Repositories & Open science awards
The year 2020 is flying past, perhaps even more so because of the differences and restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 situation.
Yet, this year has also yielded some remarkable results on the Open Science front. That is, the ESM Item Repository (www.esmitemrepository.com) celebrated its 1st year anniversary! From a simple but captivating hackathon idea to improve transparency of ESM items, to a working repository which was visited more than 5.300 times in its starting year. Moreover, thanks to many helpful and motivated item contributors we already collected more than 750 ESM items, while we hope to reach the 1000 ESM items mark soon. And we hope to be able to present our own blog in the near future!
Additionally, another interesting Open Science initiative was presented by the University of Groningen Library (UB) and the Open Science Community Groningen (OSCG), in the form of the Open Research Award. This award is meant to highlight various ways in which science can be made more transparent or reproducible. Even more interestingly, the organizers have opted to draw the three winners for the prize through a modified lottery; thereby cleverly having us reflect on whether peer-reviewed ranking, commonly used in science, is an efficient way of distributing grants, and scholarship (read their blog here: https://openscience-groningen.nl/blog-open-research-award-celebrating-openness-and-randomness/).
Even more stunningly, the ESM Repository was one of the lucky winners of the draw! As such, we now have to opportunity to present our work during the online “Celebrating Openness” event on 22nd of October (see: https://www.rug.nl/library/open-research-award/). Feel free to join us and to learn more about Open Science during this amazing event!
Best wishes & stay healthy!
Yoram.