Promoting the circulation and dissemination of scientific knowledge through Open Science is a central objective of TORCH, CHARM-EU’s R&I dimension. Following a successful online event held in June, TORCH experts organized the 2nd CHARM-EU Open Science Day at ELTE in a hybrid format with the aim of promoting OS culture and practices among CHARM-EU universities and beyond. The event welcomed 7 speakers from 4 CHARM-EU partner institutions with 40 participants joining in person and 30 online.

During the morning session, Dr. Kenneth Maussang and Sabine Avellaneda from UM’s Data Science Institute talked about Open Science and the setting up of Research Data Space at the University of Montpellier. Following their presentations, librarians Felix Weijdema and Najoua Ryane from the Utrecht University Library hosted an engaging workshop discussing how Open Science can be applied throughout the entire research workflow and explored ways together with the audience to incorporate OS practices in daily routine. In the afternoon session, Research Informatics programme manager Niamh Brennan from the Library of Trinity College Dublin focused on Open Access Publishing at TCD. Finally, Research Support librarian Tibor Faragó-Szilvási from ELTE’s University Library and Archive demonstrated several tools to choose licenses for green OA publications and research data. 

Following the event, experts started to collect the feedback of participants to develop a training plan that can become an integrated part of university practices. All presentations and materials of the CHARM-EU Open Science Days are available here.

Developing Open Science trainings is one of the seven pilot actions TORCH is carrying out in 2023 to test how the first joint R&I strategies developed within the Alliance can be fine-tuned and implemented. The overview of these actions was presented during the 3rd TORCH Internal Forum that was also held in Budapest prior to the training. As the project is coming to an end in December 2023, Vice-Rectors and representatives of the CHARM-EU partner universities have discussed the status and achievements of TORCH as well as policy recommendations and the future of research collaboration within CHARM-EU. “One thing is for sure, we cannot let this kind of cooperation fall apart. We should find the next steps on how to continue the collaboration” – highlighted Prof. Dr. Imre Hamar, ELTE’s Vice-Rector for International Affairs.