The Open Science Fair 2017, an initiative of four EU funded projects (OpenAIRE, OpenUP, OpenMinTed and FOSTER), brought together in Athens more than 300 experts from Europe and around the globe to discuss the latest developments, challenges and future prospects in open access/ open science. The National Documentation Centre (EKT), a HIRMEOS partner, participated at the Open Science Fair 2017 with a poster presentation of the project.
The conference provided a good mix of plenary sessions, workshops and poster sessions focusing on a variety of Open Science aspects such as open access models and platforms, innovative dissemination practices, open peer review, text and data mining, the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) pilot, FAIR data. Key note speakers included renowned scholars like Prof. Nektarios Tavernarakis (from FORTH-Hellas and recipient of multiple ERC grants), Prof. Jeffrey Sachs (from the Earth Institute of Columbia University and an influential world leader) and Prof. John PA Ioannidis (from Stanford University and one of the most influential researchers worldwide) who all highlighted the importance of open science in attaining goals of global significance like the UN Sustainable Development Goals and tackling the reproducibility crisis in research.
The workshops gave participants the opportunity to acquire a more in-depth perspective of diverse aspects of open science such as policies, the importance of training and skills, the establishment of rewards for those practicing open science and the introduction of incentives, the availability of tools and services and the development of appropriate infrastructures. Open science experts gave insightful presentations and provided examples of resources available to stakeholders (OpenAIRE toolkits for researchers, PASTEUR4OA policy templates, FOSTER services) followed by stimulating discussions with workshop participants. The variety of topics and approaches chosen attracted researchers, librarians, IT experts as well as representatives from research funding and research performing organisations. Throughout the three-day event it was made evident that collaboration among stakeholders is a key element in achieving the transition to open science.
The Open Science Fair 2017 video is available on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/233290266
Marina Angelaki, National Documentation Centre/NHRF (Athen)