LMU Open Science Center’s FAIR Data Management expert, Reema Gupta, attended the EBRAINS Summit 2025 (@ebrains) with her team to present their NHP-EBRAINS project, an open-source pipeline turning messy multi-lab primate electrophysiology data into something actually FAIR and usable! 🧠

More details on NHP-EBRAINS here: https://gin.g-node.org/NHPRestingState/NHP-EBRAINS/wiki/

Some highlights from EBRAINS Summit 2025:
- Neurobagel’s (https://neurobagel.org/) approach to metadata hubs - creating an open-source ecosystem for distributed dataset harmonization and search for federated discovery without centralising everything.
- Martin Schrimpf (@mschrimpf) on NeuroAI, an interdisciplinary field merging neuroscience and AI, as well as the work Brain Score (https://www.brain-score.org/) is doing regarding model benchmarking.
- The BRiDGE project (https://bridge.incf.org/brain-research-international-data-governance-exchange) on making data and tools interoperable across international brain initiatives - important for roles at LMU labs that involve collaborating with data on international projects.
- Google Summer of Code (GSoC) (https://gitlab.ebrains.eu/ri/projects-and-initiatives/bids2ebrains/bids2ebrains) project on automating BIDS-to-KnowledgeGraph registration- this project aims to integrate BIDS-compliant neuroimaging datasets from external repositories into the EBRAINS Knowledge Graph.

💡A quick recap on some especially interesting booths at the summit:
The siibra-explorer booth (https://ebrains.eu/data-tools-services/tools/siibra-explorer), BIDS booth (https://bids.neuroimaging.io/index.html), Knowledge and Data services booth (https://ebrains.eu/data-tools-services/data-knowledge), and the Modeling and Simulation booth (https://ebrains.eu/data-tools-services/modelling-simulation).

Reema’s top highlight was finally meeting and having insightful conversations with the people behind the tools she works with every day and uses to build her project!

#EBRAINSSummit2025 #EBRAINS #OpenScience #FAIRData #LMUOSC

Prof. Dr. Felix Schönbrodt (@nicebread), LMU Open Science Center’s Managing Director, joined a workshop on “Instructional Design”, held by Antje Manske at the Leibniz Institute for Psychology (@zpid.bsky.social).

Here were some of the key topics:
- ADDIE, a framework for instructional design that stands for these five phases: Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation.
- Agile Instructional Design, an iterative and learner-centered approach to creating materials that emphasize collaboration and continuous feedback.
- Bloom’s taxonomy, a framework that classifies observable knowledge, skills, attitudes, behaviors, and abilities into categories of learning goals.

These skills and themes will be applied to an agile course on Research Data Management 📊.

Workshops like this help us continuously improve how we teach Open Science and empower researchers through better learning design.

#OpenScience #InstructionalDesign #LMUOSC

We’re excited to share that the cBRAIN Lab🧠, led by Inga Katharina Koerte at LMU Klinikum München (LMU Munich Hospital), has successfully completed our Switch to Open Program (SwOP) led by @MalikaIhle!

Over several months, we delivered tailored training and consultations using a flipped-classroom approach supported by our self-paced tutorials.
📚 Tutorials: https://github.com/lmu-osc

As part of the collaboration, we also co-developed and published a standard open research practice guide for the lab—now available as a reference for new projects and as an onboarding document for incoming team members.
📄 Guide: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16262260

We shared the lab’s achievement at the Neuroimaging Core Unit Munich (NICUM) Summer Festival to encourage other research groups to adopt and adapt similar practical guides (https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7360737896632336385/?actorCompanyId=91742131).

During our final offboarding session, we reviewed progress and revisited our customisable open research cycle diagram.
🔄 Diagram: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15630229

Team members reflected on their individual projects, identifying which checklist items were essential, recommended, or aspirational for each stage of the research cycle. Together, we built a group consensus and outlined a timeline of next steps toward the lab’s ideal open research standards.

It has been incredibly rewarding to see the sustained motivation and progress of our first “switched” group. Huge thanks to Alberto Villagran, OSC Fellow and cBRAIN’s Computer Scientist, and Anja Betz, cBRAIN’s Lab Manager, for their invaluable support throughout this process, as well as to Reema G., for her FAIR data sharing expertise.

We also gratefully acknowledge our funder, the Volkswagen Foundation (VolkswagenStiftung), for believing in the project and advancing open, responsible, and reproducible research practices.

#OpenScience #OpenResearch #LMUOSC

The LMU Open Science Center participated in the AI-Hub@LMU’s annual flagship event “KI-Symposium 2025” on November 10, 2025 💡 We presented a booth that invited visitors to reflect on key questions about the intersection of Artificial Intelligence (AI) 🤖 and Open Science 🔍

Our booth encouraged dialogue around AI and how it affects Research Quality, Reproducible Research, and FAIR Data Sharing. Visitors were also interested in the following topics:

⚖️ Can we balance openness and large amounts of new information?
A participant expressed concern that Open Science would open the floodgates to an overwhelming amount of materials being shared. An important focus of open science should then be increasing the share of reliable science, emphasizing quality over quantity.

🧠 How can openness help us confront human biases?
Another discussion centered around human biases, such as the unconscious bias to interpret data in ways that confirm one’s hypothesis, and how Open Science tries to mitigate these biases.

🔒 Where do we draw the line between openness and privacy?
A discussion on ethics in AI brought up the challenging issue of sharing health data openly while protecting patient privacy. A question was raised about whether AI possesses agency and then what would concepts like responsibility and accountability for AI look like.

By sparking these conversations, we set out to explore how openness and AI can evolve together 🌍

#ArtificialIntelligence #AI #OpenSience #OpenResearch #LMUOSC #LMU

And with that, the LMU Open Science Center has completed its 4th fully hybrid Open Science Summer School! 🙌 Five days filled with learning, training, and putting open science and open research practices into action. Check out all the material (slides, lecture recordings, workshop materials) of the open science training track here: https://osf.io/x639j/files/osfstorage and of the instructor training track here: https://osf.io/tkwqs/files/osfstorage. Find all our self-paced tutorials on our GitHub organization: https://github.com/lmu-osc

📚 #OSSS25 highlights:
🔓 Seven public lectures covered a wide range of topics from making publications more accessible, to crafting clearer code and sharing materials to make research more replicable. These presentations combined theory with practical recommendations and live demonstrations.
💻 Interactive workshops gave participants guided experience with tools such as R, Git & GitHub, and Quarto. Sessions blended demos, group activities, and self-paced tutorials, helping researchers apply these tools directly to their own projects.
👩‍🏫 The newly introduced Train-the-Trainer programme equipped participants with didactics, teaching strategies, and practical skills to share open science knowledge with their peers. With these sessions, participants were both building skills and learning to become leaders of the open science movement.
🤝 Connection and collaboration were at the heart of the summer school. From hybrid networking sessions and small group discussions to sharing lunch together, participants built relationships with fellow researchers equally passionate about adopting open practices.

A heartfelt thanks to everyone who joined us and to the OSC team who shared their expertise and energy, including Reema Gupta, Pat Callahan, Dr. Sarah von Grebmer, Dr. Sara Lil Middleton, Florian Kohrt, Dr. @MalikaIhle, Prof. Dr. Felix Schoenbrodt (@nicebread), Elizabeth Waterfield (@bethwater), and Tejaswini Sharma.

Best of luck to all participants in implementing what you’ve learned to make your research more open, transparent, and impactful! Keep in touch, and see you in 6 months for a group check-in ! 🌍✨

#OpenScience #OSSS25 #LMUOSC

The fifth and final day of the Open Science Center Summer School 2025 is completed ✅ We have concluded a week full of learning, discussing, and practicing open science and open research skills. You can check out the slides and recordings of all the public lectures here: https://osf.io/x639j/files/osfstorage.

📌 Here’s a recap of Day 5:
💡 Participants joined breakout groups based on their interests in either open access, preregistration, computational reproducibility, or FAIR research data management. Facilitators guided these focused discussions, giving participants the chance to dive deeper into each topic.
🎯 To put new knowledge into action, Sarah von Grebmer led interactive activities where participants explored how to apply open science practices to their own projects. Together, they considered potential challenges and brainstormed strategies to overcome them.
🚀 In collaboration with @FORRT we launched the Train-the-Trainer programme, featuring insightful talks and hands-on activities led by Barbara Beege, Sarah von Grebmer, and Franziska Schrade. Participants explored teaching strategies, both online and offline, along with didactics, tools, and techniques. They also collaborated in groups to design ways of promoting open science practices in their own communities and explore their role as emerging leaders of open science.

Although the Summer School has come to a close, the momentum continues! We encourage you to keep exploring these topics and reach out if you’re interested in bringing open science skills into your own research journey.

#OpenScience #OSSS25 #LMUOSC

Nearing the finish line, we wrapped up our fourth day of the Open Science Summer School 2025 ✅We’re excited for the final day to bring together the skills we’ve explored throughout the week and launch the Train-the-Trainer programme ✨ where participants will not only gain new competencies but also learn how to effectively teach and share them with other researchers.

📌 Here’s a recap of Day 4:
💻 Vera Karlbauer and Jonas Hagenberg talked about the importance of having readable code for both the reader and author while giving practical recommendations: provide structure, follow programming style standards, and engage with reciprocal code peer review!
📝 Pat Callahan and Florian Kohrt were assisted by Reema Gupta in conducting two workshops. 1️⃣ The first workshop guided participants from downloading the Quarto software all the way to combining text and code to create reproducible manuscripts ready for submission. 2️⃣ The second concentrated on building a reproducible R environment and the considerations for publishing code with appropriate license and documentation.
🔬 Dr. Tim Errington promoted open science practices in research communities as a solution for key barriers to testing the replicability of studies, such as limited access to data, code, reagents. He presented insights from the Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology.

Although the public lectures are over, registered participants still have one more day to benefit from the workshops and interactive sessions! You can find slides and recording of the public lectures here: https://osf.io/x639j/files/osfstorage

#OpenScience #OSSS25 #LMUOSC

Crossing the half-way point of the Open Science Summer School 2025 as we complete our third day ✅ So far, participants have gained hands on experience using RStudio, practiced version control using Git, tackled Open Science topics like replicability, credibility, open access, and more! It’s not too late to register for the final two public lectures: https://www.pretix.osc.lmu.de/lmu-osc/OSSS25/

📌 Here’s a recap of Day 3:
🧑‍🏫 Prof. Dr. Richard McElreath (@rlmcelreath) delivered a timely and riveting talk to promote standards such as version control, testing, documentation, and continuous integration in making science more professional.
📖 Prof. Dr. Felix Schoenbrodt (@nicebread) broke down what open access is, why it’s so important for researchers and society, how to use tools like open policy finder https://openpolicyfinder.jisc.ac.uk/ to check if your publishers allow you to deposit preprint, postprint or fully formatted articles on preprint servers or institutional repository; i.e. do green open access for free!
📚 Member of the Research Data Management team of the Universitätsbibliothek München, Laura Meier held a workshop where participants worked in small groups to learn about research data management plans, explore relevant resources, and practice skills gained in the previous FAIR research data management workshop.
💻 Dr. @MalikaIhle engaged all participants in a workshop to explore version control using Git and collaborate through GitHub ending with the merge of their pull requests!

With just two days left, we are excited to see how much more knowledge and skills the attendees already gained from this summer school!

#OpenScience #OSSS25 #LMUOSC

I entirely share the sentiment of @nicebread that the issue of #OpenAccess seemed to be the least interesting part of #OpenScience. It feels more like an administrative, institution-policy issue. But, this story shows again that Open Access means more: It's vital!

#OSSS25 #LMUOSC

"Excel is software to make pretty tables, it's no software to make data analyses." Starting the day with an interesting, but super frightening public lecture of the @lmu_osc #OpenScience Summer School on "Science as amateur software development" by Richard McElreath.

#OSSS25 #LMUOSC