Providing researchers with the skills and competencies they need to practise Open Science

Providing researchers with the skills and competencies they need to practise Open Science – Report of the Working Group on Education and Skills under Open Science. European Commission. Directorate-General for Research and Innovation. Open Science and ERA Policy Unit. July 2017.

Summary of content

Open Science is transformative to the research landscape, allowing research to be carried out with a high degree of transparency, collegiality, and research integrity. For Open Science to become a reality, researchers need appropriate discipline-dependent skills training and professional development at all stages of their research careers. To facilitate this, the Steering Group on Human Resources and Mobility (SGHRM) Working Group (WG) on ‘Education & Skills’ worked with a specific mandate to propose recommendations to ensure that researchers in Europe have appropriate skills and competences to practice Open Science . The overarching goal is to ensure that OS skills become an integral and streamlined component of the standard education, training and career development paths of researchers, and if possible even at earlier career stages, in schools and universities.

The Working Group conducted a survey between March and May 2017 to assess the current situation. A total of 1,277 answers were received by researchers across Europe, of which nearly 50% were doctoral candidates (R1). The remaining 50% were distributed across career stages, from the postdoctoral to the very senior research career levels. A majority of researchers are unaware of the concept of Open Science…

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The following are key recommendations to enhance open science skills in the research community:

– Open Science policy…
– Guidelines to implement Open Science…
– Raising awareness of Open Science…
– Training Researchers for Open Science …
– Providing Support for Open Science….
– Career development for Open Science…