Abstract

In the last years, open science has become a policy priority for the European Commission and the standard method of working under its research and innovation funding programmes. Is this a new challenge for research institutes? For the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) it has been a new opportunity to grow and to bring the research performed at the institute closer to society.
Open science has become one of the strategic areas of IBEC. During the last year, huge steps have been taken to turn IBEC into a more open institution. In our presentation, we would like to share with the audience some of the successful actions that we have carried out both to educate our researchers and encourage them to make their science more open and also to increase the impact and involvement of society in the research done at our institute.
IBEC’s Open science plan includes not only the newly created open publications and data plan but also open educational activities and the aim of bringing science close to the society. A new space in the institute web page devoted to Open Science has been created. This space highlights the six pillars that sustain our view of open access: Citizens’ science, Research Data, Science Education, Outreach, Open Access Publications and Transparency.
To educate researchers on this novel topic, some training courses regarding open publications, open data repositories, science evaluation and citizens science have been organized.
Regarding science education, we aim to make science available for all the society regardless of their gender, region, or social origin. We have developed and run several educational projects that cover identified gaps. For instance, our Territory project aims to contribute to disseminating scientific education in an equal manner throughout the territory, avoiding the centralization of educational projects in large urban centres. On the other hand, we want to ensure that our activities are inclusive and adapted to functional diversity. So, our Inclusive science: attention to diversity in science education project, wants to provide the necessary tools to transform science education proposals into proposals that ensure the participation and benefit of all students and help implement universal accessibility in science education activities.
We have initiated, as well, some actions in the field of citizens science. We are currently running the second edition of a citizens science project with local high schools.
These are only some examples of what we have been working on. We would love to share our experience and also learn about others so we can all grow together and collaborate in making science accessible for everyone.