Glossary

Building Block

Short Description

Citizen Science

Citizen science encompasses the engagement of non-professional scientists in scientific research. This participatory approach allows a wider array of societal actors to contribute to scientific inquiries. Citizen Science is traditionally leveraged in the data collection phase. However, it can also be performed in other phases, e.g. the problem, the interpretation or dissemination phase.

Data Protection

Data protection refers to the processes, policies, and practices designed to secure personal or sensitive information from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, disruption, modification, or destruction. It ensures the privacy, integrity, and availability of data and is crucial for maintaining individual privacy rights.

Institutional Review Board

Institutional review boards (IRBs) review and approve the research design proposed for a research project to ensure the protection of the rights, welfare, and well-being of human subjects involved in research.

Registered Reports

In a registered report a two-stage publication process to enhance transparency is followed. In particular, the research design and data analysis methods are peer-reviewed and approved before the research is conducted. It emphasizes quality of the research design and data analysis, rather than the novelty or positive outcomes of the data analysis

Preregistration

Preregistration involves documenting and publicly registering the research hypotheses, methods, and analysis plan before conducting the study and analyzing the data. This practice also aims to enhance the transparency of research by preventing selective reporting.

Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing describes the provision of tasks that are executed by a crowd of people working on problem-solving or data collection, contributing to a common goal. When the crowd receives a monetary reward for their contribution, it is called crowdworking.  In research crowdsourcing can be leveraged to collect data with and without incentives from crowd of people.

Open Data

In general, open data refers to data that is made available to the public freely. The open data building block in Open Science targets promoting transparency and facilitating collaboration.

Open Source

Following an open source approach means that the software source code is made publicly available. It offers different license models that grants others the right to use, modify, study, create derivative works from, and share both the software and its source code. In the research context, open source targets to increase transparency.

Open Access

The open access building block of Open Science targets to make research free and available to anyone with internet access and promote advances in the sciences.

Open Peer Review

In open peer review the identities of the reviewers and authors are disclosed to each other. Furthermore, the review reports are often made publicly available. Again, this Open Science building block aims to increase transparency and accountability peer review process and  potentially leading to enhanced quality and integrity of scholarly feedback.

FAIR stands for Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Re-usable. FAIR data adheres to these principles with the goal of making research data more sustainable and facilitating knowledge transfers. As computational support is increasingly important, the principles additionally stress the importance that FAIR data is also findable, accessible, interoperable and re-usable for computers. More information can be found here.

ORCID stands for “Open Researcher and Contributor Identification”. ORCID is a non-profit organization which provides a 16-digit persistent digital identifier (ORCID iD) to individuals, in particular researchers. Registration can be done at https://orcid.org/ for free. The use of an ORCID iD enables researchers to be identified unambiguously and consistently. This ensures that they receive recognition for all of their contributions, e.g., publications, research activities, and grants by digitally linking their ORCID iD to their work. In contrast to using the researcher’s name, ORCID iDs reduce errors caused, e.g., through similar names or name changes.

RRI (Responsible Research and Innovation)

The approach aims at the involvement of society in research and at uncovering issues in the field of research and innovation. It encompasses, e.g., the access to research outcomes as well as an alignment of research and innovation with the needs and expectations of the society. The six key policies are: Ethics, Gender Equality, Governance, Open Access, Public Engagement, and Science Education. The term gained importance in the last years through several EU Programs (e.g., Horizon 2020). Find more information here.