Category: OSC the Netherlands

Following the new OSC-NL governance, there is an opening for three new Members for the OSC-NL Board from November 1st, 2025, for a 2 -year term. We are very happy that three members, namely Anna van ‘t Veer (Chair), Anita Eerland and Vera Heininga will stay on the Board for the sake of continuity, and we thank Alexandra Sarafoglou, Raul Zurita-Milla and Caspar van Lissa for their engagement during their term as members of our board!

The OSC-NL network of open science communities is governed by the OSC-NL board, consisting of six representatives of local OSCs. You can find our full new governance structure, including responsibilities of the various roles in our network, on this page.

If you want to nominate yourself, please let us know via the form below before Sept 15. In this form you are asked to give a short motivation for joining our board. We also expect you to shortly present yourself at the first Assembly of the Members on October 10th, which will take place in Utrecht/online. There, participants will vote to appoint new Board Members.

The goals and responsibilities of the OSC-NL Board are:

OSC-NL Board Members

 The OSC-NL Board is responsible for all central decisions of OSC-NL.

The minimal effort requested from Board Members is to attend the periodic Board Meetings, an annual meeting with the Advisory Committee (not established yet) and the yearly Assembly of the Community Members online, and to prepare for those meetings by reading the topics on the Agenda and its related documentation. Additional requests can be to participate in panels, to present OSC-NL at events or to give input on policy as an OSC-NL representative. Estimated effort is 56 hours/7 days a year.

Board Members:

• Meet at least five times a year (online or f2f)
• Their participation on the board is voluntary and unpaid ( but there is budget to cover travel costs when you represent OSC-NL)
• They all represent a Local Open Science Community
• They stay on the Board for a two year term, and can get re-elected

OSC-NL Board Periodic Meetings

The Board shall meet regularly and at least five times a  year or as often as the Chair or other Board members deem appropriate. Board meetings can only take place when at least half of the Board members are present.  A Board member may be represented at the meeting by a fellow Board member authorised by them in writing. A Board member may represent a maximum of one co-Board member at a meeting. The representing Board member should make this clear at the beginning of the meeting.

The Chair oversees the preparation of the agenda of Board meetings. Both members of the Board and the  Executive Team can suggest agenda points. For all agenda points it is noted whether a decision is needed. If a decision is needed, a clear proposal should be presented to make it easier to discuss and reach a decision based on consent decision making. The role of secretary will be taken up by someone from the ET. 

Board decisions may be taken outside a meeting, provided that all Board members are given the opportunity to voice their opinion and raise objections to a proposal. In the event of an indecisive Board, the Chair can cast the decisive vote.

One of the aims of OSC-NL is to provide input to policy, infrastructure and services on a national level. We vocalise the opportunities and needs of those who put OS to practice. National stakeholders in the OS landscape ask us to provide input to policy, infrastructure and services but we also start up consultations or petitions ourselves if we feel this is needed.

Therefore, OSC-NL has opened up an open consultation Panel page, where requests for input with the broader Open Science Community in the Netherlands are shared. These can differ from policy consultations, ideas for national working groups, petitions and surveys to sticker slogans.

If you want to join this panel, and to see which consultations are open at the moment, got to the Panel Page

On May 12th 2025, we gathered at Radboud University in Nijmegen for a day full of insight, learning, and awareness. The goal of this workshop day was to equip participants with know-how to make their research, research support, and/or events (such as presentations, training, engagement activities) more open, participatory, and inclusive in the broadest sense of the word.
Participants came from both within and beyond Dutch borders to participate in this event, representing all stages of academic careers, from research assistant and PhD candidates to support staff, researchers and professors. Once everyone had arrived, the day began with opening speeches stressing the importance of this event, both seen from the organizers side as well as the participants’ motivation for coming to discuss and learn how to put Equity, Diversity and Inclusion into our (Open Science) practices.

Following this, participants could choose to partake in two out of three workshops:

A) Leveling the playing field for careers in science & measuring marginalization by Afreen Khalid and Ze Freeman

B) Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion in the research lifecycle by Thomas Gültzow and Hanne Zimmermann

C) Inclusive events, work environments and building ally skills by Esther Plomp and Melanie Imming

In Khalid and Freeman’s workshop, the focus was on navigating the research world as a member of a marginalised group. They shared research-based insights on how to support others with similar diverse backgrounds who are pursuing a career in science. The presentation emphasised the importance of privacy and critically assessing when data collection is truly necessary. One example discussed was booking a Eurostar train ticket — should the options go beyond “Mr” and “Lady” (the literal choices provided), giving a whole list of options to give everyone the feeling of being seen, or should the question be removed altogether? How do we ask these questions in our research? And will we actually use all the answer options or lump them into ‘other’ anyway (in which case just providing an ‘other’ option at least tells the participant how their data is used, and ‘not listed’ would be even better as it also prevents ‘othering’ language). At the end of the workshop, participants were asked to imagine themselves as part of a marginalized group, consider a potential challenge they might face, and then develop a possible solution. Want to reflect on these topics more? The slides will soon be added as a next step resulting from the grant proposal.

Gültzow and Zimmermann’s workshop focused on ensuring diverse and inclusive representation throughout the research process. On the list of covered topics was: the research team, population representation, reflexivity, and transparency regarding researchers’ positionality. All topics boiling down to how Open Science practices, such as pre-registration (pre-study documentation of hypotheses, methods, or analyses), can help make research more diverse, inclusive, and transparent. The key takeaway may be that conducting research on diverse groups is not enough–people from these groups must be actively included in the research (process). Moreover, even small design decisions can significantly influence how inclusive a study is. Find this session’s slides here, and find a paper with inclusivity and diversity elements for preregistration here.

Plomp and Imming’s session highlighted how we can drive change in situations where we have more privilege and power than others. As an example, they mentioned how members of the Open Science Communities could act as change agents by modeling inclusivity. Participants were encouraged to train and use their ally skills, for instance by speaking up for others. They also shared resources on how to organise accessible, inclusive initiatives. Find the slides including exercises, resources and tips for basic ally skills here.

The day concluded with a closing speech that highlighted how discrimination can take hidden forms, and shared examples of misconduct where it might be least expected, even within one’s own department. The main takeaway was a call for humility: we may not always know the best way to be inclusive on an individual level, but we shouldn’t be afraid to try, ask and learn how to do better. It was a fitting end to a workshop day that encouraged honest reflection and practical conversation. Big thanks to the organisers for creating this event that gave us this opportunity.

Written by members of the community, including Signe Glæsel, Melanie Imming, Esther Plomp, Thomas Gültzow, and Anna van ‘t Veer.

On 5 July, 2024 OSC-NL hosted its second Knowledge Exchange Day – what a day it was! Representatives from eight Open Science Communities traveled from all corners of the Netherlands to join the event.

The morning started with an engaging Faces of Open Science workshop, led by Susanna Bloem and Marc van Mil. Everyone tapped into their creativity as we created puppets and told animated stories on different persona in open science. We discussed their approaches to open science practices and where their focus lay (on collective or individual efforts, inside or outside of institutions). We even tackled some controversial statements from the perspectives of these persona. It was eye-opening and a potential tool to bring back to local communities to spark discussions on diverse perspectives and motivations in open science.

After lunch, we broke into groups to discuss plans for the OSC-NL Open Science Week, funding opportunities, and workflows for knowledge exchange. 

A few developments to take note of:

• At the Open Science Retreat in March this year, a new narrative for sustainable open access was discussed. This led to the creation of a Call to Commitment, which anyone interested in the future of Open Access in the Netherlands can endorse. More information will follow.
• The OSCNL executive team will work on launching a new cohort for the incubator program for new communities as well as a toolkit for managers

On the whole, the day was a great opportunity to see where local communities stand and share approaches. The workshop and discussions were a good reminder that everything we do in the open science communities is a collective effort. We look forward to working together again soon—perhaps at OSF24, if not sooner.

For now, enjoy the summer, and let’s keep the momentum going!

The Open Science Communities-NL (OSC-NL) network will receive a grant of 400,000 euros for a period of four years. This was decided by the Open Science NL steering committee on 17 May.

OSC-NL will use this to work on knowledge exchange, community management and sustainability of our bottom-up network. Professionalisation and expansion are also on the programme.

OSC-NL’s grant application outlines their plans for the next four years. The application is openly available here. The plans are divided into four work packages, each led by one of the members of the Executive Team.

• Networking
• Knowledge management
• Increase visibility and findability of local Open Science Communities and open science expertise
• Organisational embedding and perpetuation of OSC-NL after the project period

SURF will facilitate the Open Science communities as a partner in open science, to realise the ambitions in the exchange of knowledge, community management and embedding the Open Science Communities in a sustainable way.

For more information, see the formal announcement of OpenScienceNL.