The Open Science movement aims to make knowledge accessible to everyone by sharing and further developing it through collaborative networks. In 2022, for example, the ZHAW reached over 12,000 students worldwide with its 11 online courses (Massive Open Online Courses, MOOCs). About 550 of those students obtained a certificate after completing the courses. In addition to expanding its “digital campus”, the ZHAW was able to strengthen its national role in sharing Open Educational Resources (OER). The ZHAW strives to create a Swiss OER repository, shared and managed by as many universities as possible, to make free teaching and learning materials available for reuse. At the kick-off meeting, the ZHAW presented, discussed and developed its vision in front of representatives of 25 Swiss universities. In addition, a workshop for Swiss university members was held as part of the Swiss Digital Skills Academy project of swissuniversities’ P-8 programme. This was a great success for the newly formed OER community.

Free access to publications and data

The ZHAW is also committed to promoting free access to scientific publications (Open Access, OA) and research data (Open Research Data, ORD). The GOAL project (Unlocking the Green Open Access potentiaL in scholarly and professional journals in Switzerland), supported by swissuniversities, started back in January 2022. Led by the ZHAW University Library, many Swiss universities of applied sciences and universities of teacher education are working together to make publications in journals for practice-oriented research openly accessible. A series of events including a panel discussion was also organised as part of the international Open Access Week. The year was rounded off with the ZHAW applying for numerous ORD calls from swissuniversities.