Introduction à l’Open Science et l’intégrité de la recherche en Master en langues et lettres modernes

This talk briefly presents how we familiarize MA students in Modern Languages with open science, research ethics and research integrity. The target audience is made up of students following the in-depth study option within our 120-credit MA programme, in which students combine one Germanic language (English, Dutch, German) with another one, or with a Romance language (Spanish, Italian) or with Arabic. The in-depth study option includes a 10-credit research seminar per language studied, and before 2023-2024 it involved little interaction among students across languages or disciplines (linguistics & literary studies). This year we launched a collective dynamic, and proposed a series of interactive lectures and hands-on sessions, as well as organized a student symposium for all students involved. In this flash presentation, I will home in on two lectures, one on open science, and one on research ethics and research integrity. The first one sketches the historical background of the fight for open science and highlights the pioneering role of our university. It then focusses on Open Access (different ‘shades’ of OA) as well as Open Data (the FAIRness principles), and gives examples from the two disciplines central to our MA-programme (linguistics & literary studies). The second one introduces the concepts of research ethics and research integrity, which have come under pressure due to the publish or perish culture in science. It will present how research fraud and fake science have massively infiltrated the research landscape by using case studies of fake authorship, fabricated data, paper mills and predatory journals. It will also provide guidance on what can be done, both individually and collectively, to improve research ethics and thereby curb the rise of research fraud.