Open Science at the Douglas

• Openly share new research outputs following FAIR principles (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable).

• Support access to sustainable OS-enabling platforms, by developing in-house digital infrastructure and facilitating the use of external OS tools.

• Integrate the Douglas’ research platforms into the OS initiative.

• Offer support, through dedicated personnel, for sharing research outputs and identifying OS practices that best fit individual research projects (e.g., animal-based vs. human-based).

• Develop institutional policies and best practices that facilitate and guide sharing research outputs.

• Develop tools to monitor our progress on sharing research outputs.

(*) Research outputs include but are not limited to raw data, articles, code, software, methods, research tools, reagents, materials and biological samples.

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  Reduce barriers to access and use of research outputs, by actively promoting them in appropriate forums and sharing them in ways that enable their modification, remixing, adaptation and adoption.

• Curate, translate and adapt research outputs and knowledge for greater accessibility and use by clinicians, teachers, research participants, service users, policy-makers, the general public and other potential users.

• Collaborate with other institutions – including educational, non-profit, industrial, philanthropic and governmental organizations – to promote public education and knowledge mobilization.

• Make our processes and results available to the provincial ministry of health and social services to inform measurement-based care initiatives.

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  Guarantee that service users have the right to decline to participate in OS research, with no repercussions on the quality of the clinical care they receive at the Douglas.

• Ensure that research participants and service users have the necessary information to understand our OS practices and the mechanisms regulating future usage of open data and other research outputs.

• Adapt consent processes and research ethics frameworks to allow for OS practices while ensuring the privacy, dignity and confidentiality of research participants and service users.

• Develop a data management policy with the provincial Ministry of Health and Social Services, to define conditions and processes for sharing service user data.

• Document and publicize all steps of our OS journey, to actively support culture change at the Douglas and serve as role-models for collaborating institutions.

• Support the autonomy of internal stakeholders, including but not limited to researchers, staff and trainees, by recognizing their right to decline to participate in OS activities.

• Create awards and incentives to reward, encourage and enable OS activities.

• Develop and adapt researcher evaluation criteria to incentivize OS practices while accounting for the variety of researcher profiles and research programs.

• Establish a community of practice and train a new generation of scientists well-versed in OS.

• Apply appropriate open licenses to research outputs as often as possible, including licenses that require proper attribution.

• Provide full institutional support for researchers wishing to pursue research, collaboration, innovation, and mobilization strategies that explicitly forgo restrictive intellectual property.

• Diligently consider in a transparent manner when restrictive intellectual property protection may be appropriate to maximize the impact of our discoveries and innovations on the prevention and treatment of mental health disorders.

• Incorporate OS practices into partnerships and research contracts with commercial, governmental, non-profit, and philanthropic partners.