Open Science at the MDC: The ORION Project

The MDC was a partner in the H2020 EU Open Responsible Research and Innovation to further Outstanding KNowledge (ORION) project. The aim of the ORION project was to explore and promote Open Science practices, improving the quality of research.

At the MDC WP 4 was in charge of training activities, delivering over 40 live workshops in 16 countries, developing online courses in Open Science and a train-the-trainer, reaching over 500 participants as well producing a podcast on all things Open Science. The project comes to a close after four and a half years of funding, leaving behind a legacy of training materials and resources that can be found in the list of outputs below. All the materials are CC BY licensed to be shared and reused and in addition can be found on Zenodo.

Accompanying research projects were also undertaken to analyze  1) the extent of Open Science being a topic on the graduate curricula of non-university life sciences research institutes in Europe, and 2) how to integrate Open Science into the professional development programs for scientists (publication pending)

As a partner of ORION, MDC also engaged in other activities such as hosting an Art Residency producing the Art Science Project Aeon conducting a citizen science project on sitting behaviour of school kids SMOVE. As well as engaging with citizens through a public dialogue on genome editing.

If you want to know more about what we did during the project, check out the ORION website and/or  watch this video from the final conference.

Legacy of Resources

• The ORION Open Science Podcast / also on Zenodo 
• ORION MOOC for Open Science in the Life Sciences 2.0
• ORION Open Science Train-the-Trainer MOOC
• ORION Open Science Training Resources on Zenodo 
• Deliverables 
  • D4.1 Optimised offline and online trainings
  • ​​D4.2 Open Educational Resources on Responsible Research and Innovation
  • D4.3 Train-the-Trainer workshops
  • D4.4 Final report on the training work package

• ORION YouTube MOOC Channel 
• Inspiring stories:
  https://www.orion-openscience.eu/publications/inspiring-stories

These are the team members that contributed to ORION over the course of the project at the MDC

If you are interested in having an Open Science training or would like to contact us, write us an E-Mail: luiza.bengtsson@mdc-berlin.de.

Open Science at the MDC continues

Although the ORION project has come to an end, the MDC is committed to continuing to implement Open Science. Here are the MDC’s Institutional Action Plans.

Publishing in Open Access

The MDC aims to publish the full text (publishers version or accepted manuscripts) of all MDC and ECRC publications in the repository. Additionally, in order to support the goal of the Helmholtz Open Access policy (60% of all publications should be published as open-access publications by the end of 2020 and 100% from 2025 on) the library has created a central publication fund, which pays the charges for all articles in open access journals (see: conditions).

Open and Fair Data 

MDC is committed to a goal of making data created as part of the research process compliant with the FAIR principles. Data should be: Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable. lmplementation of this policy also aims to ensure conformity with pertinent legal obligations, ethical responsibilities and the rules of funding bodies, such as EU Open Science Policy aand Guidelines of the German Research Foundation for handling research data.

Public Engagement 

The MDC is committed to opening up the research process and supporting transfer into society. Scientists actively take part in yearly recurring science festivals such as Berlin Science Week and the Long Night of Sciences. We also run an innovative teacher training program, Labor trifft Lehrer, occurring once a month to bring insight into current research projects at the MDC. For further information on public engagement and knowledge transfer, contact MCD’s  public engagement officer (luiza.bengtsson@mdc-berlin.de)