Toward inclusive Open Science: Bridging WO, hbo, and mbo for regional impact

Workshop Overview For the Open Science Festival 2025 in Groningen, the working group of Open Science in across the North organised a workshop to facilitate the network building for the institutions within the Universiteit van het Noorden. we organised a workshop to broaden the discussion of strengthening collaborations between universities, HBOs and MBOs. As we looked to kick-off the workshop, we asked the participants on their affiliation and respective role, to gauge who was being represented. The group presented a nice representation between research, academic and policy staff amongst universities, HBOs and knowledge institutions (i.e. KB, National Library of the Netherlands). However, it was a bit unfortunate that no one from MBOs were participating in our workshop, leading to the question whether MBOs engage in Open Science practices? The vision of our working group was shared amongst the workshop participants, calling them to soundboard their ideas and share experiences with building collaborations amongst universities, HBOs and MBOs. As our vision looks to strengthen the dissemination of research and education amongst northern institutions to be better integrated into local society, learning from others’ perspectives on best practices and challenges faced was sought to ensure we can achieve our ambitions. To ensure our participants could also learn from each other, we organised the session as a world café to provide sufficient opportunities for each participant to discussion the questions posed by us. Below are the questions we posed and the summary of the feedback we received. Participants discussing questions amongst their tables, while the organiser clarifies questions Discussion 1 - What types of knowledge, voices, or partnerships are lost when hbo and mbo are excluded from Open Science? The general response from the participants focused on the loss of specific types of knowledge & learning, e.g. practical experiences in the field, different perspectives, if HBOs and MBOs are excluded from Open Science initiatives. Furthermore, distance to Dutch society grows when MBOs are excluded. Thus, public trust in institutions and difficulty to connect to society when conducting transdisciplinary research is facilitated. The general consensus focused on ensuring the importance of connection by sharing knowledge & learning and also build a sense of community between the specialised technical knowledge that is essential for research Discussion 2 - What practical steps can we take to build Open Science infrastructures that recognize applied, community-driven research? There were many discussions relating to the knowledge transfer amongst the different institutions to enable closer collaboration. Starting from the broad discussion on understanding what we mean by infrastructure, i.e. hosting buildings closer together vocational education on the (university) campus, the focus shifted towards sharing facilities for easier dissemination of knowledge. While there may be infrastructure already in place, it was not so obvious to our current participants. Thus, enabling the opportunity for individuals to find each other, work together and use each other’s expertise becomes essential. The initial steps would be to map existing solutions, i.e. knowledge bank of solutions, and set up a central location where such knowledge is openly shared. By weaving such data into a format of selected infrastructure, a digital platform where people can find each other to broadly disseminate information would be well received (image drawn from feedback). Next Steps While a collaboration between universities, HBOs and MBOs, was not immediately created today, the workshop provided input on how we can look to better engage with each other to foster an environment for collaboration. With feedback from participants was generally positive, it shed light that these collaborations are important to facilitate the broader dissemination of Open Science towards society and societal stakeholders. We will work on our respective ambitions and we hope to share as we look to build upon our findings and put groundwork on the productive discussions held at the workshop.