Open Science

Discover how Open Science is implanted at ECA in a pragmatic, non-dogmatic way with respect for the diversity of research practices.

OPEN SCIENCE AIMS to make scientific research freely available to other scholars and society. It makes the whole research process more transparent.

Nowadays Open Science is debated topic and it has many issues. We insist on the collaborative and collective nature of research process. Every researcher is building upon previous research results to produce new knowledge. It also implies that research results have to be available to different stakeholders and to society as a whole. In this sense, Open Science is a core preoccupation of ECA as a truly international Academy, leveraging the opportunities of digital transformation, fosters interdisciplinarity and wishes to contribute to the public debate. As a Academy of applied sciences, our role is to participate in the knowledge economy and to promote general welfare.

OPEN SCIENCE VISION

ECA embraces Open Science as the new normal.

ECA is committed to play a role in international academic Open Science community;
ECA wishes to safeguard the independence of academic institution. This implies critical assessment with attention to transparency; to create awareness that the quality is first. Contribute to sustainable publishing system and take precautions against the risk of lock-in created by the major digital players and digital publishers.
ECA applies the principle of the European Commission: to be as open as possible, be as close as necessary. We support open sharing of ideas in order to foster innovation and bring researcher’s ideas closer to social work practice. We respect intellectual property rights. The principle about greater efficiency and productivity, more transparency and better response to interdisciplinary research needs – this principle has to be applied with respect for differences between disciplines and their commonly used channels for scholarly communication.

OPEN SCIENCE TASK FORCE

To achieve its strategic Open Science ambition ECA has also commissioned an Open Science Task Force. Its mission is to coordinate the openness efforts and to disseminate Open Science results. The Task Force also intends to be a platform to share ideas, insights and experience.

As such, the Open Science Task Force is a form for dialogue and discussion with researchers and innovation ideas sharing place. We invite to become a member of the Open Science Task Force forum or Byzantine Cabinet for dialogue with discussion with researchers involving students of the Master study programs.

Members:
Assist. prof. Guntis Dišlers (chair), assist. prof. Dace Dolace (co-chair), Dr. George van Durtanossky, pr., dr. Alexander Shabelnik, dr. Efrosinya Sedova, Anete Gricaičuka, Anete Ankmane.

Three working groups are operating under the Open Science Task Force:

Byzantine Cabinet,
Translation of ancient texts,
Roadmap to foster changes in the social work profession.

Responsible Research and Innovation

Research integrity	Citizen science
The principles of truth and honesty are considered as fundamental to a community of scholars. The reliability of research outcomes can be ensured by a collective dialogue with colleagues and peers. Integrity principles such as proper data management, integrity of authorship, correct citing of peers, mentioning acknowledgements, e.o. are fundamental for all researchers. The Academy expects both senior and junior researchers to honour these principles, and in so doing, to protect and maintain the high international recognition of our research and our institution. Therefore, research integrity has become an integral part of the institutional research policy. Our objective is clear: the research at ECA should meet the highest standards and correct scientific behaviour is the norm at ECA.	In the end, Open Science is about sharing scientific knowledge with the broader society. Citizen Science brings opportunities for non-scholars to contribute to research, and is thus a crucial way to contribute to Open Science. After all, openness is not just about making available scientific output. It is also an attitude. For researchers, citizen science holds the promise of exploring new avenues, discovering other kinds of collaboration, creating impact. The Covid-19 crisis shows us how important communication and civil society involvement are to demonstrate the relevance of research.

Research integrity

Citizen science

The principles of truth and honesty are considered as fundamental to a community of scholars. The reliability of research outcomes can be ensured by a collective dialogue with colleagues and peers. Integrity principles such as proper data management, integrity of authorship, correct citing of peers, mentioning acknowledgements, e.o. are fundamental for all researchers.

The Academy expects both senior and junior researchers to honour these principles, and in so doing, to protect and maintain the high international recognition of our research and our institution. Therefore, research integrity has become an integral part of the institutional research policy. Our objective is clear: the research at ECA should meet the highest standards and correct scientific behaviour is the norm at ECA.

In the end, Open Science is about sharing scientific knowledge with the broader society. Citizen Science brings opportunities for non-scholars to contribute to research, and is thus a crucial way to contribute to Open Science. After all, openness is not just about making available scientific output. It is also an attitude.

For researchers, citizen science holds the promise of exploring new avenues, discovering other kinds of collaboration, creating impact. The Covid-19 crisis shows us how important communication and civil society involvement are to demonstrate the relevance of research.

OPEN SCIENCE GLOSSARY

Aggregator - an “aggregator” is a website or computer software that collects the metadata from several data providers and makes them accessible.

Archiving - in the Open Access “archiving” (or “self)archiving” is a collection of scientific and technical information in a digital repository. The archived information is available in Open Access. Also known as: depositing.

Article processing charges (APCs) - “Author pays” is the publishing model whereby the author, the author’s institute, or the research-funding agency, pays a fee (the “APC”) to the publisher to place the publication in immediate and complete Open Access. This is opposed to the user pays model, which is applied in traditional scientific publishing.

Citation - Many, if not all, scientific publications are based on previous work. The publications that have been used to write a paper are generally compiled in a reference list at the end of the publication. References to other publications are called “citations”. A citation is used to measure the impact of an article (the more an article is cited, the higher its impact), and the sum of all citations is used to calculate impact factors. A debate is going on about the impact of Open Access articles and about whether these are cited more than toll access articles.

Copyright - “Copyright” is the set of exclusive rights granted to the author of an original published work, including reproduction rights, distribution rights, adaptation rights. This is similar to authors’ rights. Copyright is often confused with or reduced to “the right to take a copy”, whereas the latter is only one small part of copyright. The copyrights can be licensed, transferred and/or assigned, depending on the agreement between author and publisher.

Data provider - In the context of interoperability of different databases, the “data provider” links to one or several OAI repositories and distributes them to a service provider.

Depositing - a document deposit is the act of publishing a text online in a repository. Also known as: (self)archiving.

Impact factor - The “impact factor” is a measure reflecting the average number of citations to articles published in science and social science journals. It is frequently used to indicate the relative importance of a journal within its field. The Impact factor (IF) was developed by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI).

Open Access publishing - Open Access journals provide immediate Open Access to the articles published in them (often referred to as Gold Open Access). There is a large variety in business models and publishing methods.

Open Educational Resources (OER) - freely accessible, usually openly licensed documents and media that are useful for teaching, learning, educational, assessment and research purposes. Although some people consider the use of an open format to be an essential characteristic of OER, this is not a universally acknowledged requirement.

Overlay journal - electronic journal that is basically a compilation of existing papers, archived in repositories.

Peer review - process of evaluation of an article – before publication - by a reading committee. Members of this committee are experts in the discipline of the described topic. The purpose of the review is to guarantee excellent scientific quality for the final published paper. While double-blind pre-publication peer review is the most common standard for reviewing, recently journals have been experimenting with other forms such as post-publication peer reveiw or non-anonymous peer review.

Platinum Open Access - Platinum open access is a model of scholarly publishing that does not charge author fees. The costs associated with scholarly publication are covered through other means, such as volunteer work, donations, subsidies, grants, etc.

Pre-print - A preprint is a version of the article before peer review. Several preprint versions of one publication may exist. Some publishers allow the preprint version to be put in Open Access.

Repository: a repository is a digital archive that is used to collect and preserve information, such as publications and data. A lot of repositories make use of the OAI-PMH protocol, allowing easy harvesting and interoperability.

An Institutional repository collects the research output of scientific institutions and depositing is only possible for researchers affiliated with the institution
Subject repositories (or: disciplinary repository) collect the research output of one or several scientific fields

Data repositories are specialized in collecting and preserving data. Most are subject-based, although some of them collect data from all research areas. They can be found through sites like databib.org and re3data.org