Five scientists will be funded at the start of the Berlin University Alliance (BUA) Fellowship Program in the Advancing Research Quality and Value objective. The aim of the program is to support measures and projects on research quality and open science, as well as to facilitate research collaborations and knowledge exchange. National and international experts contribute their experience and competence to the work of the BUA. Researchers and staff from the academic support services of the excellence alliance can expand their expertise and develop new approaches for the projects in the objective.

The program consists of two funding lines. Incoming Fellowships offer national and international experts the opportunity to conduct research at the BUA's partner institutions and to contribute their knowledge in an advisory capacity. Conversely, outstanding scientists at all career levels can work at a German or international university in Outgoing Fellowships and familiarize themselves with new theoretical and methodological approaches. The Outgoing Fellowships are also open to staff from the academic support services to familiarize themselves with established structures and processes at other institutions that ensure sustainable research quality or implement open science practices (Good Practice Examples). In this sense, the Outgoing Fellowships focus on "learning from others" and networking with relevant stakeholders. The funding period for Outgoing Fellowships is one to three months. Interested parties may apply to the BUA's Advancing Research Quality and Value Steering Committee.

Within the framework of the Incoming Fellowships, scientists with excellent contributions, specific experience, and competencies in the field of research quality and open science are invited to work at one of the BUA partner institutions. During the three- to six-month guest stay, they support and complement their Berlin colleagues, work together on research and/or implementation projects, and offer events. The goal of the collaboration – sustainable if possible, lasting longer than the period of the actual funding, – is to expand the BUA’s research quality and open science network and to further enhance the visibility of the alliance, both at a national and an international level. Potential candidates will be invited by the Steering Committee. Proposals for eligible Fellows can be submitted to the Advancing Research Quality and Value Steering Committee.

Current Outgoing Fellowships

• Dr. Helen Niemeyer from the Division of Clinical Psychological Intervention at Freie Universität Berlin is going to the University of Chicago. She is concerned with open science practices and how their funding contributes to increasing research quality. Her particular focus is to examine the relationship between research quality, publication-readiness, chances of reception, and scholarly reputation, and to develop methods to help avoid publication bias.
• Felicitas Heßelmann from the Department of Science Studies at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin is going to the University of Edinburgh. Her research focuses on how ways of acquiring and organizing knowledge are changing through the creation of digital infrastructures and systems of automated and data-based decision-making, and how society, organizations, and individuals are responding to this digital transformation.
• Mik Schutte from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin is going to Delft University of Technology. There he will look at open hardware production processes and community-building practices within universities to disseminate open science.

Current Incoming Fellowship

• Prof. Dr. Frank Miedema, Vice Rector for Research at Utrecht University, Professor of Open Science and Chair of the Open Science Program, is joining the QUEST Center at the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH) at Charité. Frank Miedema is one of the world leaders in the implementation of open science in biomedicine and one of the initiators of "Science in Transition". As a Visiting Fellow to the BUA, he will be particularly involved in the Reforming Research Assessment Initiative as well as the OpenX Initiative.
• Dr. Ugo Moschini from the Data Analysis Office of the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) is joining the QUEST Center at the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH) at Charité. He will share information with his colleagues on open science monitoring practices and techniques using dashboards, as well as research information systems and research data.

Questions can be directed to, and information gleaned from core@berlin-university-alliance.de