Open Science - from Idea to Impact

As researchers, we move through a full research cycle: from developing ideas and hypotheses, to designing studies, collecting and analyzing data, and ultimately publishing and communicating our findings. While many publishers, funding agencies, and high-quality journals nowadays foster and even mandate transparent processes throughout this cycle, this has not always been the case: Historically, researchers often faced strong publication and career incentives that led to questionable research practices and publication bias. These dynamics have contributed to replication and credibility crises across various disciplines.

Open science refers to a set of principles and practices aimed at making research processes and outputs as transparent, reproducible, and accessible as possible, and has emerged, in part, in response to these crises. In this workshop, we examine open science across the entire research cycle. The workshop is open to researchers with and without prior experience with open science; all core concepts will be introduced in an accessible way.

Learning Objectives 
By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:

1. Explain how questionable research practices contribute to low reproducibility and replicability of research.
2. Describe the core principles of open science and their application across the research cycle; and how they address questionable research practices.
3. Discuss experiences with open science principles and how these are reflected in the expectations of funding bodies, publishers, and academic career trajectories.
4. Identify at which stages of their own research process these open science practices can be implemented in a realistic and strategic way.

Contents

1. The problem: Why open science?
   - Questionable research practices, publication bias, p-hacking, replication crisis
   - Incentives, reputation, and career considerations
2. What is open science?
   - Principles: transparency, reproducibility, reusability, open communication
3. Open science across the research cycle
   - Idea & hypothesis generation, including citizen science-inspired approaches
   - Preregistration and registered reports
   - Planning for data, code and materials sharing (FAIR data, repositories, licensing, documentation)
   - Open access strategies
   - Communicating open, robust results to academic and non-academic audiences
4. Hands-on group work: Applying open science to your project
   - Thematic break-outs depending on research stage and interest, following the research cycle
5. Wrap-up and personal action plan
   - Identifying 2–3 concrete open science steps for the next 6–12 months
   - Resources, tools, and support structures at the University of St. Gallen

Format
Interactive workshop combining short input sessions, plenary discussion and hands-on group work. In the second part of the workshop, participants split into thematic groups according to their research stage and the open science practice most relevant to them (e.g. citizen science approaches to hypothesis generation, hypothesis preregistration, data, code, and materials sharing, open access publication, science communication). Within these groups, they work directly on their own projects and receive peer and trainer feedback. 

Prerequisites
No prior experience with open science required. Participants should have at least one current or planned research project (e.g. PhD project, paper, grant idea) that they can use as a basis for the hands-on exercises.

Trainer
André Walter is a lecturer at the University of St.Gallen and a political scientist with a background in comparative politics, political economy, and computational social science. His work combines quantitative social science, historical and contemporary political data, text-as-data methods, and reproducible computational workflows. He has extensive experience with research data management, data documentation, code-based analysis, and the development of reusable research datasets. His work is closely connected to Open Science principles, particularly transparent research design, reproducibility, and
the responsible sharing of data and code.

Sabou Rani Stocker is the Open Science PhD candidate at the newly established Open Science Office at the University of St.Gallen and a psychologist by training. Sabou is currently a research associate and PhD student at the Institute of Behavioral Science and Technology at the University of St.Gallen. She is passionate about open and collaborative research practices.

Target Group
The workshop is open to PhD candidates and postdoctoral researchers at the University of St.Gallen, the Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences (OST), the St.Gallen University of Teacher Education (PHSG), and other member universities of the ENGAGE.EU alliance. Are you from another institution? Please write to fd@unisg.ch to express your interest.

Time and place
Thursday, 29 October 2026, 10:00–12:00 (Online)

Language
English

Register here

Registration is open until 19 October 2026.