Open Science Quest

Learning through the structure of a workshop is essential, but sometimes our brains also need distraction and entertainment. During the week of the Luxembourg Open Science Forum, library users were challenged to take part in the Open Science Quest to learn about Open Science practices at their own pace. The freely available Open Science Voyager Pack consisted of a travel sheet and a pencil (that can be planted to grow into herbs). Successful Voyagers were rewarded with a treasure at the end (a powerbank).

The activity was spread across the newly opened Luxembourg Learning Centre and consisted of 6 information points with two challenges/questions to find in each (and an optional task to do). The Quest focused on the reality and costs of scholarly publishing, the importance of persistent identifiers, best practices in finding and sharing data, the misconceptions around Open Access and the ‘Publish or Perish’ reality, understanding and using open licences and the joys of open source software.

Example of challenges involved finding out about the document released on 4 Septembre 2018 that was a bombshell for the academic publishing landscape, using SherpaRomeo to uncover the embargo period of a specific journal, identify the only closed proprietary file format among a list, browse Zenodo to discover a hidden password and (my personal favourite) following the trail of an author that does not have an ORCID…

The Open Science Quest was really well received and we can only encourage other institutions to hold such an informal activity!

All the materials for the Open Science Quest can be found on: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2646121

Good luck to you all on your own Quests fellow Open Science Voyagers…