Bringing Student Research into the Open: Librarian-Led Integration of Open Science into Multidisciplinary Undergraduate Research

As open science maintains its prevalence in global research, most implementation and education efforts have targeted faculty and graduate students, largely in social sciences fields. Undergraduate researchers, particularly those involved in multi-year, mentored research projects with a multidisciplinary STEM focus, can also benefit from exposure to open science concepts and tools. Academic librarians in particular, are well-placed to support these efforts, however guidance on how to do so remains limited. This case study examines how we integrated introductory open science education along with the Open Science Framework (OSF) into a four-year, team-based honors undergraduate research program. We explore how this effort can be adopted by undergraduate research programs, the librarians’ role in doing so, and an adaptable framework. Our analysis suggests that librarian-led open science instruction and tool integration is feasible and achieves broad initial adoption. Supplemental materials include OER curricular resources to support the integration of open science into undergraduate STEM research.