One year of GhentCORR: a growing community for open and reproducible research

As GhentCORR celebrates its first anniversary, we take a moment to look back on a year shaped by a shared commitment to improving research practices. To mark this milestone, we are launching a video from our Rector and Vice Rector calling upon Ghent University researchers to join and contribute to GhentCORR.

Although the video marks the one-year anniversary of the community’s official launch, the groundwork began more than a year earlier. In 2024, a blueprint workshop brought researchers together to define what they expect from such a community and helped identify priorities and directions. This workshop also led to a landscape survey, which mapped the existing situation and identified key gaps with regards to Open and Reproducible Research practices in our university.

After these preparatory steps, GhentCORR officially kicked off in June 2025 with a launch event that brought together researchers and research support staff from across the university. The event set the tone: open discussions, shared challenges, and a collective ambition to make research more transparent and reliable. It quickly became clear that there was both a need (and enthusiasm) for a community like this.

We soon launched the & Coffee series: informal moments to discuss and learn from colleagues about open and reproducible research practices. One of our first sessions focused on preregistration, a topic identified in the initial landscape survey as one of the least known and least practiced. More recently, the Reproducible Code & Coffee session created space to reflect on coding practices in research. Participants shared tips, challenges, and examples of how to make code more transparent and reusable, turning abstract principles into everyday practice. These sessions showed the value of combining learning with community-building, lowering the threshold to engage, exchange experiences, and ask questions.

We also organzed a webinar on the reproducibility crisis, hosted in collaboration with Peer Community In. The session explored systemic challenges in research and suggested concrete ways forward. For many participants, it was an eye-opening discussion that put everyday research practices into a broader perspective.

Alongside these events, GhentCORR has been gradually growing into an active online space where (currently over 180) members share resources, ask questions, and support each other. We started small, and continue to grow step by step, connecting researchers across disciplines and career stages.

Looking ahead

We are proud of the achievements in this first year, and curious to see how the community will continue to evolve. GhentCORR is shaped by its members, which put forward new ideas, topics, and collaborations.

👉 Join the community, take part in upcoming activities or help organizing them, and contribute to shape the future of open and reproducible research at Ghent University.