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Open Research Award
The Open Research Award seeks to showcase concepts and achievements by Eurac researchers who actively engage with tools and practices that make research more collaborative and equitable, and enhance knowledge sharing and dissemination.
Open Research Award 2023
After a successful first edition in 2021, the Open Research Award returns in 2023 with three prizes endowed with €1500 each. We invite applications from researchers and technical staff who contribute directly to research. The winning entries will be featured on the Eurac Research website. Award nominations for the Open Research Award 2023 will be evaluated by an international jury, consisting of:
- Sarahanne Field, Leiden University
- Barbara Heinisch, University of Vienna
- Paola Masuzzo, IGDORE, Ghent
Besides the three award winners the panel may nominate runners-up who will be also featured on the Eurac Research website.
In recognition of the collaborative nature of research, not only individuals but also groups of individuals or formal research groups are invited to nominate their exemplary open research achievements in a free form nomination letter. Collaborations between individuals from different Institutes will be judged particularly favorably.
- Early sharing of results through preprints or registered reports
- Integration of data management plans in everyday research workflows
- Using open notebooks
- Developing/implementing data and/or metadata standards
- Facilitating open innovation
- Habitually sharing research data and/or source code
- Engaging in open peer review
- Taking steps to ensure the FAIRness of data and data products
- Adopting and developing citizen science and participatory design methods
- Engaging in the development of (disciplinary) communities around open research practices
What qualifies for the Open Research Award 2023
Open research in all academic fields and disciplines, is imbued with the ambition to lower the social, cultural and technical barriers that prevent the sharing of knowledge between researchers, and ultimately with society at large. Whether it is engaging with open research workflows or citizen science approaches, developing (meta)data standards, containerizing software, or adopting other exemplary open research practices, we are looking for researchers who make open research part of their daily practice. We invite researchers to consider their full research life cycle and outputs in all possible forms, including papers, data, software and hardware, methods and infrastructures. Examples of prize worthy open research practices may include, but are not limited to:
- How is openness expressed in your work? What are you doing to improve openness, transparency, inclusion, reproducibility and reuse in your institute, your research community and beyond?
- How has the adoption of open research practices made your research better?
- How easily can others participate in your research? Does your work include input from citizens in any step of the research?
- Does your research encourage knowledge transfer in your research community, or between your research community and society at large? Does your work enable interdisciplinary research or intercultural/interracial exchange?
- Does your work generate educational resources for formal or informal education?
The nomination letter
The free-form nomination letter should describe in a self-contained manner the open research practice(s) adopted and explain the value they bring in the context of open research, notwithstanding the challenges they may face. There are no strict length limits but the nomination letters should not exceed 1000 words. The inclusion of URLs, figures and references is permitted.
We invite researchers and research groups to submit nominations by 15th September 2023, either on their own behalf or on behalf of other Eurac colleagues whom they consider deserving of this award. When writing the nomination letter, we also invite you to keep the following questions in mind. While the nomination letter does not have to address each of these questions specifically, reflecting on them as you prepare your letter could help make a stronger case for the nomination:
Eligibility and the prize money
The Open Research Award 2023 is open to Eurac researchers at any stage of their career, including PhD students, as long as they are affiliated at Eurac. We invite nominations from individual researchers, technical staff involved directly in research, as well as groups of individuals or formal research groups. The prize money will be transferred to the Institute(s) to which the winner(s) belong and may be used for any work-related expenses elected by the winner(s) together with their institute(s).
Award timeline
Deadline 15th September 2023: nomination letters should be send to openaccess@eurac.edu.
The prize award ceremony will take place in December 2023.
Useful Links
Liise Lehtsalu and Maria Bellantone at the Research Support Office will answer your questions about Open Access and RDM, including training requests, questions about funders’ and journals’ policies, internal and external funding for Open Access and the Open Research Award. The Research Support Office can also be contacted for more information about the Open Access and the Research Data Management Working Groups in Eurac Research.
For questions about the current research information system Converis and the institutional repository BIA, please contact Antje Messerschmidt at the Library.