The NORF TROPIC winter school was a resounding success! Hosted from 27–29 January at Maynooth University by Dr Dermot Lynott, principal investigator of TROPIC and lead researcher Dr Dounia Lakhzoum, this dynamic event united researchers across disciplines and career stages to enhance the adoption of open research practices.
Designed as part of the NORF-funded TROPIC (TRaining in Open Research in an Irish Context) project, the winter school aimed to provide both the knowledge and practical skills necessary to incorporate open research principles into everyday research practices.
Bridging knowledge and practice
The TROPIC initiative seeks to advance open research practices across Ireland by offering hands-on training that empowers researchers to create transparent, accessible, and reproducible research. By participating, attendees learned how to integrate open research practices into their workflows, fostering collaboration and boosting transparency in their work.
A diverse programme
The winter school attracted a diverse group of participants, from PhD students to senior academics, with the majority being early career researchers. Attendees represented a wide variety of disciplines, including health sciences (public health, health psychology, nursing, surgical care), computer science, engineering, business, media studies, and psychology. The event also included diverse research methodologies, such as qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods specialists.
Day 1: Laying the foundation for open research
The first day of the winter school focused on introducing open research principles, starting with talks on open and questionable research practices, research integrity and academic fraud by Dr Dounia Lakhzoum. Participants created open research profiles, including ORCID IDs and Open Science Framework (OSF) accounts. They engaged in activities to identify and address questionable research practices in their own field, before exploring research integrity and fraud detection. In a hands-on activity, participants reviewed fraudulent papers and identified the types of fraud involved. The day concluded with Dr Denis O’Hora from Galway University and OSF Ambassador, who highlighted the OSF platform and its role in enhancing research management, collaboration, and reproducibility.
Day 2: Crafting a data management plan
Day two began with a presentation on data management plans by Fran Callaghan from Maynooth Library, followed by a practical activity where participants created a plan using the Horizon Europe data management template. The day ended with a talk by Dr Dermot Lynott on data sharing and licensing for FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data, providing essential insights into best practices for research data management.
Day 3: Preregistration and Reproducibility
The final day concentrated on study preregistration and reproducible workflows, beginning with Dr Darren Dahly from University College Cork discussing reproducibility, focusing on code reproducibility and highlighting ways to avoid common errors when handling data. Dr Dermot Lynott followed with a session on the role of preregistration in promoting rigorous and transparent research practices. Participants then worked on selecting and adapting preregistration templates like AsPredicted and OSF, to their own specific research needs.
The event wrapped up with participants reviewing their portfolios, listing the knowledge and practical skills they had acquired, and uploading their data management plans and preregistration documents to their OSF accounts.
Feedback and future directions
Participants expressed high satisfaction with the balance of theoretical content and hands-on activities, praising the opportunity to immerse themselves in open research practices, as well as being able to meet with people from a range of backgrounds also interested in open research. The event’s three-day format was appreciated for offering ample time to explore these concepts in depth, with attendees highlighting the warm hospitality of the Maynooth University team whose delicious meals and well-timed coffee breaks added to the positive atmosphere of the event.
The NORF TROPIC winter school not only fostered deeper understanding of open research but also equipped attendees with tangible skills to integrate transparency and reproducibility into their work. Building on the success of this launch, the programme will be expanded through a future train-the-trainer initiative, allowing open research practices to reach a broader audience across Ireland. We plan to offer this workshop as part of a portfolio-building training programme, further amplifying its impact and promoting adoption of open research in an Irish context.
