Topic description / abstract:

The current societal vision of open science also concerns to museums. While museums always have been public places and rely on voluntary public work, the options and requirements increased during the last years, last not least also due to development of digital technologies. Open science in museums relates strongly to the collections. In Austria, currently a consortium of universities and museums is emerging in order to make collections more accessible in a digital way – Open Scientific Collections Austria (OSCA). Open science also addresses the involvement of the public in science and innovation; while citizen science is rather established and consolidates, open innovation is an area with some untapped potential. In this talk, these processes are described and analysed in more detail, and some conclusions with regard to the relationship open and digital are presented.

Biographical note:

Katrin Vohland is Director General of the Naturhistorisches Museum Wien (NHMW) since June 2020. Before, she headed the Research Department “Museum and Society” at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Research. Germany. Her main research interest is in the interface between science - especially biodiversity science - and different public audiences. She build up the German Network for Biodiversity Research (NeFo) and investigated how scientific knowledge can be mainstreamed into policies as in the case of IPBES (Intergovernmental science-policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services). As another pathway to intensify science-–society interactions, Katrin is very active in developing citizen science as an integrative approach in Germany and Europe. She initiated the German citizen science platform including the development of quality criteria, she was chair of the European scientific network of the COST Action “Citizen Science to promote creativity, scientific literacy, and innovation throughout Europe“, and she was vice-chair of the European Citizen Science Association (ECSA) which promotes and conducts citizen science.