On November 27th, the Dutch Reproducibility Network was launched (NLRN). NLRN is a national network with the goal to increase the quality and efficiency of research in the Netherlands by coordinating, supporting and strengthening initiatives on reproducibility and transparency in all scholarly disciplines.
We congratulate our colleagues from NLRN with this milestone!
OSC-NL and NLRN share many goals, as Open Science and Reproducibility are topics that go hand-in-hand. It is therefore natural for OSC-NL and NLRN to collaborate. In fact, many members of OSC-NL are already active in NLRN, either in the NLRN steering committee or advisory board. At the NLRN Launch Event, possibilities for future collaborations were explore, for example on joint efforts to stimulate and facilitate ReproHacks.
With the addition of NLRN to the Dutch academic landscape, it is also relevant to indicate how and where OSC-NL and NLRN differ in their strategies and roles, and how they complement one another. To this extent, OSC-NL and NLRN have published a collective statement that explains where these initiatives overlap, and what sets them apart.
In short, OSC-NL is a national community of researchers and research supporters who make their OS practices visible and accessible to their peers, and provides input to policy, infrastructure and services to both local and national stakeholders. NLRN, on the other hand, is a network that brings togethers institutes, local initiatives and other stakeholders to increase the reproducibility of science, focussing on stakeholders alignment and agenda-setting.
Making the overlap and differences explicit is not only relevant for the Netherlands, but also for other countries where OSCs and RNs co-exist – which happens ever more often, as the number of OSC and RNs continues to rise across the globe.
With OSC and RNs teaming-up, you can expect many new events and initiatives to stimulate Open and Reproducible Science!