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Dear colleagues,

We’re happy to share with you updates related to Open Access and Open Research Data tools and events, as well as the latest news from the swissuniversities Open Science Programme.

Subscribe to this newsletter here and follow us on LinkedIn and X for updates in the meantime.

Would you like to announce your OA or ORD event or share an update from your Open Science project? We invite you to send us your news item to  by 1 July 2024 for the July Newsletter.

Many thanks and best regards,

The Open Science Team of swissuniversities

FROM THE OPEN SCIENCE PROGRAMME

19 June 2024: swissuniversities Open Access Webinar: when Green meets Diamond

Green Open Access and Diamond Open Access refer to different models of scholarly open access publishing which at first glance do not share many connections. However, they could be seen as strong partners in aiming for a more sustainable and affordable scholarly communication system.

In this webinar, we aim at exploring the links, perceptions, and challenges of both Green and Diamond Open Access and the question of how we can seize opportunities and synergies in our goals to enhance non-commercial open access publishing. The discussion will therefore touch upon issues such as institutional publishing infrastructures, rights retention, and international connectivity.

This webinar is a joint venture between the project «GOAL – Unlocking the Green Open Access Potential» and the project «PLATO – Platinum Open Access Funding» – both co-funded by swissuniversities.

Inputs by Enrique Corredera Nilsson (GOAL) and Daniela Hahn (PLATO)

Moderation: Thomas Leibundgut (swissuniversities)

Please register here until 17 June 2024 to receive the MS Teams Link.

26 June 2024: Invitation to the Presentation of the revised Swiss National Open Access Strategy in Berne

We are pleased to invite you on Wednesday, 26 June 2024, to a presentation and discussion of the revised Swiss National Open Access Strategy. 

swissuniversities and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), partners to the Open Access strategy for Switzerland 2017–2024, have undertaken a review of the strategic parameters in order to update them beyond 2024. Experiences from the implementation and current developments as of 2023/2024 were addressed with the overarching aim of ensuring the long-term development of Open Access in the Swiss higher education landscape.

The strategy review is now drawing to a conclusion, and the revised strategy shall be presented to the public. To this end, an afternoon event is planned to reflect on the analyses and developments in the Open Access context on Wednesday, 26 June, 4-6pm, in Berne. Both experts involved in the process as well as interested professionals and researchers are invited. Prior to the presentation, a workshop dedicated to Diamond Open Access for learned societies will be held.

Programme:

• 14h – 16h: Part 1: Workshop on possibilities and challenges of Diamond OA for learned societies
• 16h – 17h30: Part 2: Presentation of the revised Swiss National Open Access Strategy and reflection from an institutional, national and international perspective

When and where: 26 June 2024, 14h - 17h30 followed by an Apéritif, at Hotel Kreuz, Zeughausgasse 41, 3011 Bern.

Further information on the programme will follow. Please register for the workshop and/or the presentation until the 23 June 2024.

EVENTS FROM THE COMMUNITY

14 June 2024: Online Workshop "Open Data with Zenodo for Citizen Science", 8h30–12h30

Are you ready for reuse? The online workshop discovers how high-quality data from Citizen Science projects can revitalize the research landscape with Zenodo. You will learn how the zenodo.org platform works and how to make the platform useful for Citizen Science. Using test data (which will be made available to you), you will learn how to prepare your own research data for Zenodo to make it openly available.

The workshop is aimed at Citizen Science project leaders who would like to make their data openly available but have little practice in doing so and would like to exchange ideas with others about the possibilities that already exist.

When & where: online on Zoom on 14 June 2024 from 08h30-12h30.

The workshop is held in German, the number of places is limited to 30 people ("first come, first serve").

Register here and find out more about the workshop.

The workshop is organized by the D-A-CH-AG, an association of actors such as platform providers, representatives of universities, research institutions & Citizen Science organisations from Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The working group's aim is to strengthen the cooperation and exchange on Citizen Science in German-speaking countries. 

25 June 2024: Online workshop on Reforming Academic Career Assessment: Insights from the CoARA working group and future directions

What are higher education institutions and research organisations doing to enact reforms in academic career assessment? This workshop will present the latest findings.

The CoARA Working Group on Reforming Academic Career Assessment (ACA) has gathered data on both organisational and broader national and international initiatives aimed at reforming academic career assessment. This workshop will highlight the key outcomes from its large-scale survey and case studies, offering valuable insights into the current landscape of academic career assessment reforms.

Participants will have the opportunity to learn about the findings and provide further input to the Working Group on potential lessons learned, as well as share experiences from reforms in their own context.

When and where: 25 June, 15h00-17h00, you may register here.

The workshop is free and open to all, regardless of CoARA membership. The CoARA working group particularly encourage researchers at all career stages, as well as representatives of higher education institutions and research organisations, to participate.

27 November 2024: Award Ceremony National ORD Prize 2024

The Swiss Academies invite you to the Award Ceremony of the National ORD Prize 2024. The event will take place on 27 November 2024 in the evening at Eventfabrik Bern. Please save the date! 

NEWS FROM THE COMMUNITY

The GOAL database is here: The Green Open Access policies of Swiss journals now have a home

Developed by the team behind the GOAL project, the GOAL-Databaseis a freely available service aimed at making the Open Access policies of Swiss journals more discoverable and well-known. The primary but non-exclusive focus is on the Green Open Access policies of practice-oriented journals negotiated by the GOAL project.

The GOAL-Database is a dynamic tool, and the number of available policies continues to grow. It is also possible to suggest the inclusion of new journals and their policies (see the criteria here). A proposal for inclusion in the database can be easily submitted through the feedback form.

Team GOAL look forward to your visit. If you have questions or suggestions, do not hesitate to contact them.

CHORD Summer Survey

The project CHORD-talk-in-interaction has just released its “CHORD Summer Survey” – an online survey on research data management and re-use. The project is part of a swissuniversities project on Open Research Data (ORD) and explores the practices researchers engage in to share data about talk-in-interaction.

The “CHORD Summer Survey” is intended for researchers and students based in Switzerland who work with audio and/or video recordings of spoken discourse and their written transcripts. The aim of the survey is to gain a better understanding of the current practices and challenges of sharing and re-using this type of data and to assess the needs of the concerned scientific communities when it comes to data management. The survey outlines three different data usage scenarios, and it will take between 5 and 15 minutes to complete, depending on the usage scenario that applies. The survey is accessible via this anonymous link. It will be online for two months, until 30 June 2024.

Swiss Data Science Center SDSC: Call for Collaborative Open Research Data (ORD) Infrastructure Projects

The 2024 Call for Collaborative Open Research Data (ORD) Infrastructure Projects aims to advance the Swiss National ORD Strategy by fostering collaborative development of sustainable and reusable data and software infrastructure that empowers open research practices.

The is organized into seven tracks. Each project can be submitted to one or several tracks: 

1. Sensitive Research Data Management (SRDM)
2. Research Data Governance and FAIRification (RDGF)
3. Standardized and Interoperable Components (SIC)
4. Metadata Enhancement and Semantic Integration (MESI)
5. Production Environments for Research Code Integration (PER)
6. Enhancing, improving, or extending the Renku platform through infrastructure integration (RPI)
7. Improving the sustainability of data science projects by leveraging the Renku platform (RPDS)

Explore initial information on the National Call webpage. 

Submission deadline for pre-proposals is July 15th, 2024

Call for applications: National ORD Prize 2024

The call for the National ORD Prize 2024 is open and applications will be accepted until 31 July 2024, 5:00 PM CET. 

This prize aims to recognize individual researchers and research teams for innovative practices in the field of Open Research Data (ORD) and to promote the transition to open research practices.

Researchers from all career levels and scientific disciplines working at Swiss research institutions, such as universities, universities of applied sciences, federal institutes, and universities of teacher education, are eligible to apply. Early-career researchers are also encouraged to submit their research projects.

The ORD prize jury defined two new focus areas for this year’s competition: 

1. Collaborative and/or interdisciplinary reuse of research data 
2. Educational and/or outreach activities related to the reuse of research data. 

Apply here

Announcement: FORS-DaSCH Cooperation Agreement, DaSCH joins SWISSUbase

FORS (Swiss Centre of Expertise in the Social Sciences) is pleased to announce that they have signed a cooperation agreement with DaSCH (Swiss National Data and Service Center for the Humanities). At the same time, DaSCH has joined SWISSUbase, an online platform and services operated by the SWISSUbase Consortium, consisting of FORS and the Universities of Lausanne, Neuchâtel, and Zurich. These partnerships aim to strengthen the Swiss research data infrastructures in the social sciences, the humanities, and beyond.

DaSCH and FORS, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, play crucial roles in managing research data within their respective fields. While FORS has extensive experience in social sciences data archiving and management, DaSCH stands out in the humanities research data area, providing long-term live access to research data in accordance with FAIR principles. Both institutions are nodes of relevant European Research Infrastructure Consortia (ERICs), FORS for the CESSDA ERIC, and DaSCH for the DARIAH ERIC.

The FORS-DaSCH agreement outlines several principles, including the alignment of strategic developments, mutual representation in the respective governance boards, regular exchange at strategic and management levels, and coordination of technical developments. FORS and DaSCH will also work together with many others to form a national cluster of social sciences and humanities infrastructures (SSHOC-CH) to coordinate training activities for researchers in Switzerland in various aspects of Open Research Data (ORD).

An important aspect of the FORS-DaSCH collaboration is the integration of humanities in the SWISSUbase platform and services through partnership with DaSCH. The SWISSUbase platform will be available for humanities researchers across Switzerland to preserve and share data which require DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers) on the dataset level. The DaSCH Service Platform (DSP) will remain the premium solution for projects that require or wish for presentation of the data with direct accessibility and searchability, and persistent identifiers on the file or object level.

With the collaboration of DaSCH, SWISSUbase becomes the joint national platform of the three national nodes of the European research infrastructures for social sciences (CESSDA), linguistics (CLARIN) and humanities (DARIAH). Following the implementation of the humanities metadata profile and a pilot phase in SWISSUbase, it will be announced when SWISSUbase is ready to receive humanities data. 

Researchers interested in participating in the pilot phase are kindly requested to contact DaSCH (info@dasch.swiss).

For more information, contact: 

FORS: Georg Lutz, Director, Georg.Lutz@clutterfors.unil.ch, www.forscenter.ch 

DaSCH: Rita Gautschy, Director, Rita.Gautschy@clutterdasch.swiss, www.dasch.swiss

Call for Papers: SWISS RESEARCH DATA DAY 2024: The Challenges of Economical and Ecological Research Data Archiving

We are delighted to invite submissions for the 4^th edition of the Swiss Research Data Day, themed "The Challenges of Economical and Ecological Research Data Archiving" which will take place on October 9 in Chur, Switzerland. This event aims to bring together researchers, data scientists, and academic professionals to discuss innovative solutions and advancements in sustainable data archiving.

We welcome papers on the following topics:

1. Low-cost data storage solutions
2. Ecological requirements in data management
3. FAIRness and CAREness assessment
4. Artificial Intelligence in data management
5. Swiss and international Open Research data initiatives
6. Policies and strategies for Open Research data management
7. Emergent storage technologies
8. Data Stewardship competence and challenges

Key Dates for Abstract Submissions:

• 9 August 2024: Deadline for submission of abstracts (250 words + titles + 5 keywords),
• 2 September 2024: Notification date regarding the proposal (accepted, revision required, or rejected),
• 9 October 2024: SRDD 2024 Conference, at the University of Applied Sciences of the Grisons, Chur Switzerland.

Please submit your abstracts on https://srdd2024.sciencesconf.org/. The language of the Conference is English.

The Conference is organized by OLOS Association in partnership with the Geneva School of Business Administration (HEG-GE Switzerland) and the University of Applied Sciences of the Grisons (FHGR).

OLOS is the result of several years of fruitful research and collaboration by experts from nine Swiss Higher-educational institutions, united in the DLCM (Data Life-Cycle Management) national project financed by swissuniversities. OLOS provides a Swiss-based solution for sharing and long-term archiving of research data. The OLOS solution complies with FAIR principles, Swiss and European regulations.
 

OPEN POSITIONS

Join the EPFL as “Open Science Officer”.

Job Opportunities at swissuniversities

Have a look at the open positions and internship opportunities in the areas of Higher Education Policy, Teaching, and Research and Development. 

More information can be found here. 

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