Latin American School of Transitions toward Open Knowledge (LASTOK) / Escuela Latinoamerica de Transiciones para el Conocimiento Abierto

Martin Andres Perez Comisso, Cristobal Olivares, Nicolas Didier

Funding Area: Capacity building / Construcción de capacidad

Problem Statement: The transition toward new knowledge production in Latin America has been rough. Research Institutions in the last decade have pushed for “academic excellence” to fulfill indicators mostly, developed by Global-North institutions. Since 2019 in Chile the National Agency of Research and Development (ANID) has been introducing notions of Open Access through their policies, with limited impact. In 2022 ANID adjudicated the instrument “InES Ciencia Abierta”, extending the conceptualization and actions around Open Science, and targeting institutional changes in relation to infrastructure and governance. Until mid-2023, 17 of 60 higher education institutions in the nation have been beneficiaries of the program, which main funding for technical hiring and IT infrastructure. There is still a huge gap between the researchers and policy makers in the nation in relation to Open Science and Knowledge. The future of the instrument is uncertain and the capacity building for young researchers in the nation is overlooked. Graduate training in the nation is misaligned with Open Knowledge culture and challenges. In that form, we propose to develop an intensive, 1-week, in-person school around Transitions to Open Knowledge, called LASTOK. Considering the central role of young and early researchers to the appropriation of Open Science tools and resources from a regional perspective. The event will be held in Spanish, and aiming to graduate students and young researchers.

Proposed Activities: We propose to create a one-week school in which we can develop different skills and abilities on integrating open science practices in the everyday realities of the assistants of this school. Specifically, we would like to target 5 topics on which the participants, being postgraduate students or researchers with a Bachelor degree, could improve their research ecosystems. These topics of this School and their objectives are: Ecosystem perception: to find the opportunity and goals in their own context of research. Impact in Latin America and Interdiscipline: to develop an interdisciplinary sensibility for understanding the academic impact in Latin America. Integrate Open Science in their projects: to learn about new practices to open their different processes of innovation. Foster networks of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI): to generate local networks of knowledge under the principles of RRI Project proposal: to propose a local project and its indicators to generate new research, adapted to their local context. To make this happen, we want to invite different Latin American scholars with experiences in the development of open science infrastructure, policies and educational systems to promote the accomplishment of the topics and their objectives. Logistically, we would divide the LASTOK in five days of work. The first four would be a close experience for a range of 40 to 50 registered participants for this experience. The last day would be open to everyone who would like to attend (thinking of a capacity of around 200 people), plus the signed participants of the previous days. From the first to the fourth day, the course would have an Opening Forum with special guests and the Latin American Scholars to create a first experience of open science a RRI talks. Later, we would have a Skills Session, in which the students would work on the different topics to develop better understanding of RRI, open science, impact of their research and ecosystem perception. To close the working day, there wil be a Closing Workshop, in which every student will create its own project (individually or in pairs) and everyday they will work with the invited scholar in the differents shapes of the project and finally, submit it until the end of the 4th day to presented on the 5th day in front of the open public. The organization team will print their projects in a physical form. This incentivizes the face-to-face instance. The closing day would have an Opening Forum with some of the scholars and guests of the course. After that, we would have Closing Presentations, in which each participant or group would present their projects in a poster and/or infographic paper. The ideal outcome of this presentation is that the participant can integrate the knowledge around the topics of this One-Week School to present a successful project.

Openness: We want to produce a safe, diverse and interactive learning space for the week of the program. This limited direct beneficiaries aims to produce a robust cohort experience of young scholars to foster their confidence, exchange ideas and develop new interdisciplinary understangings of Open Knowledge from a Latin American perspective. We consider the following aspects for openness to achieve this: An initial dedicated webpage, for news, applications and materials All materials will be also availible in Zenodo (pdf, text), OSF and Youtube (audio and video), in particular Opening Forums, that will also be transcribed The methodology and outcomes (poster) from the Closing workshop will be published in Zenodo, too. The last day of the event will be an Open event, where the guest scholars and participants will be sharing their perspective with wider audiences: Academic institutions, policy organizations (such ANID, ECLAC, Regional UNESCO, etc), Science-centered NGOs (such as Wikimedia) and others will be invited to the LASTOK seminar. A final report, after the will be shared 6-months after by the organizing team. The report and the evaluation materials (rubrics, surveys, and others) that we will be develop for this learning experience be also translated to English for further dissemination. We´re considering to incorporate aspects of Open Evaluation in the participant selection and feedback process.

Challenges: As many courses and conferences, in general, that work with people all over the world and external agents, LASTOK would not be safe from some contingencies. Cancellations of the scholars or assistants could hit the development of LASTOK. We’re going to generate an academic contingency plan in case we have a last minute cancellation, which we’re going to ask for material or videos to the scholar and rearrange the session with the other scholar and organizers. In the case that the scholar is canceling his or her visit with more than 2-months, we’re going to have other guests and scholars in waiting list. In the case of an emergency (2-weeks before the event) that’ll cancel the assistance of the registered participants, we will open the opportunity for him or her to invite another person of their community to use its registry. The first is that miscellaneous logistical challenges always appear such as safety, acclimatization and last minute illness (depending on the season which LASTOK will take place). We will have ready different classrooms, halls and lounges for the accommodation of the participants, whether they are students or scholars. For colds, we would have ready sanitary products for any participant who requires it. Finally, In terms of diets, LASTOK will provide coffee breaks and lunches, so we have to provide a variety of food. To avoid any inconvenience or incommodity, we will ask previously for any food preference or allergies of the participants and scholars.

Neglectedness: Open Science and Knowledge is an emerging learning community in Chile. The proponents last year co-lead, with other institutional members a first Summer School in Open Science and Knowledge. This project was funded by budget rearrangements between four institutional InES, which had the interest and focus to extend their outcomes to train their communities. The funding of this project in Summer 2023 was around $18.500.000 CLP ($22.015 USD), and involved around 16 people working on the organization and lectures, including 3 Latin American scholars (brought from Mexico, Colombia and Argentina). We decided to apply to the InvestinOpen2023, because currently the ANID-InES Ciencia Abierta does not offer any funding for training initiatives like this one. In addition, graduate training in Chile is usually funded by grants or institutional support, which does not fund this kind of initiative for their graduates. If we get this funding, we will also attempt to get other institutional sponsors which complement the funding for the event, and in particular, help us to get extra travel and accommodation support for participants outside Chile. We expect in the future to diversify this experience with other alliances, as well to foster inter-institutional support to make the maintenance of this kind of event in the country, to offer a recurrent Latin American-centered perspective about Open Knowledge and Science.

Success: We envision that a successful participant of LASTOK will be capable to integrate Open Knowledge strategies in their research practices, showed throught their research outcomes (papers, but also pre-prints, registrations, open educational resources, databases, and others). We will showcase the cohort achievements through the webpage, which will be following the participants for 6 months after the learning experience. LASTOK participants will present specific proposals of action in the last day, which will be based on their learning during the event. We expect that 20% of the actual proposals will be implemented during that time, and at leat 50% of the participants will have incorporated Open Knowledge practices in their communities actively. The activity of the participant´s network will be something that we also expect to see as a metric of success, and we will be monitoring their different interactions and exchanges, offering visibility to their projects, ideas and innovations. Other metrics that we hope is that the created resources get at least 500 visualizations in the year after the event, as well getting media attention from closing public session, with the milestone of 5 media notes in different national and/or regional specialized media.

Total Budget: $24000

Affiliations: Universidad de Chile / Universidad de Atacama

LMIE Carveout: The capacities from this event can be expanded to other nations in Latin America. Chile has become a hub for Latin American scholars to get graduate training, with an increasing presence of researchers from Perú, Ecuador, Colombia, Argentina, and Venezuela. We want to leverage this to address some linguistic and cultural gaps in Open Knowledge. We aim to make our resources and materials available for other participants in the region, who will be able to replicate this experience. We want to ensure gender parity on the participant selection. We expect to ensure a 33% of participants from other underrepresented backgrounds in the national ecosystem (discipline, territory, gender identity, ability, and others), to empower them as leaders in the local Open Knowledge community.

Team Skills: Our team connects different logistical and technical expertises. Our team has effective communication, disciplinary versatility, intellectual curiosity and humane generosity to deliver an experience and monitoring that will be engaging, robust, nurturing, and generous. In addition, our team includes people with project management experience on international courses, which ensures a set of resources for materials, catering, travel, and others that will be produced for the best possible experience to the participants. Our partnerships in the nation include other universities, policy institutions, international partners, and regional experts who will be willing to come to Chile to spend the week building capacities for graduate students. We are a highly committed group. In addition, lead is a Dr. in Science and Technology Studies, who also has previous experience teaching and organizing projects in Open knowledge and currently with a directive role in a local NGO. In addition, he was the academic coordinator from the previous open training in Chile in 2023, which served 60 staff and faculty participants. Our members have also robust understanding of qualitative and quantitative methodologies to be able to offer different tools, pathways, concepts and, frameworks to the participants on the experience to explore. This will be enhanced by the guest scholars who will be leading sessions and skill sessions, based on the particular selected cohort in LASTOK.

How Did You Hear About This Call: Word of mouth (e.g. conversations and emails from IOI staff, friends, colleagues, etc.) / Boca a boca (por ejemplo, conversaciones y correos electrónicos del personal del IOI, amigos, colegas, etc.)

Submission Number: 178