1. Activity one
What are the difficulties of fostering openness within your research context (10 mins)
Using post-its participants will be asked to note down three issues they feel are hampering attempts to foster openness in research in their daily research
Place your post-its on the boards at the back according to geographic region.

2. Louise Bezuidenhout University of Notre Dame
Benefits and Challenges, Guidance and Confusion: Daily Open Data Practices
Louise Bezuidenhout
University of Notre Dame

3. What is open science?

4. Moving ahead towards a culture of sharing
Governments, funders, institutions and scientific bodies recognize the benefits of sharing data
Increase visibility of research
Increase outputs and returns on investments
Decrease duplicate research, increase verifiability of research

5. Fostering openness
Notwithstanding issues to do with data quality and sustainable infrastructures, there is a lot of interest in creating environments that facilitate effective sharing and re-use
Issues to consider include:
Legal and policy frameworks
Ethical guidance
Awareness and skill sets
Cross-cultural dialogue and context-appropriate solutions

6. Legal and policy
Scientists are expected to contribute the data arising from their research to an open access repository with appropriate metadata to facilitate re-use
Funding agencies
National funding agencies – RCUK (UK), NRF (RSA)
Private funding agenicies – Wellcome Trust
Journals
Institutions – repositories
MOUs in collaboration
National governments and international agencies such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the European Commission and the Global Research Council, private foundations such as the Gates Foundation and Wellcome Trust and science academies such as the International Council of Science (ICSU), the Royal Society, the InterAcademy Partnership (IAP) and the Global Young Academy (GYA) have devoted considerable attention and resources to developing regulatory frameworks for big and open data production, dissemination and use. The results of such efforts is evidenced in institutional and national policies on Open Science, policy documents such as the international accord Open Data in a Big Data World released jointly by ICSU, IAP, the World Academy of Sciences and the International Social Science Council in December 2015 (13), and the Open Science policy introduced by the European Commission in May 2016 (14).

7. Ethical
Scientists are expected to treat data in a responsible manner that maximizes benefits and safeguards against harms
Codes of conduct
Aspirational
Advisory
Enforceable
Issues often considered are benefits of sharing, issues relating to human data
Special considerations relating to LMICs – expected speed of data release, protection of particularly vulnerable populations, ownership of data, capacity building for local research, context-appropriate re-use of data and informed consent

8. Skills and awareness
Scientists should be educated in data management, as well as the ethical, legal and social implications of data-intensive research
Initiatives to increase technical skills in data management, curation and release. Also increasing amount of interest in training for data scientists.
Support for the development of data infrastructures in LMICs – particularly development of institutional repositories
Initiatives to increase ethical awareness

9. Cross-cultural
In an increasingly international milieu, scientists need to be able to negotiate the intricacies of cross-cultural perspectives of data research
Science is increasingly international
Multi-national collaborations
International funding
Data from different national origins
Different perspectives on what constitutes data and what is an appropriate use of data
Differences in research priorities and practices
Differences in resources and support available for data management
Need careful negotiation that is regularly revisited

10. Challenges of the individual
Despite clear expectations to share data, ethical and legal environment very complicated and can be confusing
Scientists are expected to contribute the data arising from their research to an open access repository with appropriate metadata to facilitate re-use
Scientists are expected to treat data in a responsible manner that maximizes benefits and safeguards against harms
Scientists should be educated in data management, as well as the ethical, legal and social implications of data-intensive research
Clear need for more skill training
Lack of clear idea of what needs to be shared, where and when
Local concerns
Resources necessary to share data are sometimes not available – need for cross- cultural sensitivity

11. Creative solutions Be vocal about local concerns and challenges
Be up front about limitations in physical, legal and social infrastructures
Investigate creative solutions for local challenges:
Creative commons and altmetric alternatives to repositories
Regional partnerships and lobby groups
Leveraging private businesses for physical infrastructure

12. Activity two
How can these concerns be addressed in your research context? (30 mins)
Participants work in geographic groups to address solutions to the problems identified in activity one.
Groups report back on their discussions.
If anyone would like to discuss further please find me at dinner or at the bar after dinner.