From who does the Open Science Core team consist of?
The team has a manager, Jiří Marek. Michal Růžička is a specialist in Open FAIR data, and Miroslav Bartošek is the original leader of the Open Science idea at Masaryk University. From the beginning of the project, a network of Open Science methodologists, mostly from MU libraries, was formed, along with an advisory board of academics.
Does your library science background help you in your current position?
I've always been drawn to the humanities and books. The great thing about library science is that part of the degree is also information science, which connects even a humanities-oriented person to the IT environment, which in retrospect I appreciate immensely because I found myself at the Institute of Computer Science and the intersection of humanities and engineering is proving to be a huge benefit.
What exactly is your role as Open Science Coordinator?
I lead a group of Open Science Methodologists, provide central Open Science support for the whole university, organise regular training sessions and run an annual Open Science workshop. My primary effort is to make the data management tasks for researchers as effortless as possible.
How do you identify the needs of the scientific community in Open Science?
Recently, Masaryk University conducted a "Data Potential Analysis at MU," where we tried to map data-productive workplaces where researchers might need more intensive support in the form of, for example, large-capacity storage, specific data formats, etc. Now we have to create a data strategy within the university, where we want to take into account, among other things, the specifics of STM and humanities. We hope that this could become an analogy for the national environment and the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) initiative.
How does the scientific community view Open Science efforts?
Often, they perceive it as an administrative burden by funding providers. We try to explain that it is a standard of modern and responsible scientific work while creating conditions that prevent researchers from seeing it as a burden.
What feedback do you have?
In recent years, the feedback has been very positive. We consult and help write Open Science sections in feasibility studies, often resulting in high scores. Researchers then see that we help them secure projects and funding. Of course, some resist putting their data into a repository because they do not trust it or do not see the difference between FAIR and Open data. This is particularly an issue in the humanities.