A realistic researcher’s take on Open Science services

Katie Smart; Per Pippin Aspaas

doi:10.7557/19.8152

Authors

Katie Smart UiT The Arctic University of Norway https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4231-7519
Per Pippin Aspaas UiT The Arctic University of Norway https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6760-9617

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7557/19.8152

Keywords:

Open Science, Marketing, Library Services

Abstract

Katie Smart served as a research librarian at UiT The Arctic University of Norway from 2022 to 2025. A geologist specializing in research on mantle petrology, she has experience from three countries (Canada, Germany, South Africa) before she arrived at UiT. In this episode, she discusses different local and national services for open science that she has been involved in during her time in Norway and emphasizes that marketing open science to academia must include the perspective of the target audience: the researchers. Understanding the academic mindset and catering to researchers’ needs is key for success in widespread adoption of open science practices, she argues. Words matter: do not use the jargon of librarians and other service staff but find expressions that trigger researchers’ interest. Do not take for granted that researchers are idealists willing to change habits just for the sake of the common good. Although open science can be framed benefiting academia and society as a whole, in order to get strong buy-in from academia it must also be framed as to how it will propel each individual’s career.

First published online: July 4, 2025.

Author Biographies

Katie Smart, UiT The Arctic University of Norway

Kathleen (Katie) A. Smart obtained her PhD in Geology at the University of Alberta (Canada) in 2011, then held a Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellowship at Universität Münster (Germany) from 2011–2012, and was Senior Lecturer at The University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa) before serving as a senior academic librarian at UiT The Arctic University of Norway from March 2022 till July 2025. She now moves on to a position at the TU Bergakademie Freiberg in Germany.
Per Pippin Aspaas, UiT The Arctic University of Norway

Per Pippin Aspaas is a senior academic librarian and part-time researcher in the fields of Early Modern Studies and Neo-Latin Philology at UiT The Arctic University of Norway.