This week, members of the OpenScienceLab and the Open Science Community (OSC) took part in the final event of the European project Skills4EOSC, held in Paris. The OpenScienceLab, as part of the Carlos III University of Madrid (UC3M), contributed actively to several sessions, alongside other UC3M participants, showcasing the university’s ongoing commitment to open science and skills development in Europe.
UC3M and OpenScienceLab contributions to the final Skills4EOSC event
On June 10, Marina Sánchez (UC3M and OpenScienceLab) took part in the session Competence Centre Services and Training, within the conference Ensuring quality in training and service delivery. Her presentation focused on an innovative app developed to support the Quality Assurance Framework (QAF) created within the Skills4EOSC project. This framework addresses a need in the open science landscape: ensuring the quality and effectiveness of training materials.
The QAF provides a structured approach to evaluating and improving training resources, aiming to guarantee that they are up-to-date, community-driven, and aligned with the Minimum Viable Skillsets competence model, the FAIR-by-design methodology, and the Ethical and Legal aspects from an open science perspective. And also with already existing quality practices in learning resource catalogues and frameworks. The app presented by Sánchez allows training providers to self-assess their Train-the-Trainer (TtT) courses, offering an accessible and practical tool to apply the QAF criteria and promote continuous improvement.
On June 11, Eva Méndez (UC3M and OpenScienceLab) contributed to the session Empowering EOSC through skilled Data Stewards: when Open Science training matters. Her talk highlighted the importance of data stewards within the EOSC ecosystem and their impact on open science practices.
Later that day, in the panel session “Open science from the bottom to the top: Upskilling all the actors of open science”, José Manuel Vega, a Skills4EOSC-trained PhD candidate at UC3M, represented the voice of early-career researchers.
Looking ahead: UC3M’s commitment to national Open Science training
Looking ahead, UC3M—together with BSC-SSH (Barcelona Supercomputing Center) and FECYT (Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology) is co-developing the Spanish Competence Centre for training, an initiative that will play a key role in consolidating and expanding capacities in open science training and support in Spain.
The presence and contributions of the OpenScienceLab team at the final Skills4EOSC event reflect both the lab’s dynamic involvement in shaping the European training landscape and UC3M’s broader institutional dedication to fostering high-quality, impactful open science practices.