European University Alliance Open Science for Beginners

From 8 November 2021, the 4EU+ European University Alliance is offering fourteen online workshops around the topic of Open Science, with the participation of Heidelberg University. The workshops are to be held in English and, under the heading “Open for you!”, they are open to anyone interested – from students to academics to library and administrative staff, and, in particular, to early-stage researchers. Besides experts from the University Library and the Scientific Software Center at Heidelberg University’s Interdisciplinary Center for Scientific Computing, there will be speakers from the other 4EU+ universities – Prague, Sorbonne (Paris), Warsaw, Copenhagen and Milan. Ruperto Carola is involved in a total of six workshops.

The concept of Open Science signifies efforts to make findings and data freely available in their different forms, and so to enable societal participation in scientific progress. Promoting the worldwide exchange of knowledge in the spirit of Open Science is also one of the strategic goals of the 4EU+ university alliance. The six research-intensive partner universities have agreed to considerably increase open access to publications by their researchers. The “FAIR” rules on the transparent treatment of research data, its saving and subsequent use, are to be followed in the whole network. In addition, more research projects are to be initiated with the participation of “citizen scientists”.

The workshops in the series “Open for you! An introduction series to open science” offer an overview of the different aspects of Open Science. Each session will be conducted by representatives of several 4EU+ universities. The first speaker on 8 November will be Dr Jochen Apel, head of the medical and natural sciences branch library of Heidelberg University Library, together with colleagues from Charles University Prague (Czech Republic) and the University of Copenhagen (Denmark) on the topic “What is Open Science?”. Concluding on 4 July 2022, 13 more virtual workshops will include topics such as publishing in the open access format, creative commons licensing, and the advantages of professional research data management. Another matter for discussion will be the impact of free access to research findings on scientific integrity. Those wishing to attend the workshops are required to register in advance.

The 4EU+ European University Alliance consists of the universities of Prague, Heidelberg, Sorbonne (Paris), Warsaw, Copenhagen and Milan. The group of six partner universities has, since June 2019, been one of the 17 university alliances funded in the context of the Erasmus+ pilot call “European Universities”. The alliances receive financial support in order to take the first steps towards long-term, transnational cooperation. The vision of the 4EU+ Alliance is that of a “European University” on the pattern of a comprehensive research university that seamlessly connects the students, teachers and researchers at the partner universities. With the support of strategic higher education partnerships, the European Commission pursues the goal of clustering research and teaching in Europe in new structures and strengthening the European Education Area.