The inaugural Singapore Open Research Conference 2022 took place on 2 November 2022 at the Toh Kian Chui Annex, Headquarters Building of the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine.
The Conference was jointly organised by NTU Research Integrity and Ethics Office, NTU Library, and Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine. The Conference aims to create awareness of Open Research (also used interchangeably with the term ‘Open Science’), which is the movement to make scientific processes and research outputs more transparent, inclusive, and accessible.
This year’s theme was “Accelerating Research with Responsible Open Science”. Open science, or open research practices, coupled with accessible and verifiable scientific knowledge, help to improve quality, reproducibility, reusability, and impact of science.
Prior to the Conference, participants were treated to a workshop, titled “The Art of Writing Methods and Introduction to protocols.io” by Dr Lenny Teytelman, CEO and co-founder of protocols.io. Both sessions of the workshop were well-received by the participants, who enjoyed Dr Teytelman’s introduction on practical tips in writing methods as well as protocols.io, an open tool for developing and sharing of methods.
Workshop participants having an after-workshop chat with Dr Lenny Teytelman.
Main Conference Highlights
The main conference saw speakers from various institutions, sharing their practices on open science policies, governance, ethics and practical experiences.
Prof Joseph Sung, Distinguished University Professor, Senior Vice President (Health and Life Sciences), Dean, Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, and Professor, Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, gave the welcoming opening address.
This was then followed by a keynote speech on “Accelerating Knowledge Creation with Responsible Open Research” by the guest of honour, Professor Ling San, NTU Deputy President and Provost, President’s Chair in Mathematical Sciences. He noted that Open Research could have started way back in the 1600s when the Royal Society first started systematically publishing scientific results. The UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science includes various aspects such as open methods, FAIR data, open infrastructures, open-source software and hardware, open code, open access publications, open education resources and open engagement. As a mathematician, he also offered his perspectives on what Open Research meant in mathematics. Here are the links to his presentation slides and the video clip.
Dr Lenny Teytelman in his presentation “The Selfish Reasons for Practising Open Science” shared that according to a 2022 survey on researchers’ methods sharing practices and priorities [LaFlamme, M., Harney, J., & Hrynaszkiewicz, I. (2022)], the biggest barrier was “It takes too long to prepare detailed methods information in a way that would be useful for others”. He advised that it is important to plan for data, methods and code sharing early. Thinking of sharing them only when submitting a paper will require a lot of extra work to share a good dataset at that point. However, if data, methods and code sharing, including the use of tools like protocols.io and GitHub is part of data management planning, then sharing the methods and code will be super easy at the time of publication.
Dr Lenny Teytelman’s presentation slides can be found here and the video clip here.
Dr Amy Chou, Manager, Open Science and Research Services, NTU Library; and Ms Celine Lee, Manager, Good Research Practice Office, Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine presented the NTU Open Research Checklist through an engaging dialogue. As the Checklist is still a draft version, they invited the audience to give them feedback and suggestions. A video of their presentation is available here.
Lunch, Networking Session, and Poster Session Highlights
During the lunch, participants had the opportunity to speak to Awards recipients who were on standby next to their physical posters to exchange notes on open research experiences. More information on the Award recipients’ lightning talks, posters, and highlights of their open research practices can be found here and in this blog post.
Ms Michelle Neoh representing Social & Affective Processing Lab, sharing her team’s open research work with a conference participant.
Prof Fung Tat Ching and Assoc Prof Kevin Pethe having a discussion over lunch.
Conference participants enjoying the food and networking sessions; even outdoors.
Afternoon Conference Highlights
After lunch, Ms Koh Mingshi, Director (Chief Health Scientist Office), Ministry of Health, shared that TRUST is a new national health-related data exchange platform that adopts the Five Safes Framework ‘Safe Purpose’, ‘Safe People’, ‘Safe Settings’, ‘Safe Data’ and ‘Safe Output’ in her talk “Improving Health Outcomes and Advancing Healthcare Innovation Through TRUST”.
Her presentation slides can be found here.
Up next, was Assistant Professor Owen Schaefer, for Centre for Biomedical Ethics, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, with his talk titled “From Open Data to Open Access: Ethical Tradeoffs in Open Science”.
Assistant Professor Schaefer presented on the ethical tradeoffs in Open Science and explores how to explore these tradeoffs in an ethically principled way. His presentation slides can be found here and a video of his presentation is available here.
Next, we had the pleasure of Professor Nicole Wenderoth, Director of Institute for Human Movement Sciences and Sport at ETH Zurich; and founding Director of Future Health Technology programme at Singapore-ETH Centre sharing with us her take on “Sharing Data Collected via Future Health Technologies”.
She introduced to the audience the international, multidisciplinary research programme “Future Health Technologies” at the Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE), which offers a test bed and data microcosm for identifying challenges for sharing health-related data and developing first solutions. Check out these links for her presentation slides, and the video clip.
The next segment of the conference was the Panel Discussion, moderated by Assistant Professor Wilson Goh, Biomedical Informatics and Head, Good Research Practice Office, Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine. Members of the panel included Dr Lenny Teytelman, Ms Koh Mingshi, Assistant Professor Owen Schaefer and Professor Nicole Wenderoth.
The audience was immersed in the engaging panel discussion on concerns about sharing methods and data, how institutions can incentivise researchers to practice open science, and programmes and initiatives to engage the younger generations. They also discussed “Diamond” publishing and if it will help ease the pressure for researchers in regard to very expensive article processing charges (APCs).
Panel members going back and forth on their take on the various questions posed by the moderator.
In this next segment of the conference, Open Research in Practice was the buzzword. Associate Professor Roderick W. Bates, from NTU School of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology (CCEB) and NTU Research Integrity Officer captivated 100% from the audience with his talk titled “Correcting the Natural Product Literature through Open Data”.
Associate Professor Bates illustrated the importance of access to original data, in the determination of the molecular structure in the isolation of natural products from plants, fungi, bacteria and animals. For more details, do check out his presentation slides and the video clip.
The next speaker was Professor Ginny Barbour , Director of Open Access Australasia, and Co-Lead, Office for Scholarly Communications, Queensland University of Technology, Australia, who delivered her talk virtually. She spoke on “The Acceleration of Open Science Initiatives in 2022: an Australasian View of What’s Needed Next”.
She highlighted that the past 12-18 months had seen an extraordinary increase in open science initiatives globally as well as regionally in Australasia. She added that while these policy changes and initiatives are to be welcomed, there is increasing urgency to recognise the need for a diversity of approaches to open science and to ensure that equity is a key part of the future open ecosystem. Check out her presentation slides and her video clip.
Another virtual presentation followed, and it was presented by Dr Hiromitsu Urakami, Academic Engagement Director for Springer Nature (Japan). In his talk, titled “Progressing Open Science through Publishing“, he shared how Springer Nature champions Open Science and is committed to supporting the research community as it transitions to a more open way of conducting research.
His presentation slides can be found here and the video clip here.
The last presentation of the day was delivered by Ms Dju-Lyn CHNG, Regional Solution Consultant for Clarivate. She talked about the “Trends in Open Research through the Web of Science Lens”, where they made use of data from Web of Science to shed some light on the recent patterns of open access publishing using perspectives from funders, subjects, countries, publishers and journals.
She invited participants to discover how publisher-neutral data and analytics in the Web of Science help one find trusted open access content, as well as assess productivity, collaboration and impact in alignment with evolving open research initiatives. Check out the links to her presentation slides and video clip.
NTU Open Research Awards 2022 Highlights
The next segment of the conference was the NTU Open Research Awards 2022 ceremony. Ms Goh Su Nee, Deputy Director and Lead, Open Science and Research Services, NTU Library gave the opening remarks and invited the Award recipients on stage to receive their certificates.
The Awards were presented to the following recipients:
- Individual Award Winner (Nanyang Asst Prof Suzy Styles)
- Team Award Winner (Volcanic Hazards and Risk Group)
- Special Mention (Digital Signal Processing Lab)
- Special Mention (Social & Affective Neuroscience Lab)
- Special Mention (TeraX Labs)
After the ceremony, the audience were treated to two lightning talks by the winners; Nanyang Asst Prof Suzy Styles and Assoc Prof Susanna Jenkins for Volcanic Hazards and Risk Group.
More information on the Award recipients’ lightning talks, posters, and highlights of their open research practices can be found here and in this blog post.
Closing Remarks
The closing remarks to mark the end of the conference was delivered by Dr Willie Koh, Director, NTU Research Integrity & Ethics Office. He thanked the audience for their participation and support in the inaugural Singapore Open Research Conference and hoped to continue to foster an open research community. He also thanked the speakers for sharing their expertise, to which further discussions would continue on the topics they raised.
With that, the successful first Singapore Open Research Conference 2022 was concluded!
