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LCCOS is recognised as an international leader in Open Science and a key agent in UCL’s research community. We continue to develop and expand how we share knowledge and drive change through research.
Case studies
Launch of Profiles enhances UCL researchers’ online presence
September 2023 saw the launch of Profiles, a much-improved platform for hosting UCL staff members’ professional profiles. A partnership between teams in LCCOS, Research, Innovation and Global Engagement (RIGE) and Information Services Division (ISD), the new profiles showcase current achievements and help to make a positive first impression on external audiences including peers, industry leaders and policymakers.
During the implementation project, LCCOS colleagues played a key role in testing and shaping the platform, and in consultation and communication with a range of stakeholders. The service runs on software from Symplectic who also provide technology for the underlying Research Publications Service (RPS).
Following launch, the LCCOS team continues to support the service, providing comprehensive guidance and customised reporting to faculties which has helped researchers engage with Profiles. Take-up continues to grow impressively. A year after launch, 3,700 research staff had a complete profile. Academics have embraced Profiles' new functionality - adding, for example, more than 9,000 availability labels, ranging from degree supervision to consultancy, to help external users connect with them.
Enhanced linking, formatting, searching and filtering, introduced since launch, have helped users navigate Profiles in new ways. Academics can now show how their work addresses the UN Sustainable Development Goals, helping to foster collaborations and partnerships. Exciting developments in the pipeline include adding grants information to Profiles and introducing group/department pages, as well as further integrating Profiles with other UCL systems.
Open Science highlights
The fourth UCL Open Science Conference took place in June 2024. This year, the focus was a showcase of the innovative and collaborative work of UCL researchers, attracting nearly 80 registrants and an engaged audience online. The session themes were: Policy and Practice; Enabling Open Science and Scholarship; and Research Projects and Collaborations. A poster session and networking event provided a platform for researchers to present their work, exchange ideas, and foster collaborations within and beyond the UCL community.
The Office for Open Science and Scholarship has established a new Citizen Science Community for UCL colleagues with an interest in citizen science – also known as participatory research, community action, crowdsourcing, or public engagement. The aims of this group are to enable collaboration and idea exchange between UCL staff and students and to gather ideas for a potential citizen science support service at UCL.
UCL Press has established a strong relationship with the V&A through an open access book series of high-quality research relating to the V&A’s collections and practices. Four books have been published since the relationship began in 2019, most recently a research guide for museum practitioners on Nazi-era Provenance of Museum Collections (Jacques Schuhmacher). That volume was published in May 2024 and has already been welcomed by key figures, including Deputy Chair of the UK Spoilation Advisory Panel, Judge Baumgartner, who called it “a timely work drawing upon first-hand experience in Nazi-era provenance research, providing a unique insight into the difficulties thrown up by the period”. Speaking at a presentation for V&A researchers, to encourage their work into the series, Director of the V&A Research Institute, Jo Norman, said they are excited by the size of the audience for the books in this series as seen in the global downloads they are achieving and place immense value on the relationship we have built together.
The first two books in UCL Press’s new textbooks programme were published during this year, An Introduction to Waste Management and Circular Economy (Stijn van Ewijk and Julia Stegemann) and Methods and Methodologies in Heritage Studies (Eds Rachel King and Trinidad Rico). These books are aimed at postgraduate and upper undergraduate audiences and offer an approach that complements taught material. The textbooks are written and designed in an accessible style that is engaging for students, offering a way in to these key topics. These books support courses in environmental engineering and science and heritage studies at UCL and by making these available as open access, not only do they save library expenditure on similar commercial offerings but they also extend the UCL brand by making its teaching resources available to relevant courses around the world.
UCL Press also published a series in the open access journal UCL Open Environment on the UNFCCC/COP which coincided with the COP28 meeting in November 2023. The UCL delegation were presented with this and promoted it at the meeting, as well as publishing some articles in the series, for example a research paper on the carbon footprint tracker for COP28, which was widely promoted by UCL.
UCL Open Science Conference, 2024.