Fostering open science to research using a taxonomy and an eLearning portal

Abstract

The term "Open Science" is recently widely used, but it is still unclear to many research stakeholders - funders, policy makers, researchers, administrators, librarians and repository managers - how Open Science can be achieved. FOSTER (Facilitate Open Science Training for European Research) is a European Commission funded project, which is developing an e-learning portal to support the training of a wide range of stakeholders in Open Science and related areas. In 2014 the FOSTER project co-funded 28 training activities in Open Science, which include more than 110 events, while in 2015 the project has supported 24 community training events in 18 countries. In this paper, we describe the FOSTER approach in structuring the Open Science domain for educational purposes, present the functionality of the FOSTER training portal and discuss its use and potential for training the key stakeholders using self-learning and blended-learning methods.