Digital Skills Working Group

Identifying Open Science Skills for Library Staff & Researchers

Posted: 10-03-2020 Topics: Strategy

The array of knowledge, skills and competencies needed to practice Open Science (OS) effectively can be daunting for many librarians and researchers, particularly those who are new to OS concepts and practices.  Identifying which skills are needed is the first step for anyone wishing to upskill themselves or others in OS. 

In 2019, our Digital Skills for Library Staff and Researchers Working Group embarked on a project to define the skills needed for OS, and to align them with LIBER’s 2018-2022 Strategy. After several months of work we now have this Open Science Skills visualisation, which identifies the skills and knowledge needed to practice OS effectively.

The visualisation is licensed CC BY for reuse, and can be downloaded from Zenodo.

How the Visualisation Was Developed

We cast a wide net initially: developing a long list of skills by reviewing the literature, going through competency frameworks and exploring available learning resources which focused on OS.

While OS skills undoubtedly include behavioural competencies such as communication, negotiation, teaching, etc., for reasons of practicality and scope, the final skills list was limited to the discipline-specific digital skills and knowledge needed to practice open science.

The long list of skills were then mapped to key frameworks including Digcomp 2.0, the FOSTER+ learning resources and the LIBER Open Science Roadmap focus areas, to provide structure and context by categorising the skills. LIBER Working Groups were then invited to give feedback on the list and draft visualisation by suggesting additional skills or amending existing ones based on the perspective of their groups.

The final visualisation was then produced, and included in a poster which the Working Group will present at the Open Science Conference, Berlin, 11-12 March 2020.  We hope it provides library staff and researchers with a quick visual guide they can use to identify what digital skills they might need to practice open science effectively.

Open Science Conference Poster

At the 2020 Open Science Conference in Berlin, the Open Science Skills visualisation and the Open Science Training Case Studies assembled by the Digital Skills Working Group, are presented on a poster. A PDF of the poster can be downloaded from Zenodo.

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