Even with strong interest and enthusiasm within an institution, open science cannot implement itself. Meaningful adoption of open practices requires common language, accessible training, dependable infrastructure, and collaboration among roles that don’t always intersect.
In their recent article, "Introducing Open Science in higher education settings: a case example from a college of allied health sciences", published in Evidence-Based Communication Assessment and Intervention, an interdisciplinary team from Xavier University and the University of Cincinnati documents the steps and supports involved in embedding open science practices in an academic health sciences setting.
The team—Carrie Rountrey (Xavier University) and Andrea Ford, Collin Brice, Lynn Warner, Seung-Yeon Lee, Amy Koshoffer, and Victoria Wangia Anderson (all University of Cincinnati)—spans faculty in Speech-Language Pathology, Rehabilitation Sciences, Nutrition, and Health Informatics; research and data services librarians; and doctoral trainees in Communication Sciences and Disorders, bringing complementary expertise to tackle a common challenge: moving open science from aspiration to a sustained practice.
The paper focuses on the conditions and structures that support open science adoption in practice. Using a logic model grounded in implementation science (the scientific study of methods and strategies that facilitate uptake of evidence-based practice and research into routine, real-world use), the team describes a multi-level approach that paired Center for Open Science (COS) training modules with hands-on practice, established a Community of Practice for ongoing peer support, and aligned open workflows with existing institutional structures such as faculty development programs and doctoral education. Instrumental to this effort was the Open Science Framework (OSF), which functioned both as infrastructure—linking protocols, data, and outputs across the research lifecycle of each project—and as an instructive tool that made research processes visible to trainees who often encounter only polished final products.
The results point to practical lessons for other institutions. While training was essential, it wasn’t sufficient on its own. Sustained adoption depended on protected time, interdisciplinary collaboration, and shared spaces to reflect and troubleshoot. To support reuse and adaptation, the team made their approach transparent and replicable by openly sharing agendas, resource guides, and OSF templates. In keeping with their advocacy of open science practices, their paper was also shared as a preprint on OSF.
In this Q&A, Rountrey, Ford, and Koshoffer discuss what motivated the initiative, challenges encountered along the way, how OSF functioned as infrastructure for both research and training, and what others in the scholarly community can take from their experience.
Q: What initially drew you to open science? How did that interest motivate your efforts to develop this open science initiative?
Carrie Rountrey: My interest in OS grew out of a long-standing tension I experienced as a clinician-turned-scientist: the disconnect between how research is produced and how it is actually used in clinical and educational settings. I was increasingly drawn to OS as a way to make research more transparent, accessible and usable, not just at the level of individual projects, but for interdisciplinary research projects (across departments) and hopefully across the institution.
What motivated this initiative, in particular, was the realization that many faculty and trainees were interested in open science practices but lacked structured support, shared language, or institutional scaffolding/support/incentives. Writing the grant forced us to articulate OS not as a personal value or set of tools, but as an organizational change effort that required attention to training, incentives, infrastructure, and culture. That framing ultimately shaped the design and execution of the project.
Amy Koshoffer: I have been interested in OS for most of my library career. When I first started, the Center for Open Science was getting off the ground. I learned much from those early training sessions. Librarianship is about the access and preservation of information. For me, OS is a natural extension of this philosophy for research output. I also believe that access to all research output, especially data, improves the quality and impact of research. Working with this team was a great opportunity for me to engage with a community of researchers who appreciate the benefits of open science and are willing to make the effort to make their research as open as they can.
Andrea Ford: My interest in open science started in the middle of the doctoral program. The Principal Investigator for a scoping review had preregistered her study and asked me to review it as I began the project. I had never heard of it, but upon reading it, I was genuinely intrigued by how it offered a concrete way to make our process systematic, transparent, and accessible. From there, I dove more into other OS practices like self-archiving, data management and sharing plans. The more I dove in, the more excited I became! I started to see OS as a way to connect research and practice more closely by removing the “mystery” of our process.
Q: Your paper presents a case example of introducing open science in a College of Allied Health Sciences. What were some key findings or takeaways from this initiative?
CR: One key takeaway was that training alone is not sufficient to support meaningful adoption of open science practices. Faculty and trainees benefited most when training was paired with opportunities to practice, reflect, and problem-solve together, particularly through a Community of Practice.
Another important finding was the value of interdisciplinary collaboration. Having librarians, faculty, and trainees working together shifted open science from being perceived as a compliance task to a shared scholarly endeavor. Finally, we found that aligning open science efforts with existing institutional structures, such as faculty development programming and doctoral education, made the work feel more legitimate and sustainable, even beyond the grant period.
AK: Though open science has many benefits, it is not widely adopted and there are research culture and institutional barriers to these practices. There is much work to do to create a sustainable culture because these practices are not second nature. Working in a community makes this effort much easier.
AF: One key takeaway is that adoption of OS—like any practice, innovation, or initiative—takes time and systematicity. We highlight our approach to doing this at a college level, with arguably mixed success, but there is more than one way to do so. The goal of this paper was to help others learn from our successes and challenges to increase their own success. It’s never perfect, but in the end, any attempt is better than nothing!
I also agree with Amy and Carrie—it takes a lot of collaboration to get something like this off the ground. We were fortunate to have a committed group of researchers, librarians, and doctoral students who recognized the value of this endeavor. It was that energy that really sustained us, and I think it is an important takeaway. In my opinion, it can’t just be one person with the megaphone; it takes a village of people in the right places and with the right roles to broaden the reach of an initiative like this!
Q: Which open practices did you focus on first, and how did those choices shape the way research and training unfolded in your setting?
CR: We intentionally focused first on practices that were both high-impact and approachable, including preregistration, transparent reporting, data sharing decision-making, and use of OSF for project organization. These practices allowed us to emphasize workflow and decision points rather than perfection. Participants were encouraged to start with whatever practice seemed most feasible for them, regardless of what stage of the research cycle the project was in. For example, even participants with manuscripts in peer review were encouraged to post their drafts as preprints (journal allowing, of course) and participants with projects in draft form were also encouraged to set up a project page. This helped normalize open science practices early in the research lifecycle and reduced the perception that open science only applies at the point of publication.
AK: I came in later to the project but still felt there was much to learn. I had not submitted a registration before, so I used the follow-up trainings to learn about them and design a hands on session to discuss this topic in more detail. It was very helpful to take what we learned in each training and explore the topics deeper through practical exercises. And if someone in the community had experience, their sharing what they did made the open science practice more accessible.
AF: Oh, good question! This is always a tricky one, as there are so many possibilities. For us, the benefit was that COS had an established curriculum we could implement that highlighted practices that, as Carrie noted above, were high-impact and highly accessible. We got lucky! That said, in our early discussion with Crystal Steltenpohl, our trainer, we emphasized the need to include topics with which we had direct experience, such as preregistration. We saw this as an opportunity to match real-life, hands-on experience (the successes and challenges!) with the information they were learning.
Q: What role did the OSF play in supporting your work?
AK: A big challenge to adopting open science is the varying level of supporting infrastructure at individual institutions. The OSF gives researchers a tool and functionality that brings all the pieces of the research into one platform. Often different researchers are comfortable with certain tools and the OSF allows researchers to continue to use their favorite tools or what their institution supports. Additionally the OSF helps the overall project organization and makes it easier to collaborate with colleagues within their institution and across institutions. It also allows researchers to share the parts of the project the researchers want to share while keeping other parts within the research team. The OSF has been receptive to the needs of researchers such as added enhanced metadata and providing different types of persistent identifiers and to the institutions with the creation of dashboards for member institutions demonstrating impact through metrics. Our team made good use of the OSF at every stage of the project.
CR: In this project, OSF functioned both as infrastructure and as a teaching tool. Practically, it provided a shared space to organize projects, store materials, link protocols, data and outputs, and maintain continuity across the different stages of the research lifecycle. Conceptually, it made the research process visible. Using OSF in trainings and in the Community of Practice allowed us to show (not just describe) how decisions unfold over time. This visibility is especially powerful for trainees and early-career researchers, who often only see the polished final product of research.
AF: For me, OSF serves as a regular part of almost all my research projects. Whether preregistering, preprinting, or hosting all the materials and data I want to share for the project, it is a critical tool for my research process and organization. In fact, as part of any paper planning I do, I have a whole section on what materials/data we need to prepare to share!
Q: What benefits did you observe after adopting open practices, either for researchers, trainees, or the broader institution? Were there outcomes that surprised you?
CR: For researchers and trainees, one clear benefit was increased clarity and confidence in managing projects. Participants reported feeling more organized and more intentional about decision-making. Trainees, in particular, benefited from seeing research modeled as a transparent, iterative process rather than a black box.
At the institutional level, we were encouraged by early signs of cultural shift: open science language appearing in faculty development conversations, cross-departmental collaboration increasing (even within our own project), and growing interest in shared resources. One surprise was how much participants valued the community aspect of the initiative, often as much as the technical skills themselves.
AF: For our doctoral students, I noticed increased interest and actual use of OS practices as a result of the infusion of this into coursework! One of the doctoral students who is an author on our paper has fully adopted OS in all that he does. From using preregistration and data sharing for his own projects to submitting to conferences to share more about OS, these practices have become part of who he is as a researcher. In fact, he is now an active member of CSDisseminate, a working group of researchers in Communication Sciences and Disorders who aim to disseminate knowledge and experience with OS practices, and brought another doctoral student into the fold. Although there is certainly variation in uptake across students, even exposure in graduate school is making a difference and snowballing engagement in a good way!
Q: What were some challenges that you encountered in planning and executing this initiative? How did your team address them?
CR: Time was the most persistent challenge. Faculty and trainees were interested but constrained by existing workloads, which reinforced the importance of protected time and institutional support. We also encountered hesitation around data sharing, particularly in clinical and human subjects research where ethical and regulatory considerations are complex. There was some concern about “scooping” discussed early in the trainings.
We addressed these challenges by emphasizing decision-making over mandates, offering discipline-specific examples, and leveraging librarian expertise to navigate data governance questions. Importantly, the funded grant itself, even though it was a small internal grant, provided both legitimacy and modest resources that I believe helped reduce barriers to participation.
AK: Agreed that time is the biggest challenge. Time to learn, time to practice, and time to do. As mentioned above, we designated time for learning and practicing. As community members develop competencies in open science practices, it will take less time to do.
Q: What advice would you give to researchers, departments, or institutions that are just beginning to explore open science?
AK: I wholeheartedly agree with Carrie’s perspective. And open science practices do not need to be an all or nothing approach from the beginning. Building up step by step is a great way to start and normalize open science as part of the research workflow. And working to integrate incentives to implementing open science practices, such as time for the work and recognition of open science’s worth and impact, can help with adoption.