Open Science Retreat 2026

Session

Plenary Session

7 Apr 2026, 16:00

Sheppard Theatre (Centre for Alternative Technology)

Conveners

Plenary Session: Welcome & Orientation

• There are no conveners in this block

Plenary Session: Unconference Planning

• Heidi Seibold (Digital Research Academy)

Plenary Session: Lightning Talks

• Julia Pauquet

Plenary Session: Morning Stand Up

• Ruth Davies

Plenary Session: Recap of the Day

• Ankita Dolai

Plenary Session: History & Future of CAT

• There are no conveners in this block

Plenary Session: Presentations from Topic Groups

• Julia Pauquet

Plenary Session: Summary, Reflection, & Closing

• Danny Garside

Plenary Session: Recap of the Day

• Ruth Davies

Plenary Session: Recap of the day / instructions for last day

• Heidi Seibold (Digital Research Academy)

Plenary Session: Group Picture

• There are no conveners in this block

Plenary Session: Intro to Dinner Icebreaker - Getting to know each other

• Danny Garside
• Julia Pauquet

Plenary Session: Morning Stand Up

• Ankita Dolai

24. Welcome & Introductions

Danny Garside

07/04/2026, 16:00

26. Retreat Overview & Information

Julia Pauquet

07/04/2026, 16:10

25. Co-Organizer Presentations

Bethan Iley (OLS), Joyce Kao (Digital Research Academy), Ruth Davies

07/04/2026, 16:25

DRA (5 mins) - Joyce Kao
UKRN (5 mins) - Ruth Davies
OLS (5 mins) - Bethan Iley

91. Topic Group Formation

07/04/2026, 19:00

In this session we will see how many people are interested in which topic. Topic groups are usually comprised of 2-7 participants.

Topics that too few people are interested in will not be pursued further.
If groups get too big, we may split them into subtopics.

Choosing a topic can be difficult, yet you should choose one ;)
If you are unhappy with your choice, you can always switch....

92. Finalization of Groups

07/04/2026, 20:00

72. The ones who must be named: taxonomic research still lacks explicit species concepts

Matheus Maciel Alcantara Salles (Universidade Federal do Parana)

08/04/2026, 16:50

Taxonomy provides the foundation upon which most biological research is built, yet one of its most persistent obstacles lies in the lack of conceptual transparency regarding what, precisely, is meant by “species”. Although recent decades have seen advances in integrative approaches and molecular tools, many studies still fail to explicitly state the species concept guiding their analyses. This...

74. Failures, Not Secrets: Documenting What Broke, What Worked, and Why We Should Care

08/04/2026, 16:55

For research to be effective, it must be both reproducible and replicable. Only then can false results be identified, existing findings built on and human error reduced. In short: meaningful and robust research can be done. However, research is often neither reproducible, nor replicable; this is often called a reproducibility crisis.
One factor contributing to the current state of research is...

90. Reducing Noise, Interrogating Bias: The Case for LLM Experimentation in Peer Review

08/04/2026, 17:05

Peer review has a noise problem. The "reviewer lottery" means a manuscript's fate often depends on who is assigned, their topical familiarity, their individual priorities, and how much time they have that week. This idiosyncratic variance treats similar work inconsistently: a clear source of unfairness.

Large Language Models (LLMs) can substantially reduce this noise. Even non-deterministic...

75. Open Research Across Disciplines

08/04/2026, 17:10

"Open Research Across Disciplines" is a an interdisciplinary guide and collection of resources for engaging on open research across a range of academic disciplines. The format of the guide is a preprint, and the content from this preprint has also been adapted on the UK Reproducibility Network website (https://www.ukrn.org/disciplines/). The guide has existed for 5 years, and we run a yearly...

84. The Castle and the Codebase: Building Secure, Sustainable Research

08/04/2026, 17:15

In this interactive lightning talk, I use "the castle" as a symbol to explore what really protects our open research data and software. While open science supports data, software, experimental results, and other research artefacts to be publicly available and FAIR, it is equally important to consider the security of the same. I will present a simple live ‘Castle Stress Test’, which would help...

81. Leibniz Institute for Psychology (ZPID)

08/04/2026, 17:25

The Leibniz Institute for Psychology (ZPID) is an open science institute based in Trier, Germany. Its mission is to encourage psychological researchers to adopt open science practices by offering tools such as the preregistration service PreReg (https://prereg-psych.org/) and the discipline-specific repository PsychArchives (https://psycharchives.org/). In my lightning talk, I will provide a...

69. The QRP Bestiary Info Cards

Jane Hergert

08/04/2026, 17:30

Questionable research practices (QRPs) are well known and often discussed in meta-science circles—but how can we make them more memorable, understandable, and teachable beyond those? In this lightning talk, we present a set of 40 QRP Info Cards, each distilling one QRP into a compact, accessible format featuring a clear definition, examples, potential harms, preventive measures, and red flags...

89. Why don't nutrition trialists preregister? A behavioural mystery

08/04/2026, 17:40

Randomised controlled trials are often seen as transparency role models, given their seemingly high adherence to practices such as registration, sharing of protocols and statistical analysis plans. With nutrition research, however, this is not often the case. In this lighting talk I will present preliminary results of the work being done as part of my PhD and invite the audience to help solve...

76. Mapping the Open Science Adoption system

08/04/2026, 17:45

Systems thinking is an approach to understanding the non-linear relationships between multiple interacting components of "a thing". That thing can be a manufacturing system, an ecological system, or even something less tangible, such as the system being implemented to support the adoption of open science. By effectively mapping the system, we better understand how the different components and...

88. Why do replications struggle to make an impact? Bibliometric study of the effect of replications on original claims

08/04/2026, 17:50

Replication is a cornerstone of cumulative science, providing essential insights into the reliability of research findings. Yet, despite an increasing number of published replications, they often fail to affect the belief in, and use of, the original conclusions. Replications are infrequently cited, usually disregarded in theoretical discussions, and—except for striking exceptions—fail to...

82. Research Software Sharing, Publication, & Distribution Checklists

08/04/2026, 17:55

These research software sharing, publication, and distribution checklists were inspired by similar checklists produced by the imaging community and are intended to address a niche not addressed by existing similar resources such as guidance for creating research software management plans. They provide a tiered approach to completing the checklists with each item able to be completed at a...

87. Participatory Action Research - a Perfect Match!

Research about transgender, intersex, and nonbinary (TIN) communities has historically further marginalised us (TIN people) as a group. As a PhD candidate who is also trans and nonbinary, this research feels particularly dehumanising. For the sake of TIN people including myself, I am committed to conducting research that is co-produced by academics and communities and offers some sort of...

23. Topic group finalization & room assignments

22. Topic group formation

In this session we will see how many people are interested in which topic. Topic groups are usually comprised of 2-7 participants.

Topics that too few people are interested in will not be pursued further.
If groups get too big, we may split them into subtopics.

Choosing a topic can be difficult, yet you should choose one ;)
If you are unhappy with your choice, you can always switch....