News

Ireland’s first ever Open Science Week took place in NUI Galway in April 2019. A campus-wide initiative, this event brought together researchers, academics, educators, policymakers and members of the public to highlight and showcase what open science is and how it can be achieved, and to work together towards creating knowledge that is open and accessible to everyone.

Open Science is a global movement towards research and educational practices that are collaborative and transparent, relevant across all disciplines including the sciences and the humanities. The aim of open science is to make research and educational resources and outputs publicly available as early as possible, as well as actively encouraging co-creation of knowledge and participation in the research process by the general public.

Launched on Monday by the VP for Research Prof Lokesh Joshi, approximately 400 people took part in seven different events across five days targeting different aspects of Open Science. These included a Wikipedia Editathon on Women In Science (organised by Dr Sharon Flynn, CELT and Dr Jessamyn Fairfield, Physics), a screening of the movie Paywall (hosted by Peter Corrigan and the Hardiman Library), a two-day workshop on open science in health research (organised by Dr Elaine Toomey, Health Behaviour Change Research Group) and the 10th Annual Open Educational Resources Conference 2019 (organised by Dr Catherine Cronin, National Teaching and Learning Forum). The event had a social media reach of 55,878 on Twitter with 1,371 likes and 1,858 interactions and was covered in the national online media and local radio. Building on the success of its inaugural year, it’s intended that the event will be even bigger and better next year!