New batch of Open Science projects kick off
Eight research projects will be granted funding in the fourth round of the Utrecht ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ Open Science Fund. The fund is aimed at making open science a reality at Utrecht and beyond and grantees can use the funding to initiate, expand or share their open science practices.
We received twelve grant applications ranging between €10.000 en €15.000 euro in total. An independent panel of open science experts then determined whether the (anonymized) applications met the predetermined criteria. The total number of qualified applications exceeded the maximum of the fund, triggering a random lottery in which eight projects were allotted funding.
Read more about the projects below:
In 2016, Utrecht ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ developed a participatory research and teaching method called DEDA: . It is method for managing ethical aspects of digital technology. DEDA facilitates value-sensitive design for technology projects. Many researchers and practitioners from other European countries have adopted the DEDA method, leading to a variety of in different languages . This calls for a European DEDA Conference, in which best practices are exchanged and more academics and professionals are welcome to learn about the DEDA method. The main goal of the DEDA Europe conference is to facilitate mutual knowledge transfer between researchers/teachers from all over Europe and professionals in the field of digital technology and ethics. Another pressing objective is to make the field notes from the different DEDA workshops held in the different European countries accessible and share insights. This would allow for an unprecedented comparative analysis of the data practices and data ethical awareness in different European government organizations.
Dr. Ruud Hortensius, Dr. Geert-Jan Will, Dr. Félice van Nunspeet, Dr. Jim Maarseveen
The human brain is best understood when scientist can study it in natural situations outside of the laboratory. This can be achieved with functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), which is a novel mobile neuroimaging technique that allows for studying brain activity when people move freely and have unconstrained interactions with others. In this project, we will develop an open resource for the use of fNIRS in research and teaching at Utrecht ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ. This resource will feature explanations and hands-on tools to guide the user through every step of fNIRS. With this resource, anyone can use fNIRS!
IPD meta-analysis & FAIR dataset creation of patient characteristics & clinically adjudicated adverse drug events
Adverse drug events (ADEs) are a leading cause of preventable harm in patient care, however, the incidence of ADEs has not decreased in the last decade because the nature of ADEs is not well understood. To address this challenge, we will develop a protocol for and pilot the conduct of an individual patient data (IPD) meta-analysis. The IPD meta-analysis will include collecting data from studies with clinically adjudicated adverse events. Using this data, we will create a FAIR dataset which will enable researchers around the world to access and reuse this data to conduct research aimed at reducing the occurrence of ADEs.
Dr. Michiel van Meeteren & Dr. Mette Bruinsma
This project will create a platform for sustainably collecting, archiving, digitizing and hosting of geographical publications. The platform will initially be filled by a re-collected archive of Utrecht ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ geographical (paper) theses from the post-1945 period. By the project’s conclusion, these theses are searchable through a Geographic Information System (GIS) interface, and accessible through the web portals of the Knoninklijk Nederlands Aardrijkskundig Genootschap (KNAG), making these knowledge productions findable, usable and accessible to academics, secondary school pupils, students and citizens. By re-building the lost human geography dissertation archive, the project will showcase the value of ‘small’ student projects to build a historical archive of (local) geographical knowledge.
Dr. Teuni Ten Brink, Dr. Christoph Strauch, (RU Nijmegen), Dr. Nicolas Masson (UC Leuven, Belgium), Prof. Michael Andres (UC Leuven, Belgium)
Visuospatial neglect is a frequent, disabling disorder after stroke. The core deficit is an ipsilesional attention bias. Objective assessment is crucial for diagnosis to allow timely therapy and to track its progress, but not existent. We developed a pupillometry-based method which closes this gap.1,2 International interest to this method has been expressed by a commercial company, clinicians, and researchers. With the Open Science Fund we will build a platform to distribute this toolbox, allow its further improvement by faster data collection and analyses (leading to insights into neglect), and ensure free availability of this diagnostic procedure.
Dr. Christoph Strauch, Prof. dr. Stefan van der Stigchel
How do we look for our lost wallet? Gaze data allows to study visual search, but expensive data collection leads to biased data: university students are assessed predominantly. We correct this with a public research installation: We improve equipment and data processing pipelines at the NEMO museum to collect the world’s biggest openly available dataset on visual search. Via talks at the museum and open citizen science activities, we will report our results to the public. Our FAIR processing pipelines enable similar installations and data collections, ultimately allowing to overcome the limitation of small and homogenous samples.
Dr. Lena Thöle, Prof. Peter Bijl
Paleo-environmental reconstructions from the Southern Ocean deliver crucial information on past climate, ocean and ice sheet dynamics, essential to better anticipate today’s climate change and sea level rise. Yet, individual datasets are difficult to compare, and the absence of a common framework limits studies’ impact. To catalyse the interoperability and reuse of data, this project aims to convert existing published data from the Southern Ocean into a linked open data framework, promoting the addition of new data. This data compilation will expedite the integration of new data and allowing for more reproducible and comprehensive analyses.
Dr. Marijn Struiksma, Dr. Iris Mulders, Dorien Huijser, Neha Moopen
In this project, we will create open educational materials for students, lecturers and researchers who want to conduct online experiments using the open source . All the practical steps between formulating the research question and obtaining the results will be documented in an open(-source) textbook. We will use open-source software R, GitHub for version control, and an open source licence. The modular setup on GitHub will allow people to reuse and tailor it to suit their own needs. We will arrange archiving and DOI assignment via Zenodo and the open(-source) textbook will be shared via Edusources.