Open Science in Museums - Strategy of the Naturhistorisches Museum Wien (NHMW):
The benefits of openness
Authors:
Vohland, Katrin 
;
Eichert, Stefan ;
Fiedler, Sarah ;
Kapun, Martin ;
Kroh, Andreas ;
Mehu-Blantar, Ines ;
Ott, Iris ;
Rainer, Heimo ;
Schwentner, Martin ;
Zimmermann, Eva ;
Please cite this document as follows:
Vohland, Katrin; Eichert, Stefan; Fiedler, Sarah; Kapun, Martin; Kroh, Andreas; Mehu-Blantar, Ines; Ott, Iris ; Rainer, Heimo; Schwentner, Martin; Zimmermann, Eva: Open Science in Museums - Strategy of the Naturhistorisches Museum Wien (NHMW): The benefits of openness. Version 1.0 (2022-04-27) Naturhistorisches Museum Wien (Vienna 2022) https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6505108
Burgring 7
1010 Wien
https://nhm-wien.ac.at
- Summary
- Introduction
- Open Science Terminology - Definitions
- Open Data / Open Content
- Open Collections
- Open Reproducible Research / Open Source
- Citizen Science
- Open Access
- Open Innovation
- Networks and projects
- Acknowledgements
In this document the NHMW rolls out in which areas the museum already contributes and can contribute to implement Open Science in its processes and products, which resources are necessary, and which already have been aquired, mainly in the form of third party funded projects.
The key contribution is linked to its global responsibility regarding the collections. Objects from various disciplines from all over the world are hosted in the museum. Not only their conservation and their exploration/research („Beforschung") belongs to the duties of the NHMW but also increasing their accessibility for research and education. The digital transformation not only requires new standards, workflows, and skills but also offers opportunities to link the collection with data from areas far beyond the museum, being it Earth observation, health, or nature based solutions.
Some of these changes can be managed internally or with the support of projects. For a sustainable transition, additional resources are necessary as the basis of the NHMW are still the physical objects in the collections which have to be maintained in a responsible manner for the next centuries - in any case longer than the lifespan of a hard disk.
The ideas and concepts of Open Science arose from the insight that the value of science for society could be increased when offering more participation leading to deeper understanding and greater acceptance of science by larger parts of the society. Also the quality and excellence of science will increase when data and information of different origins and disciplines are linked and transparency of processes and data is enhanced. Science is currently facing a "replicability crisis"1 , as many findings in published studies cannot be reproduced by independent experiments. Similarly, analyses of original data are often not repeatable due to missing documentation and information about the underlying workflows and analysis steps.
The need to open processes, data, and outcomes was triggered by enormous progress in information science and the development of respective infrastructures. The European Commission developed in 2015 an Open Science strategy2 and intends to invest billions of Euro in confederated infrastructures such as the European Open Science Cloud3 (EOSC) and linked projects.
Open Science is a contested concept in some aspects. It comprises or links to related concepts such as Open Innovation, Open Access, Public Participation in Science, or Open Governance. For example with regard to citizen science it was shown that the terminology was developed in different communities; while the term Open Science mainly appeared in governance strategies, citizen science developed more bottom up vs top down4.
As museum with a strong research component we understand to open science far beyond the mere technical aspects of digitalisation and improved digital infrastructures and policies. Opening the museum also means including all parts of society, offering places and means to understand science and the scientific process, and to profit from its insights and contribute to its valuation and societal implementation.
However, with the „Nature History Museum Vienna (NHMW) Open Science in Museums strategy" paper, we mainly refer to the digital transformation of science and touch the physical aspects of the museum, of the place itself, only peripherally in order to keep this strategy paper focussed. In fact, as our striving for a joint understanding of key terms, including recent literature, shows the boundaries are fluent.
The NHMW formulated 2020 as its vision statement: "The Natural History Museum aims to make a significant contribution to sustainable development in Austria, Europe and the world. We strive to achieve this goal through our excellent disciplinary, interdisciplinary and participatory research, by opening up our collections to a wider audience using digital technology, by employing innovative, inclusive and inspiring approaches to teaching science, and by becoming a fully carbon-neutral museum by 2030."5
Digital technologies are a key technology in opening the collections; and opening not only means providing a collection of photos or digital lists of species but increased Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Re-usability as described by the FAIR principles6. In addition, we will also consider the CARE-principles7, which are developed unter an increasing consciousness for historical burdens and imbalances especially with respect to indigenous communities. CARE stands for Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, and Ethics.
Figure 1: This graphic hints to the claim that data not only have to be FAIR, but also acknowledge historical burdens and power imbalances8.
Image Source: Research Data Alliance International Indigenous Data Sovereignty Interest Group. (September 2019). “CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance.” The Global Indigenous Data Alliance. GIDA-global.org
The information provided in our collections can be used in a variety of disciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary research projects, ranging from basic taxonomic research, biodiversity research, genetics, nature conservation, novel materials, bioeconomy, climate change or advising the Federal Army (Bundesheer) with regard to their missions abroad. In addition, digitalisated are available for education, science communication, or arts purposes.
Responsible research and innovation (RRI) is a complementary science policy framework, adopted by the European Commission under Italian presidency in the Rome Declaration9, that has become effective in recent years with the aim of bringing technological innovations into context with broader social values. New emerging technologies and innovations in research bear the potential of transforming the future while addressing societal challenges. It is important to take into consideration the social, ethical political dimensions of these innovations and the far-reaching, uncertain, and sometimes unpredictable social consequences they may cause.
RRI seeks to include and engage public entities in the field of science and innovation with the goal of producing research and innovation outcomes that are in line with social and ethical expectations and foster sustainable knowledge transfer10.
The RRI framework addresses global challenges through the engagement of stakeholders (researchers, citizens, policy makers, business, third sector organisations and others) in the co-construction of research and innovation. It further aims to better align the process of research and its outcomes with values, needs, and expectations as imposed by society.
To open the museum deeply impacts established workflows and mind-sets. Opening research processes as well as data, software, or collections subsequently require the re-allocation of resources as well as the generation of new resources.
Another key challenge is capacity building - with regard to digital memory space and devices, but also with regards to time, skills and experience.
Other issues which were also discussed for instance during the SWOT analysis performed with every single collection discussing pro and cons of the digitalisation of the collections are the fear of increasing restitution demands from colonized countries, the loss of control of the interpretation of data, the use of flawed or not up-to-date data, and sensitive data in wrong hands, mainly in context of human remains.
Some additional minor issues considering the type of information are patents and dissertations: some protection is needed to finalize a thesis or to go for a patent.
A strategy for the NHMW is written down in order to clarify the targets of opening the museum - as it is also related to shifts in priorities.
The strategy is meant to clarify and if possible also to quantify the targets of opening the museum. A written document will make it easier for stakeholders (for instance the employees, the Kuratorium, politics, donors) to understand the products and processes behind the opening process.
And last not least, also a rough idea of internal and external resources needed as well as the understanding of the already acquired resources and successes will help to structure the process.
As Open Science is a contested term, there is a broad variety of terms in place. For the intention of this paper we define the terms as we understand them in our context for each of the different sessions addressed, along the focus on the museum (Figure 2).
Figure 2: A terminology landscape centering the museum (own graphic, Martin Kapun CC-BY-4.0.)
Open Data means that data or information such as raw measurement or genetic data and accompanying meta information, such as climate- or geodata, but also scientific analysis data such as statistical or categorical data, etc. from a wide variety of fields are publicly available and can be used freely. As a rule, this data is published under open licenses that regulate how the originators must be taken into account and how the data may be further used. In addition, content such as 2D images,3D scans, genetic data, sound recording, media, texts or models also fall into this area as Open Content.
The digitized images etc. themselves are digital copies (in German: Digitalisate), and linked with metadata we call it digital representation. The even more sophisticated digital twins are digital representations which also change and adapt in real time.
At the government level, the "policy" that information and content generated from public funds (e.g., research grants, via government research institutions, universities, etc.) must be made publicly available - at least in the medium term - has become increasingly accepted in recent years. Funding bodies such as the FWF have accordingly been requiring open access to data and results for some years now when approving funding.
The USA was a pioneer in this area. One example is the satellite-based measurement of the earth\'s surface by NASA. The resulting geodata are freely available worldwide and can be used without restrictions. Another example is genetic sequence data. Here, most scientific journals require that these data are published and freely accessible in appropriate repositories (e.g. genbank11) when the associated research article gets accepted and published.
In Austria, there are numerous government-generated data and information available, for example, on the portal of Open Data Austria12.
Copyright aspects can be clarified by choosing the appropriate license. For example, it is possible to release data only in such a way that it may only be used unchanged and not commercially.
With regard to Open Data and Open Content we want to achieve that our data follow as much as possible FAIR and CARE principles, are based on respective standards, and are also able to provide digital data and objects as open content to the public. Specifically for digitzed objects, see also the section Open Collections.
A key prerequisite for all digitisation efforts, is to fulfill the FAIR-principles13. On one hand, this is the core idea of digital open science. On the other hand, we will be obliged to fulfill them due to requirements of funding agencies that fund our projects or due to legal requirements on national or international levels for public museums and public research institutes.
Aside from digital representations of physical objects, NHMW researchers also create research data that can be (but are not necessarily) associated with the respective physical objects from the NHMW collections. These data, even though they are mostly stored in digital form, are in most cases not yet publicly available. This is on one hand due to missing tools and technical or conceptual infrastructure to provide research data as open data. On the other hand this may also be caused by a long-standing research culture does not provide data open and freely. It is thus imperative to strengthen the researchers' awareness of the benefits of open data. Also the NHMW needs to provide trusted technical infrastructures and tools to enable this from a technical point of view. Making research data (raw data as well as analyzed data) openly available is an important step to follow FAIR data principles and enhances the visibility of the research work performed at the NHMW.
In order to store, archive and disseminate digital entities, be it digital represenations or research data, a trusted repository, following the FAIR principles, should be established, providing APIs and interfaces for humans as well as machines. DOIs and persistent identifiers will be an important backbone for this. The repository will be required to permanently store and provide access to the 2D and 3D digital copies and their metadata. From here, the digital represenations should be linked to and accessible from the digital repository based on a permanent digital object identifier (DOI). Ideally, access is openly provided also from outside the museum. Persistent identifiers will allow unambiguous identification of digital representations, and their reference in scientific publications or similar outputs.
Various international projects, legal bodies, institutes as well as internal projects and departments will need to work with the acquired data, respectively. It is thus our fundamental goal to disseminate and share our data internationally. Therefore machine readable interfaces following specific formats and vocabularies (CIDOC CRM, RDF, JSON-LD etc.) are a prerequisite. This will allow embedding the NHMW open science outcomes into the semantic web. Next to machine readable APIs, "fancy" web front-ends will be an important key to provide researchers and the interested public access to our extensive collections.
The concept of open collection comprises processes as well as open content specifically targeting the heart of the museum, the collection.
Open Collections means that access to the various NHMW collections is increased by providing access to digital represenation of the collections. It includes a digital catalogue as well as 2D and/or 3D digital copies including their metadata.
The NHMW houses an extensive and invaluable natural history collection of about 30 million objects. It includes objects from anthropology, botany, geology, mineralogy, paleontology, prehistory and zoology. The collections feature objects from all continents and oceans, with a special focus on Austria. They are an important archive of current and past diversity and relevant for various fields of research.
Because of the sheer size of the collections, it is impossible to showcase and present the collection to the public in its full extent. Furthermore, scientific research is sometimes hampered by the current lack of a consistent, unified digital inventory across all collections.
The goal of Open Collections is to increase the openness, inclusiveness and visibility of the natural history collections of the NHMW via digitisation for the scientific community, stakeholders from other fields such as education or economy, and the general public. This will include a unified digital inventory, which will hold all relevant collection, systematic, curatorial and material information on the objects, as well as 2D and/or 3D digital representations of selected objects of interest. The digital inventory as well as the 2D and 3D digital representations will be made publicly available, following the FAIR principles. Although greatest possible openness is the goal, certain sensitive data (e.g., certain personal data, localities of very rare species, data on human remains, or artifacts) may need to be restricted to internal users. In short, as much openness as possible with restrtictions where necessary. This will differ in detail between collections and object types and a newly established ethics board will support and guide the curators in such decisions, and will also include persons from outside the NHMW.
The targets of Open collections are basically a subset of the overall Open Data and Content targets, but the focus here is exclusively set on objects stored in the collections of the NHMW. Targets include the generation of digital copies (2D, 3D images), enriched with collection-based and domain-specific metadata according to FAIR and CARE principles for a full digital representation as well as a digital inventory encompassing all objects stored in the collections.
It will not be possible - and of limited value - to digitize the whole collection by 2D or 3D scans. In a participatory process we will develop a digitalisation strategy for all collections. It will set priorities for the individual collections based on fragility of the material, importance for the scientific community, or requests for specific purposes such as exhibitions or science communication. The strategy will also consider different options to finance specific modules. A general basis for this endeavor is to generate comprehensive knowledge about the collection inventory at the NHMW; therefore, the first priority is a digital inventory of all collections.
An information scientist was hired in order to develop a coherent database to digitally inventorize the large collection of the NHMW. Currently, each department and even some collections use their own system, a variant of MS Access or MS Excel, Word, or hand written catalogues. The target is to have a sustainable, future-proof and easy to use system with interfaces to relevant taxonomic, geographic, and functional backbones, considering current state-of-the-art database standards. In the first half of 2020, a survey was performed based on semi-structured interviews involving all stakeholders. In addition, internal (SWOT Analysis with regard to the digitalisation of the collections) and external (e.g. results from EU projects such as Synthesis and DiSSCo) documents were analysed and considered. In the second half of 2021, the database model was developed and discussed prior to putting the database into place. Next steps are the integration of repositories as well as the development of user interfaces - adapted to the needs of the specific collections.
Data migrating from the various existing internal databases starts with selected parts of different collection types (for instance a zoological collection and an archeological collection) in 2022. This will help to optimize the database and detect bugs early. This proof of concept will help next to technical issues to support the acceptance of this big transformation.
In the following years further digitalisation of the collection will continue. A full digital inventory of all objects is the long-term goal, but this will be challenging for collections with millions of objects. European (e.g., DiSSCo14) or national (e.g., OSCA15) scientific infrastructure projects will be required to generate a full digital inventory.
The process of developing a coherent collection database is supervised by an internal interdisciplinary team covering disciplinary and technical expertise. The director general is managing the whole process in order to stress the high priority and use the available resources effectively for the benefit of the whole museum and its national and international stakeholders.
2D digitalisation mainly refers to photos of collection objects but also flatware such as letters, drawings, and other documents. Scientific collection objects and their digital copies only have a value when they can be linked to information on the collector, object name, place and time of collections etc. Therefore, linking the 2D digital copies back to the objects and their metadata in the digital inventory is of extreme importance.
Current research aims to automatize the 2D dgital represenations linked to text, using neuronal and learning networks and other Artificial Intelligence (AI) methodologies for text recognition.
3D digitalisation comprise two main types: Three dimensional surface views of objects, as done by surface screening which can, for instance, be visualized and made accessible via the platform Sketchfab16. The second type are 3D scans, e.g., based on computer tomography (ct)17that reveal the internal structure of objects.
Due to the high operational effort and huge amount of digital storage space needed, only a very small selection of objects will be 3D digitized. Prioritization will be defined on relevant research projects and representativity for public purposes.
Implementing modern technologies such as IIIF further allow exposing these digital representations with accompanying live data. In addition to data describing the objects and derivatives themselves, selected elements like agents, geographical locations, models, or descriptive terms, domain specific information can be leveraged to foster further dissemination of the data.
In addition to open content, the concepts of open reproducible research and open source refer stronger to the processes.
The major aim of open reproducible research is thus to implement measures that facilitate and improve how research is documented and to generate awareness for the importance of standardized and comprehensive protocols and workflows - optimally in the form of comprehensive digital lab-books. This not only includes complete records of all analysis steps but also detailed information about the nature and source of the underlying raw data and to also report failed experiments.
OpenSource refers to publicly available software and the availability of source code in the respective programming language. This means that the code is freely accessible and comprehensively documented. OpenSource code can thus be regarded as a complete construction manual for software, which can not only be used to reconstruct, but also to modify and adapt the functionality of the software. OpenSource software is usually published under an open license that regulates how this software can be used by third parties.
Whether software is open source does not indicate quality differences with respect to commercial (non-open) software. However, the availability of the source code for open source software facilitates the detection of programming errors ("bugs") by the community, which may result in a more rapid implementation of updates and thus improvement of the software quality.
At the NHM, we are committed to open reproducible research. We are aiming at
-
developing strategies to improve standardization of research documentation.
-
generating awareness for transparent and open digital research documentation in the form of workshops and training sessions.
-
using shared open lab notebooks in the form of project-specific GitHub repositories 18.
Measures to achieve these goals include advanced training in transparent documentation of bench work and bioinformatic analyses prior to publication. Workflows should be stored in electronic form, which makes lab-books searchable and facilitates sharing protocols. Shell scripting, the R-markdown language and Jupyter notebooks are bioinformatic tools, which all aim at combining bioinformatic analyses with comprehensive in-line documentation.
We have implemented a new seminar series 19, which represents a mix of research seminars, journal clubs and bioinformatic workshops. Specifically the hands-on workshops will facilitate practical training and help to raise awareness for the importance of standardized and transparent documentation.
Published (and unpublished) research projects, which include computer-based analyses, should be documented in a dedicated project folder that follows a standardized folder hierarchy. Subfolders should include a (1) "raw data" folder, a (2) "scripts" folder which holds custom software specific to the project, a (3) "shell" folder which contains shell scripts, Jupyter Notebooks or markdown file to comprehensively document analysis pipelines and (4) an "analysis/results" folder for intermediate or final analysis files, such as figures and tables.
Various in-house and cooperation projects have already resulted in custom software developments. We envision that in-house programming at the NHMW will play an important role and will further increase in the near future. We are fully committed to open source and in order to increase the impact and visibility of our software, we make all of our code available as open source via public repositories on our official NHMW GitHub account20.
This further facilitates publishing the software in accompanying journal articles and to regularly maintain and update the code.
The documentation (i.e. "script" and "shell") folders of each project folder should be backed up as a GitHub repository on the personal GitHub account of the researcher who leads the research project. The link to the repository should be included and made public in the published manuscript based on the corresponding research project. Moreover, unpublished research that is documented this way can easily be tested, repeated and shared with collaborators.
Citizen Science refers to scientific activities of the broader public not employed by the respective academic discipline which contributes to scientific knowledge in various areas21. Typically, citizen scientists contribute data, often in the area of biodiversity, astronomy, or history. As many projects deal with topics linked to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), citizen science is ascribed a transformative function22.
The NHMW is engaged in citizen science activities right from the beginning, albeit it was not called so. Many collections have their origin in lay activities, and many volunteers contribute to the scientific output of the museum since decaded. In 2017, the NHMW published a citizen science strategy23. Currently, there are various citizen science projects, ranging from mapping amphibia, meteorites, or fossils, up to describing species and developing red lists.
We want to keep and strengthen our traditional communities and engaged persons, and also want to motivate new communities and also younger people, handicapped or otherwise disadvantaged groups. We want to increase scientific literacy and contribute to the democratization of knowledge.
In addition, we want to broaden the disciplinary access including the archive; one option is crowdsourcing in order to digitize and open manuscripts of expeditions and other scientific endeavors.
A digital platform24 to showcase projects in which members of the public can engage and contribute to science or collection management has already been launched on the NHMW homepage. The NHMW is also represented at the Austrian Platform „Österreich forscht25" and should be linked to the European Portal EU-Citizen.Science26.
In addition, a platform featuring digitised data that requires further annotation or transcription is aspired to allow direct input from the public. This could include, for example, transcribing historic labels or inventory books written in old handwritings, as well as georeferencing historic collection sites in the collection databases. Experts may also update species identifications based on open digital images of collection specimens.
Moreover, when it comes to digitizing the museum\'s collections, new opportunities for public participation can be created. People from outside the institution should be invited to pose questions to the museum\'s collected data, which in turn should be integrated into the (internal) scientific discourse when relevant questions arise. Through these interactions and participation with museum visitors, e.g. in the form of entered data from the Deck 5027, a bidirectional knowledge flow between science and society can be achieved.
Linked to the Austrian Citizen Science Network "Österreich forscht", an interdisciplinary Research Network (Forschungsverbund) at the University of Vienna, together with the Austrian Academy of Science (ÖAW) is to be established. Main targets of the Research Network "Citizen Science" are to connect scholars within and across research institutions, create a "theory of citizen science" by developing a common understanding of its methods, analysis, and activities in general as well as develop infrastructures.
Free access to scientific publications in digital form (via the world wide web) is a key requirement of the Open Access movement, particularly so, when it comes to research results that have been publicly funded. For around 15 years, an increasing number of researchers from a wide variety of disciplines have been advocating this goal.
The Budapest Open Access Initiative defines Open Access as follows:
"By 'open access' to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited." (Budapest Open Access Initiative, 2002)28
However, Open Access is much more than access to the publication text
alone. Correct licensing (e.g. with Creative Commons license
models29) is essential to allow the re-use of results, data and
texts.
In addition, the FAIR criteria (findable, accessible,
interoperable, reusable)30 provide, among other things, for the
interoperability of research results. In relation to scientific
publications this requires clearly structured content tagging so that
machine-aided reuse of data is possible. In the case of publications,
this can, for example, be done using semantic XML publishing, which will
increase the discoverability and reuse of the research results.
In general, Open Access distinguishes between the golden and the green path: the golden path denotes immediate open access publication, the green path (also known as "self archiving") denotes successive publication (often after a certain moratorium) in institutional or disciplinary repositories. Hybrid Open Access refers to the open access publication of scientific works after payment of an open access fee. Article Processing Charges (APCs) are fees charged for publication of contributions in some Open Access journals. In general, these processes change the business model of the publishers - they earn less by selling the articles as they are open access but earn in processing the articles and offering a platform.
The current situation at the NHMW shows that despite the fact that no coherent system to support open access publication is currently in place at the NHMW, a large portion (60% of the journal articles) of the scientific works of NHMW researchers is published in open access journals (Figure 3). This is largely due to two factors: a) scientific journals in biosciences are gradually transforming into open access journals and b) financial support by the Austrian Science Funds FWF, which has an open access policy and matching funding for research resulting from FWF-funded projects. Complemented partially by financial support of the research departments.
Figure 3: Publications of the NHM Vienna in 2021 classified into impact factor, peer reviewed, and open access publications (left panel) and according to their type (right panel). Graphics: Andreas Kroh, NHMW. CC-BY-4.0.
Summing up, Open Access lowers barriers for access to research results and thus improves the visibility of the scientists' research results, thereby also increasing citations. Improved visibility, in turn, promotes exchange and feedback within the community and with other stakeholders. Open Access further increases transparency and shows what public research funds are used for.
To ensure the widest possible dissemination of research carried out at the NHMW, ideally all research results published by NHMW staff and their collaborators should be freely accessible and re-usable. On a wider scope Open Access at the NHMW should also include access to the collections, both those of research specimens and the library holdings.
The budget to publish open access is increased in order to cover Article Processing Charges and/or Open Access Fees on cost of buying journals. In addition, online catalogs providing an overview on the existing open access sources will be established and/or extended.
As part of the library services, a competence center for publication consulting is to be established. This new service will include information and clarification on APCs (article processing charges / publication fees) in the context of publications in open access or hybrid journals as well as advice on the reliability of publication models (double or triple dipping) and warnings on the issue of predatory publishing.
The administration and awarding of the in-house Open Access publication fund will also be a task of the library. Here, the library will consult with applicants on funding options and decide on the allocation of publication budgets while clarifying funding possibilities from third-party sources.
In order to keep these competences up to date and to continuously expand them, the library will participate in cooperations and networks on Open Access, such as the newly established Open Access office of the Arbeitskreis für Kunst- und Museumsbibliotheken (AKMB).
In internal training, all library employees are to be taught basic knowledge in the area of Open Access. Detailed information on the homepage will provide public information about the activities in the area of Open Access as well as information about the legal framework and licensing models.
As a further step, it is planned to set up an institutional repository for making in-house research publications available, for example, within the framework of second publication rights.
As a traditional library task, making Open Access visible also includes incorporating and presenting Open Access options in the public library catalog (OPAC). A workflow for cataloging open access publications and labeling them in the metadata is to be established.
In order to increase the visibility of research carried out at the NHMW and in order to make research results of NHMW scientists available to the widest possible audience, NHMW journals by the NHMW publishing house are progressively transformed into open access journals. Currently, Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs), however, are not assigned to articles published in NHMW journals, because the technical infrastructure to provide landing pages on article level are not available at present. The Crossref XML was identified as the most suitable data scheme. At present different software solutions for database-supported generation of article-level landing pages in line with the requirement of the DOI Foundation are surveyed. Technical and logistic implementation will depend on the availability of the necessary funds.
In March 2021 the popular print magazine of the NHMW was relaunched in a novel design developed in cooperation with the design studio Capitale. The print magazine is produced by the publishing house of the NHMW together with the PR department and appears quarterly. In the future an online version of the magazine is planned. Draft design of the online version was again accompanied by the studio Capitale.
According to the Open Innovation Strategy for Austria31, the involvement of citizens in a scientific process can range from pure data collection to citizen-initiated research projects in which scientists work on a scientific question together with citizens\' initiatives. These new formats make it possible to develop broadly distributed knowledge by involving external knowledge providers. The opening up of the research process is based on four central criteria that mean added value for science and society:
Adaptivity: Reflecting and adapting the research project to ongoing learning experiences or needs of the participants.
Anticipation: understanding societal needs and applying proposed solutions to real-world problems.
Openness: clarifying what kind of opening up of the scientific knowledge process makes sense; sharing knowledge with a broader audience
Inclusion: inter- and transdisciplinarity of research projects, adequate heterogeneity of external partners with regard to the research objective
Introduction and state of the art
Deck 50 as open space for experimentation and innovation is an attempt to integrate the four central criteria for open innovation while shaping a new museum reality.
With its architecture, cutting edge technology, and innovative communication formats, Deck50 facilitates lively discourse and knowledge transfer for topics and themes that impact and shape our society: Climate change, environment, biodiversity, digitalization, artificial intelligence, nutrition, health, resource use, ethics, space exploration; to name just a few. Currently relevant issues as well as futuristic scenarios need to be viewed from different perspectives. To enable this dynamic exchange, it is key to provide easy access to knowledge, allow for creativity, and include diverse parties. Holistic reflection that facilitates participation and communication between science and society is needed in light of new innovations and technologies that bear the potential of leading to disruptions in our society.
The "human aspect" is integral to all topics, projects and ideas that animate Deck50, given that our perception is influenced by many diverse factors. Social developments in the wake of the pandemic have shown how emotions can override cognitive processes, influencing our actions, decision-making and interpersonal communication.
At Deck50, interdisciplinary research collaboration in the museum context brings new insights into topics such as participatory knowledge transfer that are central to the space. New knowledge can feed back into the exhibition room and shape future strategies for inclusion, concepts, and space designs. Furthermore, art and design can act as a vector for knowledge. By means of creative visualizations, even complex data can become emotionally tangible for diverse audiences.
Another goal of Deck50 is to provide a dynamic network for innovative topics and to involve a variety of stakeholders: scientists from all disciplines, citizens, associations, NGOs, activists, artists, representatives from politics and business, as well as companies. Projects and ideas catalyzed within the framework of Deck 50 are characterized by their inter- and transdisciplinary nature and are oriented towards acute social issues. The added value is that new knowledge is generated together through participatory formats, adding new dimensions to scientific questions. These jointly gained insights and emotional experiences can serve as signposts for the future.
„Knowledge creation is collaborative and interdisciplinary approaches are essential to 21st century problem solving -- for this we need everyone, not just a few. Open doors -- open minds."32
When involving partners for innovation workshops, dialogue forums and other participatory formats to foster innovative topics, a variety of complemenrary stakeholders is involved, such as scientists from all disciplines, citizens, associations, NGOs, activists, artists, representatives from politics and business, as well as companies and industries. In addition, interested colleagues from administrative departments of the NHMW are invited to share their expertise, when it comes to social innovation and sustainability management.
Prominent innovation hub activities were the launch of the SDG Dialogue Forum and the presentation of the Circularity Gap Report in cooperation with the Austrian governement and other stakeholders in order to actively contribute to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and the 17 SDGs for Austria. In the future, similar stakeholder events and innovation workshops will held.
The NHMW follows two key pathways, the first learning by doing, the second are dedicated courses.
Learning by doing currently takes place in the frame of developing a joint database for all collections. The house-wide workshops and information events, the workshops in the collections as well as the face-to-face work with the database developer increased the understanding of FAIR data processes.
In addition, mainly supported by DiSSCo and in future also OSCA and the project Skills4EOSC, courses of dedicated topics will be offered.
As the acquired data will be very heterogeneous and from various disciplines, there will also be a need for data stewards and vocabulary groups that define domain specific vocabularies (taxonomy, chronology, chorology, terminology, typology etc.) and correlate them with existing controlled vocabularies and gazetteers (geonames, wikidata, Getty Art and Architecture Thesaurus, perio.do etc.) in order to enable semantic connections and in the long run, linked open data.
Making data open and accessible is an important goal. However, for certain types of data legal, ethical or scientific reasons may either restrict or delay the timing when they are made publicly available. These may include personal data (e.g., collectors or or of collection material that may want to remain anonymous) or exact localities of rare and threatened species or of archeological sites. For scientific data, a publication in a scientific journal may be required before the data is made publicly available. Legal and ethics best practise guidelines will be prepared. In addition, an advisory board will be created to advise and guide staff members to ascertain that Open Data is achieved legally and ethically correct.
The European Science Cloud (EOSC33) developed from a network into an association according to Belgium law. The NHWM is a real member, one from about 10 in Austria. Next to supporting the development of the association as a whole by commenting documents such as the SRIA or workplans, the membership is linked to voting rights as well as to access to specific information and resources.
Based on the real members of EOSC as well as other stakeholders, the EOSC Support Office Austria was founded34. The key assets are the working groups which support the implementation of Open Science in Austria. The NHMW established and led the Key Performance Indicator (KPI) working group in order to develop impact criteria as well as the collections working group in order to advocate the needs and benefits of scientific collections.
The workplan of the EOCS-SOA is lined with effort, expressed in persons months and resources needed for technical infrastructures. The BMBWF is asked for financial support.
EOSC Focus is a H2020 project and aims to adapt the EOSC to the needs of the stakeholder. It very much supports the institutional development of the EOSC association. The NHMW is somehow linked partner via the Technical University Vienna (TU Wien), the details to be clarified during the next month.
The NHMW is one partner in the H2020 project Skills4EOSC. Key target of the project is to enhance skills and capacities to implement open science workflows. The NHMW will perform tasks to mainstream good practice in collection digitisation across Europe. Outputs will be guidelines, online courses, and practical training with selected collections. The project will start in September 2022.
This European project aims to prepare the establishment of a Distributed System of Research Collections (DiSSCo35) as research infrastructure in order to facilitate access and use of scientific collections. Key partners are the European Natural History Museums. With two Person Months (PMs) the NHMW currently cannot really contribute but can profit from the standards and workflows developed. The NHWM has asked the Austrian Government to bring DiSSCo on the ESFRI roadmap for Austria.
Based upon a group of research collections in Austria being interested in DiSSCo, the OSCA36 Consortia formed in order to enhance synergies between the institutions with respect to the digitalisation of the scientific collections. The BMKOES supports this process financially. Key targets of the three-year-period are 1) the development of a work-plan with funding options, 2) increase the capacity to manage collection data according to the FAIR criteria, and 3) the implementation of case studies as proof of concept and showcases.
The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) is a global network and portal providing access to biodiversity data from collections, monitoring programmes, and faunistic assessments from academia as well as from citizen science. Austria - as other countries - support the network financially. The coordination of GBIF-AT37 has the Umweltbundesamt. The NHMW contributed data from the botanical and bird collections.
The jointly at the NHMW and the University of Vienna, Botanical Institute developed portal JACQ38 aims to jointly administer the herbaria of different organisations in Europe.
The portal THANADOS39, developed at the NHMW, offers access to open data around archeological burials in central Europe. It is one of the first contributions to the European initiative Time Machine40 and is also aggregated by ARIADNEplus41.
The H2020 project FAIRICUBE aims to enable to share gridded data and algorithms beyond classic Earth Observation via the FAIRiCUBE HUB. This mainly relates to environmental data und will help to govern natural resources, biodiversity, and climate change. The NHMW will mainly contribute to the selection, implementation, and analysis of use cases based on its collection and research data.
At the NHMW there are already many projects which support the implementation of Open Science (cf table), some of them, such as ABOL42 (Austrian Barcode of Life) where the NHM coordinated the Austrian activities, link open genetic data, open collection data, and open distribution data in order to give insights in functional biodiversity, or biodiversity change.
Aim of the Open Science Strategy to support the projects when developing digital infrastructures, and to learn from the rich experiences already present.
We are grateful to all our colleagues who supported this process in various aspects and discussed with us the strategy at a specific workshop in April 2022. We also thank our Scientific Advisory Board for seconding our strategy and giving valueable hints.
Footnotes
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See also: Fanelli, D. (2018). "Is science really facing a reproducibility crisis, and do we need it to?" PNAS 115(11): 2628--2631. ↩
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Moedas, C. (2015). Open Innovation, Open Science, Open to the World. http://ec.europa.eu/research/openscience/index.cfm ↩
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Research Data Alliance International Indigenous Data Sovereignty Interest Group. (September 2019). “CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance.” The Global Indigenous Data Alliance. GIDA-global.org ↩
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https://www.nhm-wien.ac.at/en/research/central_research_laboratories/micro-ct ↩
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The NHMW has an own GITHUB account: https://nhmvienna.github.io ↩
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https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3511088 ↩
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https://nhm-wien.ac.at/jart/prj3/nhm/releases/de/upload/cs_strategie_screen.pdf ↩
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Open Innovation Strategie für Österreich, bmwfw, 2016. ↩
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Martha Fleming, Open Minds -- Open Doors, In: Museums - Social Learning Spaces and Knowledge Producing Processes, Kulturstyrelsen \ Danish Agency for Culture, 2013, p 148ff. ↩
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https://journals.univie.ac.at/index.php/voebm/article/view/6270 ↩