About us
The interdisciplinary LMU Open Science Center (OSC) has the mission to promote and to foster open science practices at LMU Munich and beyond.
Transparency and reproducibility lie at the core of scientific integrity. Pursuing these goals through open practices, for example by preregistering studies, and by providing open data, open materials, analysis scripts for computational reproducibility, and open access versions of the published results increases the efficiency, validity, and credibility of research. We subsume these practices under the term “Open Science”. Furthermore, independent replications are vital to establish the robustness and generalizability of research findings.
We seek to promote open science by offering advanced training programs and workshops for early career researchers and senior faculty members, public talks, the development of core curricula on open research practices, and original research on meta-science and reproducibility. Even more, we seek to develop and implement alternative incentive structures in science that support the adoption of open science practices.
The OSC aims to be a central knowledge hub for all practical questions surrounding open science, including questions on intellectual property rights, data privacy, consent forms, and software solutions.
Finally, the center’s mission includes connecting existing initiatives at LMU institutions and beyond, as well as initiating an (inter)national dialog with funding agencies, publishers, service providers, and other external stakeholders to drive open science policies forward.
These steps promise to lead to a faster accumulation of knowledge and the potential to provide substantial benefits for science – and for society.
(See also A portrait of the LMU OSC)
In October 2022, the LMU OSC joined the German Reproducibility Network (GRN), which is a multidisciplinary consortium that aims to increase transparency and trustworthiness of scientific research. The Network’s goals are to promote open research practices through training and community building, to conduct meta-research, and to work with stakeholders across the sector to ensure coordination of efforts at the national level.