RoRI at ESOF 2022

Crossing borders, engaged science, resilient societies were the themes of the recent EuroScience Open Forum conference in Leiden, Netherlands from 13- 16 July 2022. I was lucky enough to attend to present a poster on RoRI’s project on Experiments in research funding: lessons from partial randomisation which explored novel ways in which research funders are trialling processes of grant allocation. 

In addition to speaking to lots of delegates about our poster, which was great fun, I also had the opportunity to attend several of the keynote and workshop sessions. This included a fascinating panel on team science which explored what this is, how it works, its benefits and challenges making it work. The panel discussed the many definitions of team science, and how a team could be mono, inter or trans-disciplinary, but always involves different types of expertise. 

The panel went on to consider the drivers of team science and how these vary by context and field. When is team science synonymous with co-produced research? How can it become a vehicle for increasing equality and diversity in research teams? With large teams, there is always a challenge of all contributions being appropriately recognised and rewarded, which can serve as a barrier to participation, particularly for early career researchers. Some felt that it was important to ensure compliance with open practices so that all contributions were recognised; others felt that broader culture change in research was the only answer. This echoes our recent paper on open data incentives, which explored the relationship between culture and other types of interventions, and how these circle around each other to create change. 

ESOF 2022 was a lively and well organised conference, with a rich diversity of content which allowed for serendipitous connections, as well as in depth focus on evergreen challenges for researchers, meta-researchers, funders and other stakeholders.

Delegates can view posters, presentations, performances, and insights from ESOF 2022 until September 30th. Our RoRI poster is also available to download here.