Open Science and Research Assessment
Interdisciplinary collaboration requires a cultural shift from solely single investigator-led research to team science, involving scientists from different groups and disciplines. This shift requires a more collaborative and inclusive scientific ecosystem that values a diversity of contributions and encourages the free sharing of knowledge to accelerate discovery and innovation.
To facilitate these changes, the Max Delbrück Center will redefine performance indicators, including career advancement evaluations, promotions and tenure decisions, to acknowledge and reward contributions to team science. We will also recognize and value diverse research outputs, moving beyond traditional metrics such as publication in high-impact journals.
Member of the Coalition for Reforming Research Assessment (CoARA)
To accelerate the pace of discovery and maximize societal impact, we commit to open science, ensuring that researchers and the public can freely access and contribute to scientific knowledge. Embracing open science practices is critical to build public trust. By joining the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA), the Max Delbrück Center has committed to improving its research assessment practice, including recognizing open science contributions.
CoARA is an international initiative dedicated to transforming the way research is assessed across academic institutions. The coalition, founded in 2022, aims to create a more inclusive and collaborative scientific ecosystem by redefining traditional assessment metrics and promoting open science practices. CoARA encourages institutions to move beyond conventional metrics, such as publication in high-impact journals, to recognize a broader range of research outputs and contributions, and to abandon the inappropriate use of journal-based metrics and rankings. Member institutions agree to adhere to the 10 CoARA commitments.
As a leading institution in biomedical research, the Max Delbrück Center is dedicated to fostering a scientific environment that values diverse contributions across research and career paths. During its most recent external in-depth review, the Max Delbrück Center adapted its assessment criteria to recognize a broader range of research outputs and contributions of the researchers to the scientific community. In line with the previous efforts, the research center joined CoARA in 2023, underscoring its dedication to reforming research assessment practices, and supporting the collaborative and dynamic nature of modern science.
The Max Delbrück Center specifically outlined its commitment to research assessment in its MDC 2030 strategy published in 2024. Major aims are to revise performance indicators, and to acknowledge and reward contributions to team science and interdisciplinary collaboration. The center is committed to open science practices, ensuring that researchers and the public have free access to scientific knowledge.
As a member of CoARA, the Max Delbrück Center will develop a detailed action plan to implement changes in research assessment until 2030. The alignment with CoARA principles will help to implement more equitable and effective assessment practices, supporting the goals of the MDC2030 strategy. A dedicated working group will review current practices, and plan and oversee the implementation of improvements. This plan will be a living document, informed by the MDC2030 strategy and previous efforts undertaken to advance research assessment.
For mutual learning and sharing best practices, the Max Delbrück Center actively participates in the CoARA National Chapter Germany to advance research assessment reform on a national level, and engages in international CoARA Working group, “Supporting the alignment of research assessment systems with CoARA in biomedical disciplines through administrative reforms and governance (SAGA)”.
The Max Delbrück Center has also signed the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA).
Our Initiatives in Open Science
Open Access
The Helmholtz Association has long been committed to open access and was one of the first signatories of the “Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities” in 2003. In this context, open access refers to having access to scientific results with as few financial, technical and legal barriers as possible.
The Max Delbrück Center is committed to Open Science and supports the Helmholtz Association's Open Science Policy, which calls on its researchers “to make their results … open and reusable whenever possible according the principle of intelligent openness – that is ‘as open as possible and as closed as necessary’.” The Max Delbrück Center supports the targeted Helmholtz goal of achieving an open access rate of 100% starting with the publication year 2025.
To support these goals, the library records all publications by authors at the Max Delbrück Center in our repository and makes their full texts publicly accessible as far as possible. We share both the publisher's version and the accepted manuscript approved for release. The documents are freely accessible worldwide and are permanently archived.
The library promotes Open Access through a publication fund that is used to pay the fees for publications in pure Open Access journals (OA Gold) for authors at the Max Delbrück Center.
Moreover, the library participates in the Alliance of German Science Organizations’ DEAL project (contracts with the major publishers Springer Nature, Wiley, Elsevier) and in other transformation agreements that enable authors at the Max Delbrück Center to publish Open Access in thousands of hybrid journals and at the same time offer permanent reading access to almost all of the publishers' journals.
Open Data and Reproducible Research
The Max Delbrück Center recognizes the critical importance of research data and its management in upholding research excellence and scientific integrity. The Center is committed to ensuring that data aligns with the FAIR principles: Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable, following the principle of being "as open as possible, as closed as necessary."
The Research Data Management (RDM) Team was established in 2020 to oversee the implementation of the Research Data Management Policy, ensuring compliance with legal obligations, ethical responsibilities, and the rules of funding bodies. This includes adherence to Good Scientific Practice, the Guidelines of the German Research Foundation for handling research data, data protection (GDPR), and other relevant regulations.
In line with the RDM Policy, the team supports key research data management infrastructure, including the RSpace electronic lab notebook tool, the OMERO Plus image data organization tool, the FAIR Wizard data management planning tool, and a protocols.io subscription. The team also provides one-on-one support, offers training, organizes workshops for PhD students, and runs "RDM Monday," a series of one-hour webinars held every Monday at 2 p.m. These webinars cover various aspects of the research data lifecycle, such as scientific data reproducibility, transparency, and management.
Open Education
The Max Delbrück Center was a partner in the H2020 EU Open Responsible Research and Innovation to further Outstanding KNowledge (ORION) project from 2017-2021. The aim of the ORION project was to explore and promote Open Science practices, improving the quality of research.
We were in charge of training activities, delivering over 40 live workshops in 16 countries, developing online courses in Open Science and a train-the-trainer, reaching over 500 participants as well producing a podcast on all things Open Science.
- ORION training materials and resources
All the materials are CC BY licensed to be shared and reused:
Podcast
- The ORION Open Science Podcast / also on Zenodo
Courses
Deliverables
- Optimised offline and online trainings
- Open Educational Resources on Responsible Research and Innovation
- Train-the-Trainer workshops
- Final report on the training work package
Resources
Accompanying research projects were also undertaken to analyze:
- the extent of Open Science being a topic on the graduate curricula of non-university life sciences research institutes in Europe
- how to integrate Open Science into the professional development programs for scientists
As a partner of ORION, the Max Delbrück Center also engaged in other activities such as hosting an Art Residency producing the Art Science Project ÆON conducting a citizen science project on sitting behaviour of school kids SMOVE. As well as engaging with citizens through a public dialogue on genome editing.
Public Engagement
The Max Delbrück Center is committed to opening up the research process and supporting transfer into society. Scientists actively take part in yearly recurring science festivals such as Berlin Science Week and the Long Night of Sciences. We also run an innovative teacher training program, Lab meets Teacher, occurring once a month to bring insight into current research projects at the Max Delbrück Center.
Further information
- About the image in the header of this page
The sensory neurones of the sixth sense transmit precise information about movement and posture to the central nervous system. Without these clear connections, targeted movements would be impossible.
Different populations of sensory neurons cell bodies in a dorsal root ganglion (right) and their axons in the spinal cord (left): The cells in green detect proprioceptive information while the cells in red thermal and tactile information.
© Stephan Dietrich, AG Zampieri, Max Delbrück CenterThe sensory neurones of the sixth sense transmit precise information about movement and posture to the central nervous system. Without these clear connections, targeted movements would be impossible.
Open science also ensures that scientific findings are transparent and accessible - only through the free exchange of knowledge innovations can be driven forward in a targeted way. By changing the way we evaluate research, we will acknowledge scientific contributions in all their diversity and strengthen connections across disciplines.
The work of one of our research groups contributes to a better understanding of the functions of these sensory networks.
