Leonhard Volz

Open science increasingly plays a critical role in research, impacting researchers and support staff alike. Unfortunately, curricular education often is a blind spot in how scientists consider changing structures, and consequently, students too often only feature as an afterthought in open science conversations. Yet, overlooking students stands in stark contrast to the fact that (a) foundational education lays the ground for how students (as future researchers or evidence-based practitioners) view aims and principles of research and that (b) education has compounding effects, i.e. the earlier students acquire skills and knowledge, the more these can catalyse subsequent learning efforts.​

This talk will present these arguments by lining out issues student open science initiatives face and how their projects aim at promoting a student-focussed perspective on open science. Thus, it aims to achieve a productive contribution to envisioning structural change that keeps students in mind and offers them a seat at the table in the effort of OS-oriented reorganisation. Concretely, it highlights how initiatives in different academic systems with different organisational structures (I) organise extra-curricular education to target students’ needs; (II) promote appropriate curricular changes to instil open science principles early on; (III) connect to expert groups, academic societies and research support organisations aiming to provide student support; (IV) promote and support cross- and international student engagement in communities; (V) advance integration of student (organisations) in professional networks for mutually beneficial exchange. Along these points, the talk presents lessons learned on how to structure and include student- focussed open science education on different organisational levels of academia.