On 7 November 2024, the UGO Open Science Award 2024 was given to Carolin Becklas during the general meeting of the UGO e.V. in the Audimax of the alten Fleiwa. Carolin Becklas was honoured by the jury for her diversity and outstanding contribution to the open science community. Her commitment beyond her own specialist field and her impact in an area in which Open Science principles such as Open Access are still not very common was highly recognised.

As part of the award ceremony, Carolin Becklas gave a short talk entitled „Game over for Closed Access”, in which she emphasised the growing importance of Open Science and the need to make scientific findings accessible to all. She showed how her own research on gamification and the playful communication of climate change can increase engagement with socio-ecological challenges. Becklas is a doctoral student at Faculty 3 in the „Gestalten der Zukunft” doctoral programme. She uses digital media to present her research findings in order to make socially relevant topics accessible to a broad public. In addition to her research, she co-founded the „oldengame” research collective, which takes a critical look at digital games and makes this discussion accessible to a wide audience through events and podcasts (e.g. DIGITALOG LIVE: Gamification). As a member of the open-access.network, Becklas organises workshops and creates open access (online) materials that support researchers in publishing their research results open access and also produces videos that deal with current topics in the field of open access publications. Their goal is to provide access to scientific discourse and to promote open science practices for this reason. Her materials are available, for example, on Zenodo and the TIB portal for audiovisual media (AV-Portal).

The other nominees:

2nd place was awarded to Aaron Reer (FK VI) and the team of the „Applied Neurocognitive Psychology (ANCP) Labs”. Since 2022, they have been publishing all research results and datasets open access and developing innovative tools for data quality and conversion. The ‘Tools for Open and Reproducible Neuroscience Centre (TORS)’ was particularly highlighted. which promotes the standardisation of data storage and regularly organises workshops on the implementation of Open Science.

Third place went to Prof. Dr. Oliver Theel (FK II) and his team with the „Guerilla Sensing” project. With its open source citizen science platform, the team has developed an innovative geo-information system that enables citizens to monitor environmental parameters, identify problems and initiate solutions. The open source availability and detailed instructions significantly promote the reusability and further development of the platform by the scientific community.

Since 2023, University Society Oldenburg (UGO) e.V. has honoured projects and initiatives that are guided by the principles of open science and actively work to make research results transparent and publicly accessible. Many thanks to UGO e.V. for making the award possible as well as to all applicants, the members of the jury and everyone else involved who contributed to this success.