An End-to-end Open Science and Data Collaborations Program

The future of scholarly communication requires researchers to share data and other research products, in accordance with open science principles. Open science not only helps satisfy funder and publisher mandates and accelerate the dissemination of research, but importantly, facilitates collaboration and makes research more reproducible and reusable. Many academic institutions have established institutional repositories and open-access programs to support open data and publishing. However, these initiatives often emphasize the end product of research. At Carnegie Mellon University, we implemented the Open Science & Data Collaborations (OSDC) program, within University Libraries, that helps embed open science practices into the entire research lifecycle by providing tools, training, opportunities for collaboration, community-building events, and advocacy. The OSDC program has supported numerous researchers and their projects and has created strong partnerships with academic departments and university leadership. Recently, we have turned our attention to developing metrics to evaluate the impact of the program and open science more broadly on research activity. We first collected data that includes event and workshop registrations, platform usage, and feedback from a user advisory group. Analysis of this dataset, along with a logic model that depicts the program activity and outcomes, will help to develop more in-depth evaluation metrics and a toolkit, launch targeted surveys, and identify priority service areas and interesting open science projects. Our program implementation and assessment can serve as a model for others to implement open science initiatives on their campuses. We also welcome partnership with other universities to form an alliance of open science programs that supports open science as it continues to evolve