open science as the Eurpean Commission's default position, graduate schools need to have the knowledge, resources and capacity to train the next generation of researchers. This proposed WG will help to fill the widening gulf between skills requirements arising from emerging policies and mandates for open research practices and the currently lagging graduate school practices by working with providers of graduate education and training to identify mechanisms to embed Open Science skills into existing courses.

Measures of success will include:
· Integration of Open Science as part of graduate curricula in selected disciplines. Disciplines to be targeted in the first instance will be selected based on the make-up of the WG participants.
· Engagement with employers and professional bodies to endorse the value of Open Science skills in early career researchers.

This WG will aim to dovetail with existing WG investigating education, training and data science but will focus on building capacity and enthusiasm within existing Graduate Schools for fostering Open Science skills as a foundation for all disciplines. We envisage close cooperation with the WG on Training and Education and the CODATA WG.

In addition to cooperation with other RDA WGs, we will also seek to establish links with the successful Horizon 2020 SWAFs projects to avoid duplication of effort and to maximise our potential combined impact.

The WG will be made up of:

(1) Graduate school representatives with experience and influence on research curricula;
(2) Current graduates and early career researchers successfully applying Open Science to their own research to act as Open Science Ambassadors;
(3) Representatives from professional bodies and employers to sense-check the skills being promoted from a real world perspective
(4) RDA colleagues particularly those working to improve skills in using e--infrastructure, data interoperability, and research data management;
(5) EC projects looking to define and implement discipline specific curricula related to data science and responsible research and innovation (RRI);

Please list the meeting objectives:

(1) define pragmatic action plan for Graduate Schools to make open data standard training
(2) engage students, librarians, graduate school administrators in the process

Meeting agenda:
(1) agree on WG mission statement and objectives,
(2) shortlist representatives from the three stated stakeholder groups that should be invited in the WG,
(3) consensus on format of the WG output for optimum uptake by Graduate Schools.

Target Audience:

- graduate school administrators
- students;
- librarians & knowledge managers;

Group chair serving as contact person:
Ivo Grigorov, Paola Masuzzo, Joy Davidson

Type of meeting:
Informative, scoping WG, strong online participation