In January, the recently established Open Science Community Twente (OSCT) has held its kick-off event. This month, on the 25th, OSCT organises a second event focusing on the benefits and limitations of preregistrations.
Open Science Community Twente
Open Science Communities are popping up across the world. Maybe you have noticed that, as of this year, Twente has its very own Open Science Community, called Open Science Community Twente (OSCT). OSCT’s initiator, Markus Konkol, explains in this U-Today interview why he started this community and what he and a growing number of members hope to achieve, now and in the future.
Why should you join OSCT’s next meeting?
The new Strategy Evaluation Protocol (SEP, 2021-2027) urges universities to assess their work in more qualitative and contemporary ways. A stronger focus on matters like Open Science, integrity and inclusiveness allows us to reshape how we as a Faculty do and assess our work. Our mission is still to promote innovative and interdisciplinary research, and we are aware that this might require different ways of managing and supporting researchers in their work. BMS has performed very well in terms of making their scientific output openly accessible, and we realize that a lot of researchers find it difficult to make certain publishing choices without financial support. At the same time, Open Science is more than paid publishing in a selection of journals. In June 2020 a questionnaire was sent out to ask BMS researchers about their ideas on the developments to improve and open up academia. One aspect of Open Science that was mentioned by a few researchers was preregistration. Preregistration means registering your study before it has been conducted, and the practice could help prevent issues like publication bias and questionable research practices. Researchers can publish their plans on platforms like the Open Science Framework or AsPredicted, but there are also journals that subject a plan to initial peer-review and guarantee subsequent publication of the final study, regardless of its findings. In social sciences this is slowly becoming more commonplace. Data indicates that both public preregistrations and journals offering registered reports are doubling each year (e.g. Chambers et al., 2019), including BMS-favourites like British Journal of Health Psychology and Journal of Business Ethics.
As such, attending OSCT’s next meeting on 25 February – an online event that focusses on preregistration and registered reports – could be a perfect opportunity to get introduced to the potential of this Open Science community.
How to register?
Are you interested in joining this event? The meeting is organised via Teams on 25 February, 14:00. More information on this event can be found here. More information about OSCT, its founders, members, activities, and goals, can be found on their website. You can also become a member of the community, by filling out the Join OSCT form.
Let’s pick up challenges together and share your experiences on Open Science!
