1. Bern University of Applied Sciences
  2. About BFH
  3. Management, Organisation + Legal foundations
  4. Offices
  5. Open Science Office
See table of contents See table of contents

Open Science Office

In line with the National Open Access Strategy and the Swiss National Strategy for Open Research Data of swissuniversities, the BFH has declared the promotion of Open Access and the implementation of Open Science at the BFH to be a strategic goal. A focused specialist service serves as a central point of contact for general questions relating to Open Science.

Open Science

Open Science stands for freely accessible and transparent science, including free access to publications (Open Access, OA), FAIR (Findable - Accessible - Interoperable - Reusable) research data, Open Research Data (ORD) and Open Educational Resources (OER). The implementation of Open Science represents a profound cultural change in research and teaching. To achieve this, the BFH has developed a focussed strategy. The relevant Specialist Service coordinates implementation measures and serves as an internal contact point for researchers and lecturers.

Contact

Open Access_LOGO

BFH Open Science Strategy

BFH Open Science Strategy

Open Science has to be sustainably established in the operations and organisation of the BFH. For research and teaching activities, this requires a range of both centralised and decentralised measures. In addition to redesigning infrastructures, strengthening the acquisition of competencies and increasing visibility, targeted incentives must also be created to promote cultural change on a broad basis. The measures to be prioritised are set out in a roadmap and will be implemented by 2025.

Vision

BFH researchers and lecturers have the knowledge, skills and resources to practise Open Science at all levels.

Mission

As a future-oriented university of applied sciences, we empower and support our employees in implementing the precepts of Open Science.

Focal points of the strategy

Grafik_OS_Strategie

Links

Open Access

Open Access means unlimited, free access to scientific information. Open Access publications have many advantages:

  • global, free and fast access to research findings
  • good retrievability of open access publications via search engines
  • increased visibility and range of publications
  • increased research efficiency by promoting international and interdisciplinary cooperation
  • promoting the transfer of research into practice

The BFH, in particular the BFH Library, promotes Open Access in a variety of ways.

Further information

To support green open access, the BFH has set up an institutional repository called ARBOR (Applied Research Bern Open Repository).

A repository is a publicly accessible document server. ARBOR features bibliographic information on publications as well as full texts. 

BFH staff can find help with ARBOR on MyBFH.

The BFH Open Science Fund supports publications in Open Access as well as Open Research Data.

BFH employees can find information on how to apply on MyBFH.

On behalf of its members, the Consortium of Swiss Academic Libraries negotiates for transformative Open Access agreements with publishers, in particular Read&Publish-Agreements. These allow researchers at the BFH to publish Open Access in selected journals free of charge.

BFH employees can find the lists of journals and help on MyBFH. 

 

Open Research Data (ORD)

In addition to Open Access to scientific publications, Open Research Data is increasingly being demanded by funding organisations (SNSF, EU) and scientific journals. As far as possible, the data should be archived and documented according to FAIR principles:

  • Findable: Research data must be designated and indexed so that they can be found.
  • Accessible: The Research Data must be accessible.
  • Interoperable: Research data must be technically stored in such a way that they can be accessed, read and processed via standardised interfaces.
  • Reusable: Research data must be documented and formatted in such a way that it can be reused by third parties.

Open archiving according to FAIR principles offers a number of advantages:

  • Research results become more transparent and can be better reviewed and retraced.
  • Shared datasets reduce the effort for obtaining the same information several times.
  • Freely accessible datasets that can be cited as a separate publication increase the visibility of research.

For employees, the BFH supports the publication of research data as Open Research Data via the Open Science Fund.

As a member of the association «OLOS», the BFH also has an institutional area within the Swiss data repository «OLOS», through which research data for which no suitable disciplinary data repositories exist can be published and archived.

Further information