What is greener than the Grinch or a yummy avocado? Green Open Access self-archiving of your scholarly work! Therefore, I would like to close this year with a brief reflection on how self-archiving practices not only contribute to freeing up your scholarly record, but can also be considered as forms of empowerment.
Therefore, I will not delve too much into technical details, but what always stuck with me is that you need to be prepared and ready for Open Access from the beginning. Meaning, always think and ask yourself and your prospective publishers, editors, co-authors about Open Access options. It costs nothing to ask if Open Access options are available, at least the so-called green route (self-archiving). Thus I made it a habit to check the fine print and ask for an Open Access option. I truly see this as a form of empowerment, freeing up your scholarly record and making it available to others.
Let me give you a recent example. Before I agreed to write a short piece about Lodewijk van Velthem for a rather monumental history of translation in the Netherlands (I felt so honoured!), I asked for the option to make available my contribution as a preprint open access version aka self-archiving as green open access. The request was granted and so I did!
You can download the green version now from the publications page of my blog:
U. Wuttke, ‘Vignet: Vergeten Faam buiten de Grenzen’, in: D. Schoenaers, T. Hermans, I. Leemans, C. Koster, T. Naaikens (ed.), Vertalen in de Nederlanden: Een Cultuurgeschiedenis, Boom, Amsterdam, 2021, p. 101-102. Download the Author Version (Green Open Access).
Have fun reading, buy the whole book to gain insight into the history of translation in the Netherlands from the Middle Ages to our own time, always remember to go green, if you aren’t already, and have a wonderful 2023!
Immer wieder beschäftigt mich das Thema der Öffnung der Geisteswissenschaften, ob in Projekten, Workshops oder Publikationen. Gerne benutze ich in diesem Kontext die Bezeichnung Open Scholarship bzw. Open Humanities, weil der Begriff Open Science teilweise als ausgrenzend gegenüber den Geisteswissenschaften wahrgenommen wird.
Meine Annäherung an das Thema erfolgt insbesondere aus der Sicht von wissenschaftlichen Bibliotheken und skizziert einige relevanten Open-Access-Publikationsdienstleistungen, Lösungsansätze und Handlungsempfehlungen. In der gemeinsamen Betrachtung der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften folge ich dem Beispiel wissenschaftspolitischer Diskussionen, in der oft die Kategorie SSH (Social Sciences and Humanities) zu finden ist, ich habe aber auch – trotz aller Kürze – dem Fakt Rechnung getragen, dass beide Disziplinen ihre Eigenheiten aufweisen.
Als Hauptherausforderung für die Open-Access-Transformation in den Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften sehe ich den Fokus auf klassischen, narrativen Formaten, die in generellen Open-Access-Diskussionen nicht immer genügend Aufmerksamkeit bekommen, aber auch disziplinspezifische Barrieren bezüglich des offenen Zugangs zu Daten und fehlende Annerkennung für Datenpublikationen bzw. alternative Forschungsprodukte. Am Ende sind einige weiterführende für diesen Post verwendete Ressourcen aufgeführt.
Open Access: Vision und Status Quo
2003 wurde in der Berliner Erklärung Open Access zu wissenschaftlichen Publikationen und Forschungsdaten zum Ziel definiert. Wenn wir heute, fast 20 Jahre später, versuchen uns der Frage, wie es um diese aus der Wissenschaft heraus entstandene Bewegung mit der Vision des weltweiten, freien Zugangs zum menschlichen Wissen über das Internet, in den Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften steht, quantitativ zu nähern, stoßen wir schnell an Grenzen. Aufgrund der Komplexität der Fragestellung liegen momentan kaum umfassende, verlässliche Erhebungen über den OA-Anteil in bestimmten Disziplinen vor.
Open-Access.net Logo (Public Domain), Quelle Wikimedia
2018 wurde geschätzt, dass weltweit erst circa 25% ALLER publizierten Artikel Open Access sind, zu Forschungsdaten liegen keine belastbaren Zahlen vor. Oftmals werden die Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften als OA-“Nachzügler” bezeichnet und es weisen auch einige quantitative Erhebungen in diese Richtung. Daher ist es berechtigt, die Gründe für den langsamen Fortschritt beziehungsweise spezifische Herausforderungen bezüglich einer umfassenden Open-Access-Transformation in den Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften zu hinterfragen, weil sie insbesondere 1) bei wissenschaftspolitischen Diskussionen, 2) im Gespräch mit Wissenschaftler*innen sowie 3) der Konzeption von OA-Dienstleistungen zu bedenken sind.
Die folgende Zusammenschau disziplinspezifischer Herausforderungen soll insbesondere die Gefahr unterstreichen, konkrete Bedarfe der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften zu übersehen, wenn der OA-Diskurs zu stark durch die STEM-Fächer dominiert wird, wie z. B. bezüglich der PlanS-Initiativekritisiert. Das nimmt natürlich nicht weg, dass die Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften nicht aus in den STEM-Fächern bereits gemachten Erfahrungen lernen können.
Spezifische Herausforderungen der Open-Access-Transformation in den Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften
Klassische, narrative Publikationen
Herausforderung Nummer 1: Open-Access-Monografien
Weil die Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften im Gegensatz zu den STEM-Fächern “Buchwissenschaften” sind, stellt die Integration von Open-Access-Büchern (d. h. von Monografien und Sammelbänden) eine großer Herausforderung dar. Handlungsbedarfe bestehen u. a. bezüglich tragfähiger Geschäftsmodelle für Open-Access-Monografien, der Sichtbarkeit von Open-Access-Monografien in lokalen Bibliothekskatalogen und darüber hinaus sowie der Metadatenqualität und -harmonisierung (siehe HIRMEOS).
Herausforderung Nummer 2: Überwindung des Printparadigmas
Die Publikationskultur der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften ist noch immer stark durch das Printparadigma geprägt. Die damit verbundenen starken allgemeinen Vorbehalte gegen das elektronische Publizieren im Allgemeinen (Zweifel an der Langzeitarchivierung und -verfügbarkeit) wirken sich auch negativ auf die Akzeptanz von Open Access aus.
Herausforderung Nummer 3: Spezifika des Gratifikationssystems
Zu den Besonderheiten des geistes- und sozialwissenschaftlichen Gratifikationssystems zählt einerseits, dass ausschlaggebende Auswahlfaktoren für Zeitschriften vor allem “weiche” Metriken wie Prestige und Reputation (Renommee!) sind, weniger der (umstrittene) JIF oder andere bibliometrische Metriken wie der h-Index (beide durch Open Access durchaus “boostbar”) bzw. Open Access selbst. Dazu kommen anderseits Vorbehalte gegen die Qualität von Open-Access-Publikationen (die im Zusammenhang mit den Vorbehalten gegen elektronischen Publizieren stehen): selbst dort, wo gleichwertige Review-Verfahren Anwendung finden, gewährleisten diese bislang keineswegs eine gleichwertige Anerkennung.
Herausforderung Nummer 4: Finanzielle Besonderheiten der Forschungskultur
In den Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften gibt es im Vergleich zu Natur- und Lebenswissenschaften weniger durch Drittmittelgeförderte Projekte. Hierdurch fehlen Wissenschaftler*innen der ersteren Disziplinen Projektmittel um Open-Access-Publikationen in der Form von APCs (Artikel Processing Charges) bzw. noch höheren Beträgen für Open-Access-Monografien in Author-Pays-Modellen zu bestreiten. Zumindest in Deutschland sind hierdurch auch ihre Möglichkeiten eingegrenzt legal das Recht auf Zweitveröffentlichung wahrzunehmen. Außerdem fehlt Fördergebern hierdurch der sanfte “Hebel” Open-Access-Publikationen durch Fördervorgaben zu stimulieren.
Herausforderung Nummer 5: Unsicherheiten im Umgang mit offenen Lizenzen
Der hohe Stellenwert der Integrität der eigenen Publikationen und der allgemein unsichere Umgang mit rechtlichen Rahmenbedingungen führt zu Vorbehalten gegen offene Lizenzen.
Open Data
Open Data, d. h. Open Access zu Forschungsdaten, scheint in den Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften noch wenig ausgeprägt. Die vielfältigen Gründe, die einer stärkeren Umsetzung des Open-Data-Prinzips in diesen Disziplinen, entgegenstehen, hängen teilweise mit bereits unter der Kategorie “Klassische, narrative Publikationen” zusammen.
Herausforderung Nummer 6: Fehlende Rechte an Forschungsdaten und sensible Forschungsdaten
Auch im Bereich Forschungsdaten stehen rechtliche Unsicherheiten einer umfassenden Open-Access-Transformation im Weg. Insbesondere in den Geisteswissenschaften ist es hinderlich, dass Forschungsdaten oft Digitalisate von Dokumenten der kulturellen Überlieferung aus dem GLAM-Bereich (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) sind, die oft nicht unter freien Lizenzen bzw. nur unklaren Bedingungen zur Verfügung stehen. In den Sozialwissenschaften stellt der hohe Anteil besonders schützenswerter, sensibler Forschungsdaten eine Herausforderung dar. Hier bietet der Bezug auf die FAIR-Prinzipien und das Prinzip “so offen wie möglich, so geschlossen wie nötig”, einen Lösungsweg.
Herausforderung Nummer 7: Mentalitätsfragen
Dazu kommen viele ungelöste Fragen bezüglich der Qualitätssicherung, der Verantwortlichkeiten der Langzeitarchivierung von Forschungsdaten und mit dem Gratifikationssystem zusammenhängende Mentalitätsfragen: Daten zählen in diesen Disziplinen noch nicht wirklich als eigenständige wissenschaftliche Objekte und selbstproduzierte Daten werden zudem stark als Eigentum, als Datenschatz für eigene klassisch, narrative Publikationen betrachtet. Einen Weg zeigt hier z. B. DORA (San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment) auf, in der “the value and impact of all research outputs (including datasets and software) in addition to research publications” betont wird.
Fazit
Es gibt natürlich weder DIE Geistes- noch DIE Sozialwissenschaften. Es gibt sowohl Unterschiede zwischen beiden Disziplinen als auch intradisziplinäre Unterschiede, d. h. Unterschiede zwischen einzelnen Fächern dieser Disziplinen, auf die an dieser Stelle nicht weiter eingegangen werden kann. Ganz allgemein wird den Digital Humanities eine hohe Open Access-Affinität nachgesagt und die methodisch zwischen Geistes- und Naturwissenschaften stehenden Sozialwissenschaften mit ihrer aus beiden Richtungen geprägten Publikationskultur scheinen insgesamt etwas OA-affiner zu sein.
In den Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften finden wir eine ausgeprägte Open-Access-Theorie- und Praxisschere: viele Wissenschaftler*innen finden Open Access im Prinzip gut, nicht zuletzt weil sie vom besseren Zugang profitieren, aber zögern (noch) es in der Praxis umzusetzen. Bei dieser positiven Grundeinstellung zu Open Access gilt es anzusetzen, insbesondere in den Bereichen:
Entwicklung zeitgemäßer Anreizsysteme,
Förderung von längerfristigen Lernprozessen durch Best-Practice-Beispiele und
Verstärkter Nachdruck auf Data Literacy und Informationskompetenz bereits in der Lehre, denn Open Access und die FAIR-Prinzipien sind “gekommen um zu bleiben” als Teil der Leitlinien zur Sicherung der guten wissenschaftlichen Praxis (DFG-Kodex GWP 2019).
Die noch geringe Durchdringung der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften durch die Open-Access-Transformation bietet aber auch Chancen, z. B. zur Entwicklung fairer Modelle für den Nachweis, d. h. umfassender und unabhängiger Findewerkzeuge, die wiederum impulsgebend für andere momentan stark “kommerzialisierte” Disziplinen sein können, sowie alternativer Open-Access-Geschäftsmodelle.
Hier sind natürlich nicht nur wissenschaftliche Bibliotheken gefragt, aber ihre besondere Stellung im Wissenschaftssystem bietet ihnen die Chance weitere Entwicklungen federführend zu prägen u. a.:
durch die nutzergetriebene Entwicklung von disziplin- und fachspezifischen Open Access-Publikationsdienstleistungen und -infrastrukturen (Repositorien, konsortiale Verlagsmodelle wie OLH, Open Knowledge Maps)
aber auch als Datengeber durch die Bereitstellung von (Meta-)Daten (aus Digitalen Sammlungen etc.) unter offenen Lizenzen, offenen Schnittstellen und offenen Formaten. Hierdurch leben sie vor, was von Wissenschaftler*innen gefordert wird und ermöglichen maßgeblich die Öffnung der Forschung.
Ich freue mich über Kommentare und Anmerkungen, über Twitter, Kommentare unten und natürlich persönlich!
Cite as: Ulrike Wuttke, What is the Problem with Medievalist’s and Open Access to Research Data? Some (rather uncomfortable) Reflections from the Carmen 2019 Workshop, 18.10.2019, CC BY 4.0.
After the successful Open Science Workshop at last year’s CARMEN (Worldwide Medieval Network) Annual Meeting which focussed on Scholarly Communication in general (Workshop Report), I decided to focus this years training on Research Data.
Resource: Wuttke, Ulrike. (2019, September). Make your digital research more sustainable and visible: Data Sharing and Data Management Techniques & Tools for Digital Medievalists. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3405322
Workshops like the CARMEN workshops are always very exciting because the audience is very mixed in respective to their “digital skills” but also kind of homogenous because all are medievalists, which makes it easy for me to relate to their research questions and methods etc. Also, the CARMEN people are especially welcoming and not shy of controverse discussions (as you will see below).
This year’s workshop “Make your digital research more sustainable and visible: Data Sharing and Data Management Techniques & Tools for Digital Medievalists” drew quite a huge group, not only because of the mouth-to-mouth propaganda of last year’s participants, but because it is a hot topic for medievalists.
— CARMEN Worldwide Medieval Network (@CARMENmedieval) September 5, 2019
After outlining the aims of the workshop and the code of conduct that underlined that the workshop should be a safe space for open discussion (see my slides for the code of conduct, I got great comments on it!), we opened the space to hear about participants’ backgrounds and interests. Then I introduced the basics of the concept of research data and key concepts related to humanities research data. We ended the first round with an activity in which the participants were asked to put on their “magic data glasses” and ponder over the question “What is your research data?”.
Besides the request to explain in more detail “What is research data, so what counts as data?”, the answers of the participants showed the great variance of digital methods used and ranged from:
digital notes and annotations mainly in Word or
use of spreadsheets,
“free” collections of images of manuscripts,
to more structured data such as transcriptions in TEI or
using Omeka or others database systems and collecting data e.g. using the metadata standard Dublin Core.
The question, however “What is research data? What counts as research data?”, made me think that most definitions of research data are very broad, that they also include digital versions of articles, in fact all “digital stuff”. So there seems to be a broad overlap between digital scholarly publishing and research data management, which makes the concept a bit confusing. For the session we came to agree that all “digital stuff” researchers use and produce are research data, but with varying degrees of structuredness and machine readability (which we deemed important).
After this already heated discussion during the first group activity, I introduced the key concepts and good practices related to sustainable and visible humanities research data. I especially focussed on technical and intellectual sustainability (think of documentation, research data management, and (FAIR) data publication). Then we dove into the second group activity, a discussion of challenges and needs for Data Sharing. For this part of the discussion, Torsten Roeder, Digital Humanities Coordinator from the Leopoldina (the national German Academy) had joined me.
Some more pictures of our annual meeting in #Prague, with thanks to Jaroslav Svátek. Great workshops, #digital skills training, networking, and forum to share our institutions and projects… pic.twitter.com/T7jct9nuK9
— CARMEN Worldwide Medieval Network (@CARMENmedieval) September 7, 2019
I had asked Torsten to join me because I expected a lot of detailed technical questions about digital methods related with sustainability or maybe some anxiety about sharing, but surprisingly, the main point of the discussion was:
What if I would love to do data sharing, but cannot because of costs, often posed by libraries?
Now I had a whole group of medievalists in a heated discussion about how often – in their experience – costs are the main obstacle to publishing Open Access and publishing their research data!
Of course it depends what your main research area is, but for this group, apparently their main research data (sources) are digitized manuscripts, that is pictures (not TEI encoded texts, to make that clear). It came down to the point that they often have to pay (by themselves or out of dwindling budgets) for publishing rights imposed on them by the holding institutions (often libraries) and the costs for these rights for online, Open Access, publication are much higher than for print (and/or closed access). The licensing model of libraries and other institutions and legal restrictions imposed on archival sources make it almost impossible to publish them or even contributing to community sourced collections if the default for pictures is set to OA. This situation leads to a thriving “black market” of sharing via Facebook groups etc. because legally it is not possible to share them publicly. Of course, there are quite some libraries and other institutions that provide Open Access to digitized medieval sources, but they are not always easy to find and often you are looking for a very specific manuscript and chances are apparently still very high that the one you need is not digital available in Open Access.
After the session I started to look for starting points to come up with these resources, these are some useful links I came across (please let me know if I missed something very obvious!):
After the session we continued the discussion over a cup of coffee and from this I would like some more “pieces of food for thought”:
Publication cost by libraries are really a “deal breaker” for researchers like medievalist who work a lot with picture, this has been outlined in detail as an example by Kate Rudy in an article (2019). Of course it’s not the holding institutions alone but I think she is right when she writes: “Image-holding institutions should rethink their purpose. They can never have enough in-house expertise to fully research all of their holdings. They should be grateful to scholars who are applying their expertise to their collections. The least they can do is to make images available for free. They should also allow researchers to make study photographs and produce high-resolution images for publication at low costs.”
If only the “rich” e. g. the few that have a research budget can pay for pictures and picture rights, this causes a problem for the diversity of the field of medieval studies
Especially given that libraries are often active promoters and facilitators of Open Access / Open Science (e. g. see LIBERs Open Science Roadmap on Zenodo) these “black sheep” are undermining the credibility of these efforts
These obstacles also make it very difficult to comply with strict Open Access requirements of national funders
Additionally, Laura Morreale (Center of Medieval Studies, Fordham University) pointed me to her project Digital Documentation Process (DDP) that has developed: “a set of best practices for cataloguing and preserving digital projects. The DDP makes digital humanities (DH) scholarship findable and citable for all scholars, stores and makes available durable versions of digital objects created in DH work, and facilitates a suite of documentary products for DH practitioners to communicate the value of their work to DH- and non-DH scholars alike”. She underlines that subject specialist, IT specialist, and information specialist have to work hand in hand, but the motivation has to come from the subject specialist, who cannot “just throw data at the end of the project at the librarian” (couldn’t agree more). The proposed process is aimed at making the data better understandable and is a suggestion how to add value to it so that is become a part of the scholarly record, especially the so called Archiving Dossier Narrative. She invites discussion around the question how this approach, that is very much from a subject specialist perspective makes sense from the perspective of Data Management.
Last but not least, I am happy to share with you the “Research Data Management Treasure Hunt Map” drawn by Torsten Roeder which was just not ready in time to be shown during the workshop.
“Research Data Management Treasure Hunt Map” by Torsten Roeder, 2019. CC BY 4.0
Thank you for reading! As always, I am very keen to hear you thoughts, additions etc. Discuss with me by leaving a comment below, or on Twitter (@uwuttke).
Report from Hands-on Session: Future Proof and FAIR Research Data: Open Data Management Best Practices & First Steps
At 21st of January 2019 FOSTER+ and DARIAH EU organized the workshop “How to make the most of your publications in the humanities? Discover evolving trends in open access” at the Grimm-Zentrum Berlin.
You can imagine that I was extremely thrilled to lead a hands-on session about Research Data Management with a focus on Open practices in the afternoon for an international group of humanities researchers! Not only would this session provide me an opportunity to introduce the participants to basics of Open Data Management and discuss challenges and opportunities, it also allowed me to participate in the whole workshop with an excellent line-up of international experts and projects dedicated to Open Humanities. Just have a look at the programme to discover the topics discussed on this very informative day organized superbly by Erszébet Tóth-Cifra and Helene Brinken.
For me a personal highlight was the presentation from Pierre Mournier (OPERAS) about Open Scholarly Monographs, a topic that is sometimes treated in the Open Access discourse a bit like a wallflower because loads of attention recently is placed on articles. However, monographs have played and with Pierre I dare to prophesise, will continue to play a huge role in the scientific publication process of the humanities. Therefore, equally attention has to be paid to Open Access to monographs (e.g. distribution and discovery infrastructures, funding models, reward systems).
With the permanent identifiers DOI, ORCID and a funders registry @hirmeos helps to make books visible & supports acknowledgement of researchers #humanitiesOA@fosterscience@DARIAHeu
Another highlight, very close to the topic of my hands-on session, was the presentation by Walter Scholger and Vanessa Hannenschläger from the ACDH about Copyright Issues and Open Licensing. They argued convincingly that CCO is actually not a very useful to use to release your materials at it leaves a lot of insecurities (its a mark, not a licence) and encouraged CC-BY instead, even though it may seem rather difficult for resources that have been collaboratively produced. There was not enough time to discuss this in full detail, and I would love to see more detailed information about this and also examples from practice. All slides from the presentations of the workshop are linked from the programme. You can also try #humanitiesOA on Twitter.
CC0 and public domain is impossible in European civil law states. Personality rights make it impossible to waive moral rights. The wording of the license defaults it to CC BY, *but* creates a legal weakness/ambiguity #humanitiesOApic.twitter.com/0IMXq8nwH7
My hands-on session started really very hands-on, as we first had to divide the room into two parts (in the other half was a parallel session about Self-Archiving). To get to know the background of the participants and to restart blood circulation after an already long workshop day, I asked the participants to stand up and to only sit down if the answer to my question was “no”. I asked them if 1) they had an ORCID, 2) they had ever published something Open Access besides articles or books, and 3) they had already written a data management plan. I overheard some mumbling remark to the last question, but what if it s*!&%cked? This really made me laugh, as this seems to be quite a common experience. It was also a very high motivation for me for the following 1 ½ hours!
While often when we talk about humanities data, the first thing that comes up are texts, which probably also one of the main humanities data types, I was surprised by the diversity the participants named during one of the hands-on discussion parts: social media and social network data, interview data (qualitative interview recordings and transcripts), bibliometric data, pictures, non-digital archival sources, geodata such as GIS, tabular data (Excel, CVS), algorithms and code, manuscript scans, Omeka collections. Seems, humanities researchers have a lot of data, and a very diverse range, too!
Without going into detail as you can download the full slide set of the session from Zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2546783, I would like to emphasise a few points we discussed during the session:
Thinking about Data Management from the beginning of your project, e.g. how to make your data FAIR, how to document your data and which metadata are needed, etc. can save you a lot of work afterwards, as it will make you think about standards (e.g. Standardization Survival Kit) to ensure interoperability and prevent you from losing track (or even data), or do you remember what exactly you did with your data a few months after?
Sharing Data ideally is a win-win: You can use data of others and others can use your data
Always give credit to what you use and make it easy for others to credit you (use an Open Access repository, CC licenses, etc.)
Think of Data Management as part of Good Scientific Practice, not as a nuisance (and from organizational point of view: allocate resources and infrastructure for support, this task should not be on the shoulders of researchers alone)
For me crucial parts of introducing researchers to data management are explaining the benefits and then introducing them gently to the basics, pointing at support structures and providing them with information about further learning and information resources. I often see that once they have dipped their toes into this topic, realizing the benefits, they are often highly motivated for further exploration and for using their new skills in practice. But first, you to get them into a data management session!
Resources:
In the spirit of Open Educational Resources (OER), the slides of my presentation including the practical parts are published on Zenodo, feel free to reuse and share. I have gratefully reused brilliant material from the Open Science / OER Community, and would like to encourage everyone to do the same.
While you are here: Get started now and check out the PARTHENOS Training Module Manage, Improve and Open Up Your Research and Data! You can also try out a research data management planning tool, such as RDMO, that guides you through the essential parts of a data management plan.
What do you think? Leave a comment below or discuss with me on Twitter or Facebook!
The text of this blog post is published under the license CC-BY 4.0.
Cite as: Ulrike Wuttke, Future Proof and #FAIR #Researchdatamanagement in the Humanities, Blogpost, 04.02.2019, CC-BY 4.0.
Workshop Report: How To Make Your Medieval Research More Visible With Open Scholarship Methods and Tools
As a medievalist it was an extreme honour and pleasure for me to be invited to the Annual Meeting of CARMEN (The Worldwide Medieval Network) at Tampere University, organised by Trivium, the Tampere Centre for Classical, Medieval and Early Modern Studies to give an Open Science Workshop.
The Open Science workshop suited very well in the Carmen Annual Meeting’s general theme “Passages: Beyond the Boundaries of Medieval Studies” as Open Science is all about opening up research beyond boundaries.
The Carmen workshop offered to me an excellent possibility to talk directly with researchers of all stages about Open Scholarship and to show how it can be implemented fruitfully in medieval research practices. This is in my opinion extremely important because the Open Science movement will thrive only if it is embraced bottom up by the researchers.
The focus of the workshop was on academic publishing and changes in scholarly communication. First, we talked about Open Access to scientific publications (Open Access Journals and Open Access Monographs) and Open Data & Research Data Management, topics that are gaining fast momentum for all researchers because they are increasingly supported by institutions and becoming a default requirement of research funders. Then we switched to another open science method, the communication of scientific results via social networks, blogs, videos, podcasts etc. While there are some who think that these channels are a waste of time, used strategically, they can positively impact research dissemination, and enhance the number of citations. Last but not least, they are vital channels to prove the relevance of medieval studies against the backdrop of dwindling research budgets.
Medievalists have great stories to tell and public interest is almost assured if the research is “translated” to various channels. While there is still need and space for the monograph, the edited volume, and articles, the potential of other channels to engage a broader audience for societal research impact is high and out there to be explored. During the Carmen meeting there were many exciting examples of medieval research projects engagement with the broader public, for example those presented by the Trivium researcher Jenni Kuuliala about Dis/ability History. EU citizens demand more understanding of the society they live in and the Humanities & Social Sciences can proactively contribute to fulfill this demand when they stop telling the Cinderella Story and change the story as Gabi Lombardo from the EASSH had reminded us earlier during the CARMEN meeting, they only need to seize the day. In my opinion, practicing Open Science is one facet of exactly doing this.
After having explored Open Science in theory, it was time for action. First, the participants discussed in groups which Open Scholarship method they would like to try out next. I “overheard” some discussing start using Twitter, publishing a bibliography on a specific aspect of saints, musing about making a video about their projects, or engage in Open Peer Review. Naturally, I am very curious to hear about any follow up developments!
— CARMEN Worldwide Medieval Network (@CARMENmedieval) August 28, 2018
The last part of the workshop was dedicated to a plenary discussion about doubts and needs and how to overcome them. For this discussion, James L. Smith from Trinity College Dublin and advocacy coordinator for @openlibhums had joined me.
#OA publishing and #ECR colleagues – choices need to be 'agency, not coercion' @ScrivenerSmith in workshop with @UWuttke#CARMEN2018
— CARMEN Worldwide Medieval Network (@CARMENmedieval) August 28, 2018
I could almost not keep up taking notes from the vivid discussion. The main points came down for me into these categories:
Awareness Raising:
– Authors need to be aware that there are alternatives to Closed Access (Gold Open Access as in immediate Open Access, Green Open Access as in publication of preprints, postprints, authorized version, maybe after embargo period) for articles and monographs
Education:
– Authors need to know their rights when engaging with publishers (Green Open Access, Sparc addendum, etc.)
– OA seems to add an extra challenge to teaching students which sources are reliable (Peer Reviewed = good quality), if the digitally published material is more diverse (and not always peer reviewed), one has to teach digital literacy skills & (digital) source criticism, which one may in fact consider as one major skill of a good historian anyway
Need for a Paradigm Change within the Scholarly Community:
– We need to be more aware and critically discuss where the prestige comes from. The name of the journal or the name of the publisher? Maybe open peer review could offer a solution here? Should researchers still support closed journals, series?
– Often OA publications have by default a low reputation and are perceived as less valuable scholarship although they are often also prone to strict peer review (which is often not recognised); also digital publishing in general has less prestige
-many prestigious publishers do not do OA (or at very high cost)
– It would be unfair to put ECR at risk for their career to oblige them to do so, even though there is a “Kamikaze Open Access School”, but…the established researchers should promote OA wherever they can (“Senior scholars should pave the way”)
Policy Making
– Choosing Open Access or Open Scholarly Methods does often not count for tenure
Practical Solutions
– OA for books is important for the humanities, we need good hybrid publication models (e.g. OA published by the library/publisher, book printed on demand)
– at the moment journals often bring in the revenue for scholarly societies, to make them Open Access poses a problem for the sustainability of the society
-Article Processing Charges are often very high (besides this being a problem of the commercialised system) even low APCs can cause a problem (support scholars to pay APCs)
-Open Peer Review could change the way we do research and evaluate research, but how to organize it practically
What I learned from this workshop (and from the excellent FOSTER Open Science Trainer Bootcamp), setting the goals and the scene for the workshop participants is very important, creating a space for discussion and leaving enough time for it really gets the participants going!
What I also learned from this workshop: Let’s talk about Open Science more with the researchers and let’s talk about practical steps more, because also Rome was not build in one day!
Resources
In the spirit of Open Educational Resources (OER), the slides of my presentation including the practical parts are published online as PPTX on Zenodo, feel free to reuse and share. I have gratefully reused brilliant material from the Open Science/ OER Community, and would like to encourage everyone to do the same.
ulrikewuttke 
