Research skills in the Open Science Era
CIVIL-608 / 2 credits
Teacher(s): Anciaux Guillaume, Gabella Chiara, Palatella Vincenzo, Weil Charlotte Gisèle
Language: English
Remark: Next time: Spring 2025, Max 15 participants. These credits count towards the transversal skills credits
Frequency
Every year
Summary
Research Skills in the Open Science Era is a course designed to explore the landscape of modern research tools and practices. You will gain insights into principles of open science, smart information retrieval, ethical publishing, coding best practices, and comprehensive research data management.
Content
Sem.1 - Intro & General
- Principles of research (Research in Engineering; Research outputs; Peer review process; Reproducibility in research; FAIR principles)
Sem. 2-6 - Information literacy & Smart publishing
- Searching for information (Theoretical bases: scientific information as a network, elementary information retrieval, search equation; Overview of information sources: articles, books, patents, reports, theses, databases, search engines; IA in research: concepts and tools
- Copyright, plagiarism & citation (Intellectual property basics: copyright laws, patents; Citation best practices: citation as prevention against plagiarism; Reusing other's content: tables, images, illustrations)
- Publication and Open Access (The evolving ecosystem of scientific information: Open Access, publishing agreements, institutional and funders policies, authorship; Visibility and impact: introduction to bibliometrics and altmetrics; Collaborative writing: Overleaf, Authorea)
Sem. 7-10 - Coding for research
- Coding good practices in the Open-source Era (Software introduction, programming languages; Open-source & business models; Code style and tools (e.g. linters); Version control, Collaborative coding and code publishing; Collaborative coding and code publishing (release, packaging, code reviews); Citing software (software heritage); Documentation (e.g. md, readme, doc automation))
- Data visualization / Scientific figures (Theory of design principles; Graphical integrity; Types of plots)
Sem. 11-14 - Research Data Management
- RDM Good practices in the Open Research Data era (FAIR data principles; Research data lifecycle: from raw data to data publication, including processed data and associated software and code; Metadata, interoperability, machine-readability; Standards in civil/environmental engineering; Data protections laws; Data Management Plan)
- Hot and cold data (Storage, sharing, backup, publishing and archiving; Data repositories; Data organization, file naming and documentation; ABC of data protection)
Keywords
Bibliographic databases, Smart publishing, Search strategies, RDM, Data, Dataset, Software, Code, FAIR Data Principles, Plagiarism, Scientific publishing, Copyright
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course, the student must be able to:
- Develop the appropriate skills to support Open Science compliant dissemination and re-use of scientific output
- Formulate a search strategy for his/her own PhD output (tool selection, search query design, literature monitoring)
- Determine the consequences of intellectual property laws in the re-use of scientific information and content
- Design Open-Source compliant software to be used in research
- Identify and apply RDM good practices and FAIR principles
Transversal skills
- Collect data.
In the programs
- Number of places: 15
- Exam form: Project report (session free)
- Subject examined: Research skills in the Open Science Era
- Lecture: 26 Hour(s)
- Project: 14 Hour(s)
- Practical work: 16 Hour(s)
- Type: optional