Open Science, Awareness and Adoption in Health and Medical Education: The Journey so far in FUHSI

B.O. Asubiojo CLN, FNLA, University Librarian at the Federal University of Health Sciences, Ila-Orangun (FUHSI), presented on “Open Science, Awareness and Adoption in Health and Medical Education: The Journey so far in FUHSI.” The presentation explained Open Science as an approach that promotes openness, transparency, accessibility, inclusivity, and reproducibility throughout the research lifecycle. It goes beyond Open Access publishing to include open research data, educational resources, software, methodologies, preprints, open peer review, and community participation. In health sciences, Open Science is important because it improves knowledge sharing, collaboration, discovery, evidence-based healthcare, reproducibility, research visibility, and impact, while helping researchers in resource-constrained settings access global knowledge.

The presentation highlighted the FUHSI Library’s role in supporting Open Science through information literacy, literature searching, Open Access advocacy, citation support, research visibility education, researcher identity and ORCID support, scholarly publishing guidance, institutional research promotion, and Open Educational Resources. The Library is also building capacity through sensitisation, training, workshops, collaboration, and responsible research practices, with the goal of making Open Science part of everyday research. Researchers were encouraged to obtain identifiers such as ORCID, use appropriate data-management practices, document methods carefully, share data or code where appropriate, publish through suitable Open Access routes, deposit permitted publications in repositories, maintain accurate research profiles, and share findings beyond journal articles. The presentation emphasised that Open Science must still respect ethics, privacy, confidentiality, intellectual property, and research integrity.