Ireland’s inaugural National Open Research Festival (#NORFest2023) took place on the 2 – 3 November, 2023 in the Royal Irish Academy (RIA), in Dublin. The Festival was delivered with the support of the Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI) and the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) and the expertise of the Festival Programme Committee. Funding for the event was provided by the Higher Education Authority (HEA).
By Aislinn Conway and Michelle Doran
NORFest 2023 focused on the broad themes of the National Action Plan for Open Research 2022-2023, highlighting institutional, disciplinary and community-led initiatives at the local, national or international level. For the most part, the Festival was an in-person event with a small number of presenters joining from Ireland and internationally and there was an option to watch the livestream of day one via the RIA YouTube Channel.
The event programme is available here: https://norf.ie/norfest-2023-programme/
Day One
If you would like to watch day one sessions or learn more, we have made recordings and presentation slides openly available at the following links respectively: https://vimeo.com/showcase/10833824 and https://www.slideshare.net/search?searchfrom=header&q=norfest+2023.
Colm O’Reardon, Secretary General of the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science opened the Festival by welcoming attendees to the Royal Irish Academy and highlighting Ireland’s ongoing commitment to embedding a culture of open research at every level of the Irish research system by 2030. Daniel Bangert, National Open Research Coordinator also delivered opening remarks.
The keynote speaker was Chelle Gentemann, science lead for NASA’s Transform to Open Science Mission and co-chair of the U.S. White House Office for Science and Technology and Policy (OSTP) Sub-working group on the Year of Open Science. Chelle’s talk was titled ‘Opening Science’ and she highlighted the need to make science more open explaining that 50% of climate change research is not accessible to the wider public. Chelle encouraged the audience to earn a @NASA Open Science Badge by taking an online, community-developed introduction to core open science skills that has five modules organised as a scientific workflow. Enroll at the following link: https://nasa.github.io/Transform-to-Open-Science/
Next was a panel discussion on the early career reseacher (ECR) perspectives of Open Science. This session was chaired by Yensi Flores Beuso, Postdoctoral Global Individual Fellow, UCC and Steering Board Member, CoARA and began with presentations from the four panellists:
- Noémie Aubert Bonn, Postdoctoral Researcher at Hasselt University, Belgium, and the University of Manchester, UK;
- Irene Castellano, Horizon Europe Health Cluster National Contact Point (NCP) for Ireland and Chair of the Ireland Chapter of the Marie Curie Alumni Association (MCAA);
- Stefan Müller, Assistant Professor and Ad Astra Fellow in the School of Politics and International Relations at University College Dublin, Member of the Young Academy of Ireland,
- Melissa Sharp, Senior Postdoctoral Fellow and Honorary Lecturer, Royal College of Surgeons Ireland.
This was followed by three sets of lightning talks based on the themes identified in the National Action Plan for Open Research 2022-2030:
- Establishing a Culture of Open Research, chaired by Frances Madden, Technological University of Dublin,
- Achieving 100% open access to research publications, chaired by Marion Boland, Science Foundation Ireland
- Enabling FAIR research data and other outputs, chaired by James Smith of UCC.
Next, thirteen research projects funded by the NORF 2023 Open Research Fund were officially launched. Project leads from all four of the Strand I Priority Action projects and three Strand II Open Research Stimulus projects presented during the launch.
Closing remarks were delivered by Deirdre Quinn, Higher Education Authority who provided an overview of the day and thanked Daniel Bangert, National Open Research Coordinator for his contribution to the National Open Research Forum.
Day two
On the final day of NORFest 2023, six interactive, parallel workshops took place. Click on the blue text links to find out more:
- European Open Science Cloud National Tripartite Event Organiser(s): Roberto Sabatino, HEAnet
- Open Peer Review Detective Game / Science Sleuths Organiser(s): Nina Tubranová, UCD Connect, Agape – Open Science Practising Community
- Beyond Transformative Agreements: Looking at Alternatives of Supporting Sustainable and Inclusive Open Access Organiser(s): Susan Reilly, IReL
- Sonraí Irish Data Stewardship Network Roadshow – Could you be a Data Steward? Organiser(s): Aoife Coffey, Sonraí – Irish Data Stewardship Network, University College Cork (UCC); Junwen Luo, UCC; Darren Dahly, UCC; Jenny O’Neill, University College Dublin, Johanna Archbold, Technological University of the Shannon.
- Scholarly Authorship and Open Access Organiser(s): Ruth Hegarty, PublishOA.ie, Royal Irish Academy; Lucy Hogan, Publish OA.ie, Royal Irish Academy
- Examining Open Source Software Management Challenges & Solutions for Irish Universities Organiser(s): Clare Dillon, University of Galway, Lero, Open Ireland Network.
We would like to thank the organisers, contributors and attendees, as well as the HEA, DRI and RIA for making NORFest 2023 a huge success.
