About

Our mission is to ensure that all Urban Vitality research is of high quality, reproducible, transparant and efficient.

Open science

In our view the goal of open science is to make science more accessible (both within and outside academics), reproducible and transparent. Open science practices include preregistration, making data FAIR, open peer-review, publishing open access, citizen science, open science policies and incentives. Open science is not a goal in itself, but a means to an end: high quality and transparent research.

Research integrity

In our open science research manual some chapters focus more on quality and integrity aspects because sharing materials is most valuable if it is of high quality. Chapters concerning privacy and research ethics provide the boundary conditions for open science. Open science and research integrity should go hand in hand. Therefore we are not only inspired by open science principles but also by the Netherlands Code of Conduct for Research Integrity and the REWARD alliance to optimize research potential and reduce research waste.

Advice, tools and training

To achieve our mission we developed three services: advice on research methods, stats, FAIR data and open science (UV Open science support desk), a toolbox with open science tools and procedures (UV Open science research manual), and training resources (UV Open science learning community).

'Mensen in Beweging'

The UV Open science support desk was developed within the program Mensen in Beweging . This program consists of several subprojects, so called work packages. One work package concerns the quality of practice-oriented research, from design research to randomized controlled trials. With help and feedback from 'Mensen in Beweging' and Urban Vitality researchers we developed and are still developing the UV open science support desk and the UV open science research manual.

The UV Open science support desk

Within Urban Vitality and the HvA expertise and information on topics such as methodology, statistics, FAIR data management and open science is not always findable and sometimes fragmented. The UV Open science support desk gives researchers one access point for questions/advice an open science topics. The support desk will also be able to monitor the types of questions it receives and use that information to inform activities such as training, FAQs, infrastructure, and acquiring new expertise. We hope that the support desk will increase the visibility of the services by the data steward(s), qualitative and quantitative methodologists, and in the near future hopefully the privacy officer and librarians.

Published by  Urban Vitality 8 January 2021