Researchers and staff gather to build a grassroots community on open and reproducible science

Over 20 researchers and research support staff gathered for a half-day workshop to build a blueprint for Ghent University’s first community on open and reproducible science on June 19th 2024. Supported by UGent’s Open Science team, researchers from different faculties as well as research support staff involved in research integrity, research ethics, research assessment and other areas of research policy brainstormed and voted on the identity of the future community and identified the next steps in building the community.

We kicked off by getting to know each other and learning what makes us enthusiastic about open and reproducible science through a yarn toss game.

Values: what is important to us?

In a brainstorm on values for the community, we identified the wish for a horizontal community that is built by researchers, for researchers - a community in which both early and advanced career researchers feel welcomed, contribute and build on each other’s shoulders. Moreover, we want the community to have sharing, openness and FAIRness of research results at heart.

Goals: what do we want to achieve?

We moved on to pinpoint the main goals of the future community. The top-goal is a change of research culture in which open and reproducible science is embedded into the daily practices of researchers. We want the community to help break down barriers and offer incentives for researchers that commit to making this transition to open and reproducible science happen.

Activities: what can we do to achieve it?

Next, we came up with community activities that will lead to achieving these goals. Again, activities organized by researchers for researchers tailored to their needs and in their field of interest were identified as key. To allow for knowledge and practice exchange, both “local” info sessions, workshops and hackathons, as well as sharing of guidelines on best practices, examples and templates were pinned down as crucial activities. An open science award but also advocating for the necessary infrastructure to practice open and reproducible science are deemed important.

Mission statement

Combining the identified values, goals and activities, the community’s mission statement was developed:

We are a grassroots community dedicated to making research more impactful by fostering open and reproducible practices. We provide a space to engage, connect, inspire and support each other.

Next steps

The proposed next steps are to build a governance structure for the community that can act on different levels (university-wide and within the faculties), develop a community engagement and communication plan to attract and inspire new researchers to join us, and envision how the community could contribute to the necessary infrastructure developments to enable open and reproducible science practices.

Join the core team to co-build the community together with other open and reproducible science enthusiasts!