News from the Open Science world

Open Science encompasses a series of initiatives aimed at making scientific research more accessible, impactful, transparent and reproducible. By facilitating the free access to research data, Open Research Data (ORD) is at the cornerstone of any Open Science policy. USI is actively engaged with ORD practices and this is testified by the significant number of ORD-centered projects developed by our academic community in the last few years. Between 2023 and 2024, CHF 1.8Mio in internal and third-party funds were directed towards the theme of ORD at USI.

“The enhancement and promotion of freely available research outputs is one of the missions of USI and in the last years the academic community has demonstrated a remarkable level of engagement in this sense. USI plays an important role in the advancement of knowledge and practices dedicated to Open Research Data. Furthermore, these projects have generated national and international collaborations across several research communities.” says the Prorector for Research Prof. Patrick Gagliardini.

The Research Data Manager at USI Research Service, Igor Sarman, helps USI researchers get their ORD projects funded by swissuniversities and other funding agencies, manages USI internal calls for ORD projects, and offers training to facilitate the adoption of good ORD and research data management practices across our community.

swissuniversities' Programme Open Science II (2025-2028) 

At the national level, swissuniversities is at the forefront of promoting the development and application of ORD practices across Swiss higher education institutions.

With its recently approved Programme Open Science II, swissuniversities continues its commitment towards the sustainable consolidation and strategic development of Open Science in Swiss universities and research communities also for the period 2025-2028. The programme includes the chapter dedicated to ORD with which Swissuniversities plans to put into action the measures of the Swiss National ORD Strategy and the associated Action Plan.

Among the objectives of the ORD chapter are:

1. promoting best practices in data management;
2. supporting the development and enhancement of sustainable ORD-dedicated infrastructures taking into account their strategic value in the modern research landscape;
3. providing resources, training, and support to enhance the skills and competencies of researchers, data stewards, and support staff in managing and sharing data effectively.

swissuniversities will publish the action lines of the Open Science II programme by the end of the year, together with new calls for ORD projects.

ORD grants at USI

In 2024, swissuniversities and the Academies of Arts and Sciences awarded two grants to USI on the themes of ORD and FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) principles.

The first grant was awarded to Prof. Johanna Miecznikowski-Fuenfschilling (Faculty of Communication, Culture and Society) and her colleagues from the University of Zürich and the University of applied sciences of Zürich. The team is working on the swissuniversities-funded project entitled “Moving towards a national FAIR-compliant ecosystem of Federated Infrastructure for Language Data”. By using language data in Switzerland and beyond, the project intends to build a FAIR-compliant, sustainable and expandable ecosystem of federated infrastructure to answer the needs of researchers and professionals.

In addition, Prof. Katharina Lobinger (Faculty of Communication Culture and Society) and Dr. Anna Picco-Schwendener (Faculty of Communication Culture and Society) were recently granted a project on the development of a community-specific code of conduct concerning ORD. The project “Code of conduct for open data practices in visual social research”, funded by the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences, aims at reflecting on good data management practices dedicated to visual social research and creating a clear, understandable set of procedures in which legal and ethical considerations are integrated.

USI also promotes a call for projects on Open Science and Open Research Data dedicated to its academic community. The first call was launched in 2023, and four projects were approved.

In 2024, USI proposed the second call and six projects across different disciplinary areas were submitted. The projects are currently under review and the Rectorate will take the funding decision in mid-October. The information on newly-approved as well as last year’s projects can be found on the Open Research Data dedicated webpage.

Research Data Management training at USI - registration open

Besides managing USI internal ORD calls, the Research Service offers specific training to help the academic community plan for the management of their data.

Following the successful online edition held during the Summer School in Social Sciences Methods in August, USI will host a second, in-person edition of the course Advanced Skills for Research Data Management and Open Science in Social Sciences on 25-29 November 2024. This intensive programme, developed in collaboration with the renowned Swiss Center of Expertise in the Social Sciences (FORS), equips doctoral and postdoctoral researchers in social sciences with the knowledge and practical tools to excel in today's data-driven research landscape.

USI PhD students and researchers are invited to attend to foster their skills on Research Data Management. Registrations are open!

The Research Service also organises dedicated training sessions on the Swiss National Science Foundation Data Management Plan (DMP). In fact, all researchers with an approved SNSF project must submit a DMP before they can access the grant.

The next DMP drafting training session will be held on Thursday, 31 October 2024, from 3:30 to 4:30 pm, online. If you are interested, please contact USI Research Data Manager Dr. Igor Sarman. The training session is specifically aimed at grantees of a SNSF Project Funding who are expected to present a Data Management Plan but it is open to anyone interested.