VUB's journey towards Open Science

In the recent years, the widespread adoption and implementation of Open Science principles became a priority at the national and European level. To keep up with this evolving research landscape, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) took a lot of steps: VUB established the Open Science Office (OSO) in 2021, a formal advisory board consisting of several central services and representatives of each faculty, guiding VUB through the Open Science landscape. In 2023, the original form of OSO was discontinued and “ReGroup Open Science”, a community of Open Science representative of the research groups, was started. This to further develop and implement the Open Science policies of VUB. VUB implemented an ‘opt-out’ policy for Open Access publishing. VUB updated the Research Data Management (RDM) policy to give clear guidelines on data storage during and after the research project. Furthermore, a Data Management Plan (DMP) of each research group is expected. VUB invested in safe and secure data storage solutions for work-in-progress and data preservation. VUB encourages data publishing and preservation in open or restricted access by giving an Open Science bonus, which is calculated based on publications to which a dataset is coupled. VUB started a pilot-project on RDM consultancy to provide hands-on support to research groups. VUB provides tools to VUB researchers to bring Open Science into practice, such as the roll-out of a centrally provided Electronic Lab Notebook (ELN) and the development of a storage guide.