Mission and vision

​Our research group strives to embrace Open Science as a fundamental mindset. This means that we aim to see Open Science deeply and sustainably integrated into our thinking and actions, and that we consciously give it a central place in our work.

We are committed to embedding the principles of Open Science in our research practice. In doing so, we seek to strengthen high-quality, inclusive, and impactful research within the research group, and to foster collaboration among researchers. In our research, we therefore pursue the following core values:

• Transparency: openness about our methodology, data, and results.
• Openness: research and research outputs are freely available to everyone.
• Reproducibility: research methods and data are shared in such a way that others can follow, reproduce, and reuse the decisions we have made.

With this mission and vision, we aim to create a stimulating research environment where Open Science is the standard approach, rooted in a shared mindset. Therefore, we strive to integrate Open Science practices from the very beginning of every research project. In doing so, we respect not only the distinct nature of qualitative and quantitative research, but also the privacy of participants.

Open House

We implement Open Science within Edubron through the concept of the “Open House.” This house represents the key building blocks of Open Science within Edubron and is based on the taxonomy of Pontika et al. (2015). The house is open to every Edubron researcher to explore at their own pace, with support provided by Edubron along the way.

The external and internal drivers for Open Science form the foundation of the Open House. Open Science is increasingly becoming a requirement from external funding bodies. However, we aim to implement Open Science in such a way that researchers also recognize and appreciate its added value for their own work.

The core structure of the Open House consists of three pillars. The Transparent, Open, and Reproducible workflow takes centre stage. This means making every research step as transparent and open as possible, so that others can follow and verify the decisions made and the results obtained. Open Data forms the second pillar and refers to making (parts of) research data publicly available. The third pillar, Open Science Tools, supports researchers in implementing the other two pillars. While these three pillars form the core of how we realize Open Science in our research, the extent to which each pillar is addressed in a project may vary depending on the nature of the project and the researcher’s learning trajectory.

A solid embedding of Open Science practices within our research group requires policies on Open Science at the level of EduBron as a research group, as well as at the Faculty of Social Sciences and the university. Making scientific articles publicly available through Open Access is also an integral part of this effort.

References

Centre for Open Science. (n.d.) https://www.cos.io/

GitBook Bot, Lambert Heller, datawomanHUB, mcancellieri, Bianca Kramer, Tony Ross-Hellauer, ilabastida, helenebr, Pedro Fernandes, & Jon Tennant. (2018). The Open Science Training Handbook. 10.5281/zenodo.1212495

Pontika, N., Knoth, P., Cancellieri, M. & Pearce, S. (2015, October 21-22). Fostering Open Science to Research using a Taxonomy and an eLearning Portal. i_KNOW Conference, Graz, Austria. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2809563.2809571

UNESCO & Canadian Commission for UNESCO. (2022). An introduction to the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science. 10.54677/XOIRI0696

Werkgroep Research Data Management en Open Science. (2025). Open Science: Verder bouwen aan een duurzame verankering in Vlaanderen. VLIR. https://vlir.be/publicaties/publicatie-white-paper-open-science-2025/