In this episode Nick speaks to colleagues at the LIBER 2024 Annual Conference which took place in Limassol, Cyprus from 3-5 July 2024.
In three separate conversations we hear from Iain Hrynaszkiewicz, Director, Open Science Solutions at the Public Library of Science (PLOS), Laetitia Bracco, Head of the Research Data Support Service in the Bibliometrics Unit at the Université de Lorraine and Pedro Principe, Head of Scientific Information Management, Repositories and Open Science Division at University of Minho Documentation and Libraries Services.
The panel was moderated by Masud Khokhar, Librarian and Keeper of the Brotherton Collection at the University of Leeds. A full recording is available on YouTube.
Pedro Principe is also working on monitoring Open Science through the PathOS project and ran a conference workshop that gave delegates the opportunity to provide feedback on the Handbook of Open Science Indicators proposed within PathOS project
Welcome to the research culture uncovered podcast, where in every episode we explore what is research culture and what should it be? You'll hear thoughts and opinions from a range of contributors to help you change research culture into what you want it to be.
Nick Sheppard [:
Hello, it's Nick, and for this episode we're heading to Sunny Cyprus, to the LIBER conference in Limerson, which I was fortunate enough to attend at the beginning of July. If you're not familiar with LIBER, it's an acronym for, and excuse my French League Internationale Bibliotheque European de Research, and for the tragically monolingual like me, that's the International League of European Research Libraries. This was my first time at a LIBER conference to take part in a panel proposed by Iain from the open access publisher PLOS, Public Library of Science, whose surname I won't even attempt to pronounce, but who you'll hear introduce himself in a moment. When we got together at the conference the morning before the panel, and immediately afterwards, I sat down with fellow panelist Letitia Bracco, Head of the Research Data Support Service in the Bibliometrics Unit at the Universite de Lorraine in France. So that's also coming up later. The title of the panel was "New Approaches to Measuring Prevalence and Impact of Open Science", and for which I was presenting an institutional perspective from the University of Leeds, albeit in the context of the open research indicators pilot projects on which we're one of 24 uk universities working with the UK Reproducibility Network. See the show notes below for links and more information. In addition to Iain, Letitia and myself, the panel also included Rachel Bruce, Head of Open Research at UKRI, that's UK Research and Innovation, with a funder perspective, while Letitia provided a national perspective from France as well as international context from a project with UNESCO.
Nick Sheppard [:
Iain, of course, was talking from the point of view of a publisher. I didn't manage to speak to Rachel, unfortunately, but if you're listening, perhaps we can get you on another time. As this was a plenary panel. We also recruited Massud Khokhar as moderator, our library director here at Leeds, or to give his official title, University of Leeds librarian and Keeper of the Brotherton Collection. You can see a recording of the panel online, which I've also linked in the show notes below. Finally, the following morning, on the last day of the conference, I managed to catch a few words with Pedro Principe from the University of Minho in Portugal, who is also working on open science indicators through the PaTHOS project. So stick around for that conversation too. Check out the show notes for relevant links for each of this week's guests.
Nick Sheppard [:
For now, though, here's Iain and me.
Nick Sheppard [:
I'm here at the Liber conference with my colleague, Iain. I'll let you say your surname, Iain, if that's okay.
Iain Hrynaszkiewicz [:
Yeah, that's fine, Iain Hrynaszkiewicz.
Nick Sheppard [:
So I'll call you just Iain. So you and I, we met in person quite recently. We're doing a panel this afternoon, aren't we, at the conference? And introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your background and your work in open research.
Iain Hrynaszkiewicz [:
Sure. So, I currently work for PLOS, Public Library of Science as Director, Open Research Solutions, and in sum, I'm responsible for a program of activity to measurably increase the adoption of open science practices beyond the research papers that we publish. So I and my team spend a lot of time working with others within PLOS, and also outside of PLOS, trying to understand and promote the adoption of things like sharing research data, sharing code and software, posting of pre prints and the pre registration of research. And increasingly, we're also trying to think much more about not just how common are these practices and where are they uncommon, but also what effect are they having, what's actually the impact of them.
Nick Sheppard [:
Yeah, and we've been working with you a little bit on the UKRN, that's the UK Reproducibility Network pilot projects, haven't we, in terms of identifying indicators, some of those that you just mentioned, like pre registration and data access statements and this kind of thing. And then you proposed a panel for the LIBER conference, where we are as we speak in Cyprus. It's very hot, we're in an air conditioned space at the moment. But I think you said, you were a little surprised to get a plenary position on this panel, which is good, but we've got that this afternoon, haven't we?
Iain Hrynaszkiewicz [:
Yeah. Very pleasantly surprised to put in a panel proposal and then be invited to actually have the plenary session, the large amphitheatre room, to host the panel. In a way, I imagine it may be a reflection of the growing importance or recognition of the need to monitor and understand both the prevalence and the impact of open science practices. So, yeah, I'm really pleased that there seems to be good interest from the program committee and hopefully from the audience later we'll find out as well in this topic.
Nick Sheppard [:
Yeah, perhaps I can offer some reflections on that later, after we've done the panel. Is it about 03:30 this afternoon? We're talking now, yeah, about 3340, just before lunchtime. And so the other colleagues on there, we've got Rachel Bruce from UK, I'm giving a funder perspective and we've got Letitia Braco from Universit Deloraine in France. And she's talking about the Open Science monitoring initiative, I think.
Iain Hrynaszkiewicz [:
Yes, both the national initiative in France and also an emerging global initiative that's a collaboration with UNESCO that she's working on that is aiming to establish global principles for the monitoring of open science. Of course, we've also got you as well, giving institution perspective. So.
Nick Sheppard [:
Well, and the UKRN, so I'll be talking in the context of UKRN, but yeah.
Iain Hrynaszkiewicz [:
Yeah, yeah, I think it was important to have characterized it as an arc of, from the institutional to the, to the funder, publishers, of course, but also, you know, national and then a global perspective as well. And now we will briefly touch on, you know, the mode du jour of AI, artificial intelligence. But it's more in the context that it so happens that for the monitoring of open science, in some cases where scalable solutions have been found, artificial intelligence or natural language processing can be part of the solution to that problem in, in some cases. But, you know, as we'll talk about, there's so much more to do, so much that could be monitored, but also we really need to think about what is important and appropriate to monitor, because it really depends on the, on the context and a lot of the work that we've been doing. And I say we being publishers, but also in the UKRN, where for logical reasons, probably quite focused on monitoring outputs and the effects of those outputs. But of course we also want to be thinking like, well, what's, what's the outcome of all this? Is, are we making research better? Are we improving research culture, which are the big questions and often quite difficult ones to answer.
Nick Sheppard [:
And that's been a theme, hasn't it, at the conference? I've been to quite a few talks, talking about the fact that we can't, we haven't necessarily even sort of identified what the best indicators of open research are yet, and AI has obviously been the other big theme. Have you got any sort of takeaways from the conference that off the top of your head, sort of highlights for you or.
Iain Hrynaszkiewicz [:
Yeah, well, I think, and this is a bit of a continuation of what I thought last year, having been to my first LIBER. And it was, I suppose, for someone in a role like mine, it was a pleasant surprise. I hadn't really appreciated how it's almost an open science conference or open research. It's, you know, it's a really big theme and, you know, reflecting the importance for, for the library community as well, I assume.
Nick Sheppard [:
LIBER conference. I think you've been to a few before.
Iain Hrynaszkiewicz [:
No, this is just my second one.
Nick Sheppard [:
One up on me, 100% more than me. But no, that's. Thanks. Thanks, Iain. So thanks for your time and let you get some lunch before we get ready for our panel later on.
Iain Hrynaszkiewicz [:
Cool. Thanks, Nick.
Nick Sheppard [:
Bye bye.
Nick Sheppard [:
So, that takes me back to a very hot day in Cyprus, and if you want to emulate the timeline, then you could pause now and watch the panel recording linked below. Immediately after which, I sat down with Letitia. So here's that conversation where, to be honest, I think you can hear that we're both still a bit frazzled, as evidenced by me saying podcast when I actually meant panel. Anyway, back to Limassol.
Nick Sheppard [:
So I'm here with my colleague Laetitia from our panel. So, hello, Laetitia.
Laetitia Bracco [:
Hello, Nick.
Nick Sheppard [:
We've only recently met, haven't we being on this panel with Iain? I'm not even going to try and say his surname. He did say surname for me this morning, but. So Iain arranged this podcast, which we just delivered this within the last hour. How did you find it?
Laetitia Bracco [:
Oh, amazing. Just. It's pretty recent. Yeah, it's very exciting.
Nick Sheppard [:
So we've just sat down after we've come out of the panel and we were both a bit nervous, I think, but it went all right?
Laetitia Bracco [:
Yeah, I think it was great. Very lively. We had an amazing audience with really interesting questions and, yeah, I think it went well.
Nick Sheppard [:
Yeah. We'll come back to perhaps some of the things we were talking about, but just perhaps, sorry to ask you to just introduce yourself first and where you are and what's your sort of job, role, etcetera.
Laetitia Bracco [:
Yes. My name is Laetiiia Bracco. I work in France, in the university libraries of Universite De Lorraine. It's in the northeast of France, and I'm the head of the research data support management and bibliometrics services. But I was here mainly because I'm co coordinating the open science monitoring initiative, which is quite new.
Nick Sheppard [:
So, yeah, I've learned a little bit from you, this conference about the open science monitoring initiative, which is. That's different. Is it from the French Open monitor? That could perhaps just give us a...just summarize what the two are and the relationship between them.
Laetitia Bracco [:
Yeah. So, the French Open science Monitor is a national dashboard with open science indicators regarding publications, research data software. The open Sense monitoring initiative, it's coming from France, but we want it to be international. And our first action is to draft principles of open science monitoring that could be applied internationally. And that's why we asked for the help of UNESCO to broadcast this draft, to gather as many inputs from all around the world possible to have, you know, some guidelines about open science monitoring. How should we do it? Why? On what context, etcetera.
Nick Sheppard [:
That consultation is still open. You just talked about that in the panel now, I think. And so on the podcast, when I publish this, I'll put some show notes and we put links in and that type of thing. Could I put a link to it on the podcast?
Laetitia Bracco [:
Absolutely, yeah, it's open until the 30 November, so you still have plenty of time.
Nick Sheppard [:
Okay. I'm gonna have to speak to my colleagues then, to get this podcast out well before that, so we can advertise that. So you and I...it's been a bit of a theme at this conference, hasn't it, open science monitoring. So the other projects that I've been...went to the workshop yesterday, is it? Only I've lost track of the days. What day is it?
Laetitia Bracco [:
It was yesterday, the 4th of July
Nick Sheppard [:
It's been busy, hasn't it?
Laetitia Bracco [:
No, it's the 3 July.
Nick Sheppard [:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. you're as bad as me. So then that was the PathOS project. Have you done much work with them?
Laetitia Bracco [:
We are currently trying to, you know, gather forces and join forces and to contribute to the PathOS project, and we hope that they will also contribute to the principles because they are very, very complementary initiatives. They are drafting all possible indicators about open science and we are trying to have guidelines for which indicators should we keep. So, yeah, definitely OSMI and PathOS will definately work together.
Nick Sheppard [:
...and they got some really good results that I need to explore more again. I'll put them in the link to this and I'm hoping actually to have a chat with Pedro, who was one of the colleagues. I don't know his surname. In any case, hopefully I'll get a chat with him as well. So you and I were both invited by Ian onto this panel to talk about our respective work with open science monitors, open research, as we say in the UK, because I've been working with UKRM pilots on similar work and we just thought we'd have a quick sit down now before, have a drink before, after the panel, but we can relax now, I think.
Laetitia Bracco [:
Yes, I think we are ready and we deserve some drink.
Nick Sheppard [:
So before we do that, just to finally ask you, any particular highlights for you from this conference, or anything particularly notable, or you've been to this conference before? I think this is my first time?
Laetitia Bracco [:
Yeah, it's my third, but the first one was online, so really, it's not the same. Yeah, it's not the same. I guess that open science is really the star of the conference everyone is talking about, and I'm really interested in the different key elements that we are using in different countries. And I've noticed that in the UK you are saying open research, whereas we say open science.
Nick Sheppard [:
Yeah. So again, Britain's different, you know, everybody else in Europe says open science, we say open research, but that's really to be, I think, more inclusive of the humanities, which is linguistically perhaps a bit of an issue, but, yeah, no, it's been great. So, yeah, well, it's been really good working with you. We'll have to stay in touch, and me too. Maybe even do another panel at some point. Not for a while, though, but, yeah. Thanks, Laetitia.
Laetitia Bracco [:
Thank you very much, Nick.
Nick Sheppard [:
Thank you. Bye bye.
Nick Sheppard [:
So, a bit frazzled, as I say. For the record, that was Thursday afternoon, though I was still confused the following morning, as you'll hear now in my conversation with Pedro, who her, Laetitia and I mention in the context of the PathOS project and whose workshop we'd both attended on er Wednesday, I think, and which we can hear more about now, or rather thenn on Friday morning. Here's Pedro.
Nick Sheppard [:
So I'm here on the last day of the LIBER conference. It's been... I'm quite tired. I don't know about you. So I'm here with. I'm here with Pedro. Do you want to introduce yourself, Pedro, and tell us who you are?
Pedro Principe [:
Yes, thank you very much for the invitation. I'm Pedro Principe, I came from Portugal. I'm from the University of Minho in the north of Portugal. So we are members of LIBER and active in open science related projects and infrastructure and digital repositories.
Nick Sheppard [:
And we have shared interest, I think, don't we, in open science indicators. So the first workshop I came to on Tuesday, was it?
Pedro Principe [:
Yes, yes. Wednesday morning.
Nick Sheppard [:
Losing track of the days. Wednesday morning was your workshop. Do you want to tell us a little bit about the work that you're doing with that?
Pedro Principe [:
Yes, thank you very much. So it was about the open science indicators and the results and the work that a specific European project is doing, so PathOS, "Path Open Science", so is, apart from other things, is developing an hand book of open science indicators and proposing suggest to the community. The idea is not that this book is not a kind of Bible, is just a recommendation of a set of indicators and measurement metrics and data sources that can be taken by national initiatives, institutions and funders as an hand book, as a resource of information. The idea of the workshop was to present the work and to get feedback and really then to discuss a bit what are the gaps and the needs in this area currently. We were lucky because in the workshop we have a very good, the number of participants, the participants that we wanted to have, and in fact, the participants that are several of them involved in national or institutional initiatives, discussing and thinking about these issues, which was really great.
Nick Sheppard [:
Yeah, and it's. So the handbook, is it called the...
Pedro Principe [:
Open Science Indicators Handbook?
Nick Sheppard [:
Yeah. So I was aware of it, but it's a really good resource because I was at the workshop. I'm going to look into that in a lot more detail. And then you also moderated a session, didn't you, on.
Pedro Principe [:
Yes, open metrics and indicators.
Nick Sheppard [:
And then of course I did a panel with one of the colleagues who was presenting. So Laetitia Bracco was presenting in that panel as well.
Pedro Principe [:
It was interesting because that topic. So I'm also part of the program committee of this conference, so I was aware that this topic was something that we wanted to have. And in fact, there was proposals and proposals with quality that came to the, to be presented in the program, which was really, really great. The panel that I moderated, I was expecting good quality, but I was surprised with the level of quality. It was really high because we have two specific cases from France and then a discussion from two colleagues that they are from two different universities, from the Netherlands, from Spain, but they wanted to discuss and they wanted to present to the conference, which was really great. And your panel also yesterday, on Thursday afternoon, was really nice. I think at the end, with this workshop and these two sessions, maybe other things, I think we can see that there are important developments.
Pedro Principe [:
And even if we don't have, even if in all the discussions around open science, we always say that we need to monitor, we need to implement indicators, but we don't have, we don't have them. So now I think the sessions that we had around this topic, I think expose that we are in the direction and if we continue to share this knowledge, different levels, because we have different levels here at institutional, national, different infrastructures. So the funders also come. So I think we are, we did a good contribution.
Nick Sheppard [:
Yeah. It's been a really big theme of the conference, hasn't it? Any other reflections on the conference? Any other points of interest?
Pedro Principe [:
Yes. I really like this conference. I always liked it in the past, but when I did the emerging leaders course, I was more involved. I must say that this conference is like that moment that we stop a bit in the busy year that we have and we can reflect and see other colleagues and then you see the work that they are doing is a very good monitor usually. I also like to see and to talk with my colleagues from the emerging leaders cohort that we did. We started when LIBER was in Dublin and there are always very important things here. I think there was also important presentations around RDM
Nick Sheppard [:
Yeah, well we're sat arent we.... I came to this one, we both did, this session on research data management
Pedro Principe [:
Several use cases to be presented in different countries, which was really good. And one thing that is good that LIBER also presented, maybe my last comment is that we don't have only the on topics open science is a everywhere. So now with AI. So this is also the on topic. But it's good because libraries need to still doing the other traditional things and need to manage collections, need to improve collections, to open the collections too. And then I think it's good because in LIBER we have the other topics, the old, the future. So based on some values that are also part of the strategy of LIBER like inclusivity, diversity. And I think it's good.
Pedro Principe [:
It's good because we don't sometimes the conferences just go for the on topics and forget the other things. I think this is
Nick Sheppard [:
no, no, yeah.
Pedro Principe [:
...have a very good balance.
Nick Sheppard [:
Yeah. It's my first LIBER conference. I've not been before, but hopefully come to it again. So it's been great to meet you and hopefully we can stay in touch and keep working on...
Pedro Principe [:
Thank you. Thank you for the invitation and I will follow your podcast.
Nick Sheppard [:
Thanks Pedro. Take care. Bye bye.
Intro / outro [:
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