Open Science Training Coordinators
Community of Practice
www.openaire.eu/cop-training
Open Science Training Coordinators
Community of Practice
Training as grounds for collaboration across disciplinary boundaries
Open Science : connecting the actors! 2022, 21 November 2022
Emilie Hermans
…sharing, collaborating, contributing, coordinating

Owned and driven by members…
Set up in
2018
100+
members )
Projects
Institutions
Research
infrastructures
NRENs
& more…
Slack channel
Google Group
“The CoP can be regarded as a
discipline transcending network
of trainers and training
organisers. We have built a
community. We are exchanging
information and best
practices.”
CoP member, 2020
20+
countries
EOSC
clusters
events
monthly meetings
46 10+
Open Science Training Coordinators
Community of Practice
www.openaire.eu/cop-training

Draft vision, mission and
values
Vision
• Make open science and FAIR the default in Europe (or broader?) with people
equipped and skilled to do this.
Mission
• The CoP is an informal network of training coordinators working together to
improve open science training and advocate for FAIR and open science
• The CoP aims to act as the collective voice for the training coordinators of a
wide range of institutions, projects and initiatives
• The CoP organises, together with its collaborators, workshops and other
knowledge exchange events related to open science training
Values
• Open science advocacy, informal, friendly, cooperative
• Transcending projects, nations - focussed on our values
Community of
Practice for Open
Science Training
Coordinators
Draft document

• Past activities
Blog post
Workshop report
& recommendations EOSC Skills &
Training
WG Report
Realising the European Open
Science Cloud conference session
on examples of community building
…sharing, collaborating, contributing, coordinating
Past activities

2020 Survey of members - What do
you think are the main
achievements of the CoP?
• Establishment of community across Europe and
wider. Exchange of news and information on cases
of good practice.
• The CoP can be regarded as a discipline
transcending network of trainers and training
organisers. We have built a community. We are
exchanging information and best practices. We have
successfully (co-) organized a few workshops.
• Exchange of experience
• I think the organisation of events was a great
achievement, even though I was not directly
involved but I would like to see more of it. I found it
one of the best ways to hear about the various
different projects going on.
• Providing a friendly cooperative place to share
practical problems and solutions. It's the best
forum I've found to make links between various
projects and initiatives involving training and
open science.
• regular interaction of trainers to avoid
duplication and share information
• The objective of establishing itself as a
community is accomplished. The community
grew in number of participants and the
exchange of information and practices was
also achieved. New challenges for the coming
year need to be defined.

Our activities - 2021
• Strengthen the network and increase engagement
• Monthly calls with member presentations
• Taskforces on specific topics
• Raise the profile and voice of the CoP
• Improved web presence, increased blogging and use of social media
• Presentations about the community at conferences
• Involvement in the REPO project (Reimagining Educational Practices for Open)
• CoP Open Science Training Week at the Open Science Fair, September 13 - 17, 2021
• Support EOSC skills building
• Review EOSC report recommendations and identify gaps
• Participate in EOSC projects: EOSC Future, EOSC regional and thematic projects
• Participation in EOSC Advisory Groups / Taskforces (but this cannot be done directly
as the CoP, but via members who are also EOSC Association members)
…sharing, collaborating, contributing, coordinating

Current activities
• How to make training materials FAIR -
sharing experiences from different
communities of how they have tried
to do this
• Contributions from: CLARIN, ELIXIR,
EMBL Bio-IT, OpenAIRE, SSHOC,
CESSDA, FORRT, EOSC Synergy
• Article in progress: “Towards
FAIRification of training materials and
catalogues – lessons learned from
research communities”
Wiegers, Luc, & van Gelder, Celia W. G. (2019). Illustration for "Ten simple rules for making
training materials FAIR" (1.0). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3593258

Current activities
Agenda
1. Welcome new CoP members
2. Presentation on “The Bicycle Principles for Effective, Inclusive, and Career-spanning Short-format
Training” → slide deck
3. Reports from Task Forces
- FAIR Training Materials
- Quality assurance of training
- Training in EOSC
4. Training handbooks
- OS online handbook: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7254522
- OpenAIRE updates the FOSTER Open Science toolkit
5. UNESCO working group - 26 Sept meeting. Update
6. Trainings and events
- OpenAIRE TtT Bootcamp
- EOSC Future - Train-the-Trainer: An active learning course on understanding & using EOSC
- Skills4EOSC – September kick-off https://www.eventi.garr.it/en/sk4eosc-meet/kickoff-home
7. AOB

Current activities
•Training in EOSC
•Quality assurance of training materials
•Online training handbook:
doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7254522
https://eoscfuture.eu/

Member voices
Prof Hugh Shanahan
Royal Holloway,
University of London
“…the CODATA-RDA schools curriculum was initially very
focussed on the technical sides of Data Science with some
discussion of Open Science. It was through meetings with
instructors from the community (and this is prior to the CoP)
that it became clear that we needed to broaden our outlook
and cover more of its social aspects. Hence we’ve ended up
with a curriculum that is uniquely broad (if shallow) for ECRs.
Having this cross-disciplinary community means that
different ideas for teaching get brought up. The technical
subjects tend to be focussed on discrete exercises with
teaching while the social subjects allow room for more
discussion and they can both learn from each other.”

Member voices
“Many of us are in different projects, handling more
or less the same subjects in (slightly) different
environments. Hearing other people's experience
and solutions is very enriching.
A specific example is the question on training &
support catalogues developed in different projects.
We demonstrated the different catalogues and
discussed how we could collaborate or align. At the
OSFair the group organised a session around the
topic.”
Inge Van
Nieuwerburgh
University of Ghent

Member voices
“Some brainstorming about the benefits to me of this CoP being cross-
disciplinary:
• thanks to CoP I got to know resources that I was not aware of
• sharing of know-how might so far be more established in some
disciplines than in others
• mixed teams help to get to know new tools
• in the beginning it is important to create a common vocabulary
Actually we are all responsible of a part of the implementation of Open
Science at different levels and in different purposes. I would say that
we are facing a strong difficulty: we want to push the development of
Open Science and EOSC but changing habits is a very long process and
needs time to avoid frustration and misunderstanding. It helps me to
know that others face similar difficulties - and even more to hear how
they deal with it. Thank you all for this.”
Marie Czuray
University of
Vienna,
EOSC-Pillar

Member voices
“I came to be an open science trainer for food and nutrition
researchers through my organization’s participation in a H2020
European project. I knew nothing about open science though I have
years of experience in university teaching and in running trainings for
professionals. What an eye-opener the CoP has been for me!
In a gentle and ongoing way through our monthly meetings I am
coming to understand the breadth of open science training methods
and resources. I had no idea that so many people in so many fields
were working on this! The LIBER example of a treasure hunt for open
science knowledge is one small example of a method that I brought to
the FNS-Cloud project, another CoP colleague talked eloquently one
meeting about finding out what your trainees need and want to know
and this is a lesson I’ve taken to heart. Participating in the CoP is easy,
stress-free, and brings great rewards.”
Katherine Flynn
ISEKI-Food
Association

Thank you!
Emilie Hermans
Emilie.Hermans@UGent.be
www.openaire.eu/cop-training