AGAPE: An introductory course to open science for early career researchers
Introduction
Greetings, fellow early career researchers and open science-curious friends!
In this course, we will introduce you to the world of open science. Perhaps you are familiar with some of the concepts and ideas of open science or maybe the open science movement is completely new to you. Whatever your current understanding is, we believe that what you learn here will be interesting, thought-provoking and useful in your future research career.
We are a group of budding researchers and PhD students who first met during a course focusing on open and collaborative research designed under the project Opening Doors funded by the Horizon 2020 EU programme for research and innovation. We felt that what we learned was both fascinating and helpful and believe that other students should have an opportunity to get familiar with these concepts too. Hence, we decided to create Agape. Agape means wide open, as is the open science philosophy and practice we want to promote. The word agapē originates from Greek and means love that is unconditional, such as our love for science (Okay, maybe not entirely unconditional, but you get the drift!). Under Agape we aim to share open science with fellow students and researchers, starting with this course and continuing with a series of workshops where we can learn, exchange our opinions and experiences, and together contribute to a better, more open future.
With this course, Agape would like to open doors for you into the world of open science and introduce various concepts that we think are crucial to high quality research and prior to the opening doors project we were entirely unaware of. Sure, we all heard about scientific integrity and open access publishing at some point in our studies, but the domain of open science encompasses a much larger set of ideas and concepts. Given the sheer extent of open science, this course does not, and could not cover the whole scope of open science. However, we will provide you with a scaffolding to understand the core concepts and signpost you to useful links and resources should you wish to delve deeper and start practising open science in your own work.
And now, without any further delay, let’s quench that thirst for knowledge!
Course structure and certificate of completion
The course is structured into chapters that are written to expand on various topics. We think that the order they follow is logical and the latter chapters build on knowledge acquired in previous chapters. That said, you can decide to go through them in whatever order you like by clicking on different chapters in the menu on the left or to return to some of them should you find something is not clear or you require a brief refresher.
At the end of each chapter you will find activities to enhance your understanding of the concepts introduced in a particular chapter and to improve your practical knowledge. All chapters except one contain a short quiz consisting of five questions where you can test your freshly acquired knowledge. You will see your score immediately and you can save your high scores if you wish. These scores will be saved in cookies in your browser and you can delete them by deleting cookies. The quizzes have no time limit and you have as many attempts to practice as you want.
Once you read all chapters and practise each short quiz you can attempt the final quiz. If you score 90% or higher a certificate of completion will be generated for you and you can download it directly. You have unlimited attempts to successfully complete the final quiz but only three minutes for each attempt.
We know we are by no means perfect. We would love you to share your opinions, concerns, or feedback about a specific chapter or the course as a whole. There are two ways to do this. You can either fill in the survey or use the Disqus widget that you can find at the end of each chapter to access the forum. In a truly open spirit we will discuss, collaborate and offer constructive criticism and helpful advice and ask for the same from you. We will do our best to address your comments or pass them on to the course admins. We value all suggestions and feedback, and together we will make this course awesome. We just ask for a little patience.
Course evaluation
We have surveys at the beginning and end of the course to offer the best course experience possible.
Pre-course survey
You are invited to participate in a survey that will help the Agape team learn more about learners. We’d like to ask you to answer a few questions about yourself. Your honest feedback is very important for us to improve and serve all learners better. Whether you simply browsed or completed the course, your feedback is valuable.
Thank you for taking this survey. Please click the link below to take the survey.
Bug Report/Feature request
If you come across any glitches or bugs, or would like to see a different topic or feature in our MOOC, please open an issue in github or Bug Report/Feature request form
Contacts
Should you experience any technical problems or should you wish to share your ideas on how to improve this course email us on agape.open.science@gmail.com.
To share your thoughts and experiences either with this course or on open science in general, or to see what’s new we will be delighted if you start following us on
Facebook Agape Open-Science,
Twitter @AgapeOpenSci,
Instagram Agape.Open.Science,
or on LinkedIn Agape Open Science.
Credits
Aswathi Surendran : content creator, IT whisperer
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8709-6417
Cassandra Murphy : content creator, social media wizard
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1332-359X
Ciarán Purcell : proofreading and editing rockstar
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4376-599X
Marco Prevedello : content creator, IT advisor
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8329-6294
Mohammed Mahmoud : content creator
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1224-0381
Nina Trubanová : content creator, deadline overlord, vision pusher
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8156-3304
Philipp Junk : content creator
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5228-3896
Rasaq Semiu Abolore : content creator
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6486-4754
Tendai Mukande : content creator
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0654-7141
Una Ruddock : proofreading and editing balladeer
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9118-4121
Wei Qi Koh : Info graphics wizard
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8196-1628
Yao Zhang : content creator, social media wizard
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0093-3882
And a big thanks to our muse Dr Denise McGrath.
How to cite this material
Agape Initiative. (2023). Agape Open Science MOOC. OSF. https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/DTB7V
Disclaimer
Any views or opinions represented in this course belong solely to the Agape team and do not represent those people, institutions, or organizations that the authors may or may not be associated with in a professional or personal capacity unless explicitly stated.
The information in this course is provided without warranty. The authors and Agape team have neither liability nor responsibility to any person or entity related to any loss or damages arising from the information contained in this course.