Supplementary Data 7: Impact on Mentee Case Study - Collaborative meta-research project: A Mid-Career Researcher Perspective

Dr Malgorzata Lagisz (University of New South Wales Sydney, Australia) joined Open Seeds OLS-6 to learn about best practices for managing diverse and dispersed virtual research teams. Through her participation in the cohort-based training, she aimed to assess the transparency and equity of early- and mid-career research awards in ecology and evolution. She designed and successfully completed a collaborative meta-research project, with a peer-reviewed article published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution (Lagisz et. al., 2023) receiving substantial attention from the scientific community. Following this project, Dr Lagisz was invited to provide advice on revising award descriptions and policies by two international learned societies, with a goal to make them more transparent and inclusive. She was also invited to write an opinion piece for Nature on the topic of scientific awards (Lagisz M, 2023).

Since her participation in Open Seeds, Dr Lagisz has continued and scaled her project as a cross-disciplinary study focusing on “Best Paper” awards (typically awarded by journals or scientific societies for a single published article). This follow-up project engaged 21 collaborators from 6 continents. These collaborators represented diverse disciplines, personal backgrounds and career stages. Remarkably, several of the project contributors were recruited via OLS platforms. The manuscript presenting the result of this project is currently under review for a journal publication and is also freely available as a preprint (Lagisz M. et al. 2023).

This case study demonstrates the impact of the OLS program in terms of enabling innovative and inclusive meta-research projects while promoting open science practices and values.