Open Science Tools Catalogue

There are many diverse tools that can support you in practicing Open Science or individual aspects of Open Science. They can be of great benefit, help you to save time and invigorate good scientific practice. Open Science tools, therefore, make research easier and can sometimes lift it to a new level.

Recognising suitable Open Science tools

 

In selecting tools for Open Science, it’s a good idea to check the selection criteria. This also includes checking to what extent the tool itself corresponds to Open Science criteria. Fundamentally it is a good idea to check which tools are already established in your own community.

You might find the following aspects helpful when selecting suitable tools:

 

  • Costs: Is the use of the tool free-of-charge? Commercial providers in particular often offer chargeable packages with expanded functions alongside free-of-charge use. Non-profit institutions generally offer a free-of-charge tool for end users. Its operating costs are financed via the budget of an institute or via membership models, for example.
  • Open Source: Is the tool open source? An open source tool offers more opportunities for further development and is often an important enabler for the dissemination and acceptance within a community. Examples are the programming languages R or Jupyter.
  • Operator: Who is the operator of the tool? This can be a commercial provider or a non-profit institution, including scientific infrastructure or research institutions. This can also be used to estimate how sustainable a tool is.
  • Community-driven: Does the tool lie in the hands of a scientific community? This has the advantage that the tool is thereby focussed on the needs of a community and that this has more influence on its further development. Crossref and DOAJ are examples.
  • Further openness criteria: Do the data have an open licence? Are standardised formats and interfaces used? Alongside open source, there would be further aspects for an “open” tool. For example, all data on Wikidata are CC 0 and machine readable via an API, and therefore widely reusable. The content in the DOAJ has a CC BY-SA licence.
  • Data protection: Am I processing personal data and does the tool fulfil the data privacy requirements (is it GDPR compliant)? If you are in doubt, contact the data protection officer in your own institution.

Information Information about data protection

This directory of available Open Science tools does not represent a concrete recommendation of the ZBW. This applies in particular in relation to data protection legal aspects which must be reevaluated for every tool. Particularly services that are operated in countries outside the European Union, are usually subject to less strict data protection regulations.

Please find out about the respective data protection regulations for the tools before you use them; if you are unsure, you should contact your respective data protection officer. To make the overview more transparent, the entry in the directory for every tool includes the name of the operator, the country of domicile and a link to the respective data protection declaration, as far as this information is known.