Shaping our open future together: the National Open Science Week returns to Leiden University
In the week of 22-26 September, we celebrate the national Open Science Week at Leiden University. What is your next step towards openness?
As part of the national network of Open Science Communities, our own Open Science Community Leiden (OSCL) and several faculty Academia in Motion teams will host a variety of events, and highlight how open, transparent, equitable, and inclusive practices are shaping the future of academia. The message is simple: take a small step that fits your path towards openness. From asking a colleague the question ‘what does Open Science mean to you?’, to participating in events to co-create how Open Science evolves at our university.
Take the Open Science Engagement survey
An important step that you can already take today? Help ensure that the way we move forward is in line with your needs by giving your input to the Open Science Engagement survey! The results will be used to map how Open Science is put into practice in different parts of our university and help OSCL and the Academia in Motion team improve their support of your work. In our joint efforts to set academia in motion, we need everyone at the table–if we want to do things well, we need to do them together.
Join one of our Open Science events
This is also the reason why, in an ‘OSCoffee’ that takes place online via Teams, speakers will unveil their work at Leiden University from three perspectives. First, Ana Parrón Cabañero will talk about how Open Science is defined and researched by her and the ‘OS lab’, a team of researchers looking into how Open Science is evolving at Leiden University. Second, Karlijn Hermans will give us a unique perspective on how the Academia in Motion team uses policy-making to accomplish its goals of setting academia in motion. Lastly, Anna van ’t Veer will speak about how the Open Science Community Leiden aims to empower the research community to be part of the change.
Highlighted events include:
- OSCoffee (Wednesday 24 September, online), an online-open-to-all chat with speakers who unveil how Open Science features in evidence, policy and community at Leiden University.
- Discipline-specific events, namely: an afternoon event at the humanities faculty under the title ‘Let's Open Up!' (Monday 22 September), Research Data Day at the LUMC (Tuesday 23 September), an afternoon event in the Archaeology faculty on alternative publishing (Tuesday 23 September), and a lunch event ‘Think before you Submit' (Thursday 25 September) at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, where we will have an open dialogue about the Leiden University publishing guidelines and the considerations surrounding where and how to publish.
Where to find support
While Open Science promotes greater transparency and inclusivity in research, putting it into practice can be challenging. During Open Science Week, we aim to shed light on the (social) support available to help overcome these challenges. The Open Science Community Leiden (OSCL) facilitates support via dedicated Teams channels so that researchers can ask open science questions, find guidelines, and discover resources available for open access, data sharing, reproducibility and more.
By leveraging our connectedness and raising awareness of where to find support, the Open Science Week 2025 seeks not only to celebrate Open Science, but to push past hurdles—such as time investment, lack of training, or lack of recognition—that can stand between ideals and everyday research practice. With diverse perspectives and broad engagement, we can move towards a community where values like transparency aren’t just the goal, but the working norm.