Providing answers with participatory final projects Promoting open knowledge with everyone and for everyone is one of the UOC's strategic pillars. Since 2018, the University has been running a project to encourage students to prepare participatory final projects as part of their bachelor's or master's degrees: applied research with non-profit organizations, civil society groups or government agencies in order to meet a specific need detected by these organizations. Students analyse projects such as designing an application for unaccompanied migrant children, communication on responsible tourism, or public policies and the right to cities. In the words of Pastora Martínez Samper, "Participatory final projects provide added value both to the programmes offering them and to the students choosing to take them on. This is because everything, from their initial design to their final execution, is done in collaboration with another entity. In addition, the initiative helps strengthen the University's impact on our society, because the entities with which we collaborate are able to experience firsthand what we have to offer."
UOC promotes applied research that meets the needs identified by nonprofit organizations, civil society groups or government bodies.
The University joins the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) to prioritize content over metrics.
New research evaluation models The way research is assessed, a system currently based on journal impact, needs to change. This is the tenet of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), an international movement that promotes the assessment of research based on quality rather than the reputation of the journals in which it is published. The UOC, pursuant to its commitment to open knowledge, joined this initiative in academic year 2018/2019 to put it into practice both in its research activities and within the institution: a commitment to the promotion of qualitative assessment of research based on the social impact of its results instead of on publication metrics.
During this new academic year, "we have started to apply this criterion in internal calls for research funding," explained Nadja Gmelch, director of Open Knowledge Projects and coordinator of the plan since its creation. In addition, in relation to scientific output, the University encourages data from its research projects to comply with the FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) principles and already has six open datasets of results. Reinforcing this, the institution has already launched a FAIR research data management support service.
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