The 4th National Open Science Forum was held online on April 28th, 2022. As before, the event was organized by two institutions, the University of Debrecen University and National Library (UDUNL) and Governmental Agency for IT Development (KIFÜ). These two organizations are putting their efforts together since last year, to deepen Open Science practices, the benefits of FAIR research data management and the importance of collaborative science in the Hungarian research community.
Last Thursday participants were able to discuss the current situation of Open Science in Hungary, from two important aspects. The 4th Hungarian Open Science Forum was unique because two active researchers shared their views on open research practices they apply in their everyday work. The entire event was coordinated by Judit Fazekas Paragh, leader of WP7 and head of Education and Research Support of UDUNL.
One of them, Dr. Judit Gárdos presented open research methods in social sciences, and she highlighted the hidden differences between transparency and openness in scientific workflows. She also talked about how we can join the world of open social sciences and mentioned the most important infrastructural networks in the discipline.
In the second speech, János Mohácsi (KIFÜ) spoke about the previous Hungarian Open Science Forums, and encouraged stakeholders to support the Position Paper on Open Science with their signature. In his presentation he dedicated a key section for the current activities of EOSC as well.
Prof. Dr. Péter Bay (biologist, professor at University of Debrecen) represented the researchers in life sciences as he introduced the most used open research practices in the field. In his presentation he included that in life sciences, publishing research data has been a central question in the past 10 years, while also paying attention to their reusability and verifiability. This field is incredibly data-intensive, therefore, it is a great challenge to use the correct method for processing and publishing different types of research data.
The organizers
Since the early 2000s UDUNL plays a key role in the discourse of Open Science in the country. In the past few years the organization not only provides support in open access publishing, but their supporting activity expanded to the field of research infrastructures. UDUNL is an important actor in dissemination of research data management practices that are compliant with the expectations of scientific communication of the 21st century.
Within the NI4OS-Europe project, they work together with KIFU to raise awareness in using open research infrastructures in Hungary, carefully taking the researcher view into acccount.