FOSTER Open Science Toolkit

The EU-funded project FOSTER Plus developed a set of ten free online courses covering key topics of Open Science. Each course takes about one hour to complete and a badge is awarded after successful completion. You will need to create a free account on the FOSTER portal if you wish to claim your badge but the courses can also be accessed without registration if no badge is desired. The order you take the courses in is not important, the system tracks your progress regardless and you can claim the badge as soon you completed each of the suggested courses. However, we recommend starting with "What is Open Science?" as an introduction. The draft courses were released for public consultation during the summer and have been refined based on community feedback. The courses include: What is Open Science?; Best Practice in Open Research; Managing and Sharing Research Data; Open Source Software and Workflows; Data Protection and Ethics; Open Licensing ; Open Access Publishing; Sharing Preprints; Open Peer Review; Open Science and Innovation. If you wish to become more knowledgeable in specific areas, FOSTER suggests five learning pathways through the courses to gains specific competencies. Each learning path is comprised of 4-5 individual courses and should take around 4-5 hours to complete but don’t worry - you can work through the pathways at your own pace rather than doing them all at once! The pathways include: The open peer reviewer (understand the move towards Open Peer Review and equip you to be able to participate - both as an author and as a reviewer); The responsible data sharer (knowledge you need to make informed decisions about sharing your data responsibly); The reproducible research practitioner (how to make sure that your published findings can stand up to scrutiny and serve as a solid foundation for others to build upon); The open innovation accelerator (skills you need to spot opportunities and to build open innovation aspects into your research); The open access author (how to ensure that your publications, underlying data and software are accessible and can be used to support your findings). The learning pathways are accessible via the main page of the FOSTER portal. If you are logged in, you can click on them to see your progress.