Services

The GW OSPO includes faculty and staff eager to help answer any questions from students, faculty, and staff related to open practices. Please don't hesitate to send us an email at [email protected] or make an appointment for a consultation whether you are brand new to open source or an experienced contributor.

Consultations

Our two main focus areas are Open Education and Open Research with the key research output of Open Source Software (OSS) as a particular specialty. However, we are also knowledgeable about Open Science, Open Source Hardware, Open Access, Open Scholarship, Open Data, and general open practices. We are here to help and if we don't have the answers then we will do our best to connect you with our large community of experts at GW and externally to get you the support you need.

Book an appointment

Workshops

The Gelman library already has a large cadre of workshops focused on open source tools, open data and learning how to program using Python and R (which are languages with large open source communities). The OSPO plans to extend these offerings with the following workshops

  • code development on GitHub
  • intro to collaborative software development
  • open requirements impacting grant writing and execution
  • open education, open access, and open licensing

See Open Source Workshops

Please see our Events page for more details and to apply for a spot on one of our workshops.

Recognition and Awards

The GW OSPO will celebrate and recognize open-source software contributions. We aim to highlight the achievements and contributions of faculty, researchers, and students in the realm of open-source software and open scholarship. By acknowledging their efforts, we aim to incentivize and encourage more members of the university community to engage in open practices.

See Student Awards

Grant Support

The Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released the Nelson Memo (PDF) in 2022 establishing policy "to promote improved public access to federally funded research results." The GW OSPO is here to support researchers as they navigate the complexities of delivering open and publicly accessible research outputs, including peer reviewed papers, data, and software. Please contact the us to receive the following grant support:

  • Grant submissions:
    • The OSPO will submit a letter of commitment with your submission noting that you will receive support ensuring the research outputs meet the requirements for being open and publicly accessible.
    • The OSPO will help write sections of proposals that call for open practices.
  • Grant execution:
    • The OSPO will provide consultations and workshops to support researchers as they work to improve the quality, reproducability and accessibility of their research outputs in the following focus areas:
      • open access: navigating the confusing publishing arena. We can help connect you with experts on copyright and please know you should never have to pay to share your papers openly.
      • open data: support following FAIR guidelines and developing data management plans.
      • open source software: researchers are generally not software engineers, so we are here to help you learn open software best practices and help give you information so you can decide what platforms, tools, and practices are right for your project.

Book a consultation

 

We hope these services will help GW compete even better for future grants and more importantly we are excited to be a part of maximizing the quality, reproducibility, and accessibility of science at GW.