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A few months ago, I submitted a scientific article for publication for the first time in my academic career. It was exhilarating, although no one warned me about how arduous the submitting process was. Somewhere along the way, the system asked me if I wanted my article to be “open access (OA)” or not. The OA option looked quite expensive, so I opted for the cheap one. I thought that OA was cool; it meant that you didn’t need to go through the illegal routes that we are all very familiar with to access a paper. But I hadn’t really thought much deeper about it. Who would have money for doing that anyway? Why would I spend my precious project money on this?
Upon the acceptance of my submission, I received an email from the publisher, saying that if I wanted to, I could make my article OA for free. Apparently, the Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU) had an agreement with this publishing group and was going to pay for the OA charges. I naturally had a lot of questions: Why didn’t I know this before? How could I even get this kind of information? What other journals do VSNU or Radboud have deals with? Why is OA this expensive anyway? Why doesn’t anyone teach us this stuff?
Well, it turns out that they do try to teach us. Not your supervisor, maybe, but Jeroen Bos, Dirk van Gorp, and their colleagues do. I wanted to learn more about this OA thing, so I enrolled in the course Open Science for PhD Candidates. I thought this would take me a few hours, but I was surprised to learn that it would take 4 days over 2 weeks. Was there really that much to teach about open science? Believe me, there was.
The course is split into two main parts: open access and research data management (RDM). Jeroen, Radboud University’s OA officer, and Dirk, the open science manager, take care of the OA part. RDM sessions are led by the university’s RDM support team coordinator Inge Slouwerhof and RDM specialist Theresa Redl, with Radboudumc-specific information provided by Radboudumc’s data steward Mirjam Brullemans-Spansier. I did not even know that we had a whole open science team at the university library. I wonder what other resources are going under the radar in my little lab-focused bubble.
Here are some things you can expect to learn from the course:
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what open science is and why it is important
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where to publish OA and how to find the right journals
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how to identify and avoid predatory journals
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how to find OA publications
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tools that you can use to learn about the OA policies and fees of journals
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how to find out about Radboud’s or VSNU’s OA deals
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different types of copyright agreements and which ones to choose in which case
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OA requirements of various funders (did you know that if your research is funded by European public grants starting from 2021, you have to publish OA in compliant journals)
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why we should care about RDM and how to write an RDM plan
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the proper ways of documenting, organizing, and archiving research data
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how to deal with sensitive personal data
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tools and repositories you can use to archive and share your research data
I believe that the Open Science course is a must for every researcher. From personal observations, I can tell that we don’t know, think, and discuss enough about these practical things that would help us be better researchers, better collaborators, and more helpful members of our societies. You can easily enroll in the course via gROW or contact any of the professionals mentioned above if you need some guidance on OA or data management. They are all happy to help you. If you'd like to learn even more and connect with other academics, check out Open Science Community Nijmegen (OSCN) and their interesting events. Let's all be conscious of and involved in the open science movement starting to sweep the scientific world. It will undoubtedly affect your life sooner or later.
by Ozlem Bulut
