The beginning of a promising discussion on Open Science in Hungary: A NI4OS-Europe NOSCI event

The first Hungarian NOSCI event entitled Hungarian Open Science Forum took place virtually on May 28th.

The event counted more than 50 attendees mostly from research, university leadership and policy making areas. The goal of this event was twofold. First, it was an intention to begin discussion with stakeholders on important topics such as national practices of Open Science and to examine most common challenges regarding openness in science. Second, organizers talked about EOSC, and its wide spectrum of services research can benefit from.

The event began with a presentation from Judit Fazekas-Paragh (NI4OS-Europe, UDUNL) covering Open Science, highlighting key aspects, benefits, challenges and building blocks to solve them.  In her presentation she also talked about the role of NI4OS-Europe in the changing mechanism of scientific research.

After introducing EOSC to the participants, the event continued with an other presentation from János Mohácsi (KIFÜ) in detail about the benefits and services of EOSC. In his presentation he highlighted the European Strategy for Data, talked about E-infra commons, FAIR Data, and much more.

The organizers prepared interactive questions for debate regarding topics included in the presentations, which have made the audience engage in conversation. The event formed a highly active discussion covering aspects of open science, predatory journals, trustworthy publishers, connections to higher education in the perspective of OS.

The event also aimed to discuss aspects of Hungarian research infrastructures. Organizers prepared questions for the attendees to discuss regarding institutional research infrastructures which are specialized in collecting research data. Answers were highly diverse, some only plan to create these infrastructures, some already introduced them to the public.

With this virtual forum, it was possible to examine opinions of the audience regarding necessary support using research infrastructure services. Participants agreed, that in Hungary it is necessary to advance trainings and expand education methods for data stewards.

Seeing the success this event was in the end of May, there are already plans for organizing other Open Science Forums in Hungary.