{"title":"Assessment of the use of Open Educational Resources at five European Library and Information Science higher education institutions during and post-COVID-19 pandemic.","authors":"Gema Santos-Hermosa, Cristóbal Urbano, Sílvia Argudo, Juan-José Boté-Vericad, Anja Đurđevic, Milijana Micunovic, Lea Wöbbekind, Tania Todorova","doi":"10.12688/openreseurope.17457.3","DOIUrl":"10.12688/openreseurope.17457.3","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article presents an analysis of the impact of Open Educational Resources (OER) during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as their potential use in the post-pandemic, in Library and Information Science (LIS) higher education institutions. The research explored how OER were used and created, what were the main barriers and drivers in practice and some main lessons learned that can help to improve the quality and increase the use of OER beyond times of crisis. The research was based on fieldwork carried out in the LIS departments of the universities of Barcelona (Spain), Hildesheim (Germany), Osijek and Zagreb (Croatia) and the University of Library Studies and Information Technologies in Sofia (Bulgaria). The methodology approach was qualitative and was based on interviews with faculty and focus groups with students. Results show that faculty members were still hesitant to adopt OER since they generally did not consider them. Moreover, those who did use them did so on their own initiative and as additional resources. We discuss the different speeds of OER implementation that have been observed depending on the faculty's prior level of knowledge, and on whether their institutions and countries are prepared to support the use of OER. The promotion of post-pandemic OER involves greater capacity building, as well as collaboration and institutional support. Students' attitudes about the usefulness of OER focus on their availability. The large number of teachers and students who participated in the study, as well as the international scope of the study, constitute a strength in the treatment of a topic such as the use of OER where the user perspectives and LIS context have been little addressed in the literature.</p>","PeriodicalId":74359,"journal":{"name":"Open research Europe","volume":"4 ","pages":"95"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11523556/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142549410","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Open research EuropePub Date : 2024-10-25eCollection Date: 2024-01-01DOI: 10.12688/openreseurope.16913.2
Darshika Manral, Ilse Bos, Mark de Boer, Erik van Sebille
{"title":"Modelling drift of cold-stunned Kemp's ridley turtles stranding on the Dutch coast.","authors":"Darshika Manral, Ilse Bos, Mark de Boer, Erik van Sebille","doi":"10.12688/openreseurope.16913.2","DOIUrl":"10.12688/openreseurope.16913.2","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>Every few years, juvenile Kemp's ridley turtles ( <i>Lepidochelys kempii</i>) are stranded on the Dutch coasts. The main population distribution of this critically endangered species primarily inhabits the Gulf of Mexico and the east coast of the United States. This study focuses on five reports from the Netherlands between 2007 and 2022, where juvenile turtles were reported to strand alive during the winter, albeit in a hypothermic state. At ambient ocean temperatures between 10°C and 13°C, Kemp's ridley turtles begin to show an inability to actively swim and remain afloat on the ocean's surface, a condition termed <i>'cold stunning'</i>. Understanding their transport in cold-stunned state can help improve the rehabilitation process of stranded turtles.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>Cold-stunned turtles are back-tracked as passive, virtual particles from their stranding location using Lagrangian flow modelling. This study investigates when and where these juvenile turtles cross the threshold temperatures between 10° C and 14° C before stranding by tracking the temperature along the trajectories.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>As expected, the simulations show the transport of the cold-stunned turtles via the English Channel. More surprisingly, the analysis suggests they likely experience cold-stunning in the southern North Sea region and encounter temperatures below 10°C for only a few days to up to three weeks, and below 12°C for up to a month before stranding.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>The estimate of cold-stunned drift duration of the turtles provides additional knowledge about their health status at the time of stranding. Adherence to rehabilitation protocols for Kemp's ridley and post-release monitoring are recommended to improve their long-term survival.</p>","PeriodicalId":74359,"journal":{"name":"Open research Europe","volume":"4 ","pages":"41"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11415756/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142302833","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Open research EuropePub Date : 2024-10-25eCollection Date: 2024-01-01DOI: 10.12688/openreseurope.17020.2
Enric Senabre Hidalgo, Antonio Calleja, Ricard Espelt, Sara Suárez Gonzalo, Mayo Fuster Morell, Andreu Belsunces
{"title":"Co-creation of the Digital Democracy and Data Commons Manifesto: alternative sociotechnical visions of data.","authors":"Enric Senabre Hidalgo, Antonio Calleja, Ricard Espelt, Sara Suárez Gonzalo, Mayo Fuster Morell, Andreu Belsunces","doi":"10.12688/openreseurope.17020.2","DOIUrl":"10.12688/openreseurope.17020.2","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Amid public concern surrounding the proprietary and exploitative use of personal data by corporations and public institutions, and its consequences from a sociotechnical perspective, narratives around digital commons have recently emerged, framing potential alternatives. This paper presents the co-creation of the Digital Democracy and Data Commons Manifesto through a collaborative writing sprint, drawing on principles of openness, diversity, and inclusivity. The manifesto articulates a technopolitical vision for data governance that prioritizes community control over data. We analyze the manifesto's evolution throughout the process, demonstrating its capacity to address contemporary concerns such as data extractivism and algorithmic governance. Our approach is based on participatory design methods, more concretely on a collaborative writing sprint, to co-create a manifesto on alternatives to current datafication, digital inequalities, and lack of citizen control over personal data. On the one hand, we describe the process of implementing a sprint approach for collaboratively writing a topic-specific manifesto, in the context of the broader EU project DECODE (Decentralised Citizen Owned Data Ecosystems). On the other hand, we present and analyse the main results from the content structure of the manifesto over its initial and final versions, which moved progressively as a cohesive text away from a scholarly and policy-oriented tone.</p>","PeriodicalId":74359,"journal":{"name":"Open research Europe","volume":"4 ","pages":"45"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11589416/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142735227","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Open research EuropePub Date : 2024-10-25eCollection Date: 2023-01-01DOI: 10.12688/openreseurope.16723.2
Elisa Roberti, Gaia Petrucci, Francesco Bianciardi, Stefano Palagi
{"title":"Fabrication of hydrogel mini-capsules as carrier systems.","authors":"Elisa Roberti, Gaia Petrucci, Francesco Bianciardi, Stefano Palagi","doi":"10.12688/openreseurope.16723.2","DOIUrl":"10.12688/openreseurope.16723.2","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Conventional drug administration often results in systemic action, thus needing high dosages and leading to potentially pronounced side effects. Targeted delivery, employing carriers like nanoparticles, aims to release drugs at a target site, but only a small fraction of nanoparticles actually reaches it. Microrobots have been proposed to overcome this issue since they can be guided to hard-to-reach sites and locally deliver payloads. To enhance their functionality, we propose microrobots made as deformable capsules with hydrogel shells and aqueous cores, having the potential added advantages of biocompatibility, permeability, and stimulus-responsiveness. Endowing microrobots with deformability could allow them to navigate inside capillaries and cross barriers to finally reach the target site. In this study, we present a cost-effective method for fabricating core-shell structures without the use of organic solvents, surfactants, or extreme pH conditions unlike other techniques (e.g. Layer by Layer). The process begins with the dripping of a mixture of hydrogels, agarose and alginate, into a solution to gelate the drops into beads. After they are loaded with calcium ions at different concentrations, they are immersed in an alginate solution to form the shell. Finally, the beads are heated to let the agarose melt and diffuse out, leaving a liquid core. By varying the concentration of calcium ions, we obtain shells of different thicknesses. To estimate it, we have developed a method using the colour intensity from microscope images. This allowed us to observe that lowering the calcium ions concentration below a threshold does not lead to the formation of continuous shells. For higher concentrations, although the core may remain partially gelled, continuous shells successfully form. Therefore, our fabrication process could find applications in drug delivery, encapsulation systems, and microrobotics.</p>","PeriodicalId":74359,"journal":{"name":"Open research Europe","volume":"3 ","pages":"191"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11605173/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142775367","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Open research EuropePub Date : 2024-10-22eCollection Date: 2024-01-01DOI: 10.12688/openreseurope.17370.3
Sebastian Lifka, Cristina Plamadeala, Agnes Weth, Johannes Heitz, Werner Baumgartner
{"title":"Oriented artificial nanofibers and laser induced periodic surface structures as substrates for Schwann cells alignment.","authors":"Sebastian Lifka, Cristina Plamadeala, Agnes Weth, Johannes Heitz, Werner Baumgartner","doi":"10.12688/openreseurope.17370.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.12688/openreseurope.17370.3","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>People with injuries to the peripheral nervous system suffer from paralysis of the facial muscles, fingers and hands or toes and feet, often for the rest of their lives, due to its poor functional regeneration. Therefore, to improve patients' quality of life, there is an urgent need for conduits that effectively support the healing of large defects in nerve pathways through specific guidance of nerve cells. This paper describes two specific methods for achieving directed growth of Schwann cells, a type of glial cells that can support the regeneration of the nerve pathway by guiding the neuronal axons in the direction of their alignment. One method uses aligned polyamide-6 (PA-6) nanofibers produced via electrospinning on a very fast rotating structured collector, which enables easy nanofiber detachment, without additional effort. The other method implies the exposure of a poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) foil to a KrF* laser beam, that renders a nanorippled surface topography. Schwann cell growth on these substrates was inspected after one week of cultivation by means of scanning electron microscopy (SEM). For both methods we show that Schwann cells grow in a certain direction, predetermined by nanofiber and nanoripple orientation. In contrast, cells cultivated on randomly oriented nanofibers or unstructured surfaces, show an omnidirectional growth behavior. These two methods can be used to produce nerve conduits for the treatment of injuries to the peripheral nervous system.</p>","PeriodicalId":74359,"journal":{"name":"Open research Europe","volume":"4 ","pages":"80"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11541076/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142607060","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Open research EuropePub Date : 2024-10-18eCollection Date: 2024-01-01DOI: 10.12688/openreseurope.17992.2
Benjamin Molina, Carlos E Palau, Jaime Calvo-Gallego
{"title":"Enriching Earth observation datasets through semantics for climate change applications: The EIFFEL ontology.","authors":"Benjamin Molina, Carlos E Palau, Jaime Calvo-Gallego","doi":"10.12688/openreseurope.17992.2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.12688/openreseurope.17992.2","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>Earth Observation (EO) datasets have become vital for decision support applications, particularly from open satellite portals that provide extensive historical datasets. These datasets can be integrated with in-situ data to power artificial intelligence mechanisms for accurate forecasting and trend analysis. However, researchers and data scientists face challenges in finding appropriate EO datasets due to inconsistent metadata structures and varied keyword descriptions. This misalignment hinders the discoverability and usability of EO data.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>To address this challenge, the EIFFEL ontology (EIFF-O) is proposed. EIFF-O introduces taxonomies and ontologies to provide (i) global classification of EO data and (ii) linkage between different datasets through common concepts. The taxonomies specified by the European Association of Remote Sensing Companies (EARSC) have been formalized and implemented in EIFF-O. Additionally, EIFF-O incorporates:1.An Essential Climate Variable (ECV) ontology, defined by the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS), is embedded and tailored for Climate Change (CC) applications.2.The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) ontology is included to facilitate linking datasets to specific targets.3.The ontology extends schema.org vocabularies and promotes the use of JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data (JSON-LD) formats for semantic web integration.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>EIFF-O provides a unified framework that enhances the discoverability, usability, and application of EO datasets. The implementation of EIFF-O allows data providers and users to bridge the gap between varied metadata descriptions and structured classification, thereby facilitating better linkage and integration of EO datasets.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>The EIFFEL ontology represents a significant advancement in the organization and application of EO datasets. By embedding ECV and SDG ontologies and leveraging semantic web technologies, EIFF-O not only streamlines the data discovery process but also supports diverse applications, particularly in Climate Change monitoring and Sustainable Development Goals achievement. The open-source nature of the ontology and its associated tools promotes rapid adoption among developers.</p>","PeriodicalId":74359,"journal":{"name":"Open research Europe","volume":"4 ","pages":"133"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11555329/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142634226","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Open research EuropePub Date : 2024-10-18eCollection Date: 2022-01-01DOI: 10.12688/openreseurope.14332.1
Theresia Perger, Hans Auer
{"title":"Dynamic participation in local energy communities with peer-to-peer trading.","authors":"Theresia Perger, Hans Auer","doi":"10.12688/openreseurope.14332.1","DOIUrl":"10.12688/openreseurope.14332.1","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>Energy communities and local electricity markets (e.g., as peer-to-peer trading) are on the rise due to increasingly decentralized electricity generation and favorable adjustment of the legal framework in many European countries.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>This work applies a bi-level optimization model for dynamic participation in peer-to-peer electricity trading to determine the optimal parameters of new participants who want to join an energy community, based on the preferences of the members of the original community (e.g., environmental, economic, or mixed preference). The upper-level problem chooses optimal parameters by minimizing an objective function that includes the prosumers' cost-saving and emission-saving preferences, while the lower level problem maximizes community welfare by optimally allocating locally generated photovoltaic (PV) electricity between members according to their willingness-to-pay. The bi-level problem is solved by transforming the lower level problem by its corresponding Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) conditions.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>The results demonstrate that environment-oriented prosumers opt for a new prosumer with high PV capacities installed and low electricity demand, whereas profit-oriented prosumers prefer a new member with high demand but no PV system capacity, presenting a new source of income. Sensitivity analyses indicate that new prosumers' willingness-to-pay has an important influence when the community must decide between two new members.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>The added value of this work is that the proposed method can be seen as a basis for a selection process between a large number of potential new community members. Most important future work will include optimization of energy communities over the horizon several years.</p>","PeriodicalId":74359,"journal":{"name":"Open research Europe","volume":"2 ","pages":"5"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10445879/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10307646","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Open research EuropePub Date : 2024-10-18eCollection Date: 2024-01-01DOI: 10.12688/openreseurope.17831.1
Wajiha Rehman, Tim Bunnik, Onno Bokhove, Mark Kelmanson
{"title":"Experimental Modelling of Water-Wave Interactions with a Flexible Beam.","authors":"Wajiha Rehman, Tim Bunnik, Onno Bokhove, Mark Kelmanson","doi":"10.12688/openreseurope.17831.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.12688/openreseurope.17831.1","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>A series of fluid-structure-interaction (FSI) experiments is presented for studying water-wave interactions with a flexible beam in a wide range of sea conditions, thereby yielding a repository of FSI test-case data. The aim is to use these experimental data in order to validate FSI solvers commonly employed by the maritime industry in the design of fixed-foundation, offshore wind turbines. The experimental set-up allows simultaneous measurements of beam deflections and their effect on incident and reflected waves. In addition, the study is carried out in a wide range of sea conditions ranging from regular-to-irregular and moderate-to-extreme wave height and steepness. The study of such a wide range of conditions makes the experiments suitable for providing reliable data in the validation of a suite of mathematical and numerical FSI solvers, i.e., linear, nonlinear and high-fidelity. The data from the experiments are made publicly available through open-source data-sharing platforms.</p>","PeriodicalId":74359,"journal":{"name":"Open research Europe","volume":"4 ","pages":"229"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11607480/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142775328","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Open research EuropePub Date : 2024-10-18eCollection Date: 2024-01-01DOI: 10.12688/openreseurope.17205.2
Stephen Burleigh, Håkan Jönsson
{"title":"European agrifood and forestry education for a sustainable future - Gap analysis from an informatics approach.","authors":"Stephen Burleigh, Håkan Jönsson","doi":"10.12688/openreseurope.17205.2","DOIUrl":"10.12688/openreseurope.17205.2","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>The NextFood Project ( www.nextfood-project.eu) started work in 2018 to identify 'Categories of Skills' that students should be equipped with to address the upcoming global challenges within agrifood and forestry disciplines, and involved concepts such as sustainability, technological adaptation and networking. This study is based on the initial skills and competencies mapping, but takes a different methodological approach. Instead of investigating what the research literature and professionals think are important skills for the future, this study asks how existing education programmes include or exclude these skills in the description of their programs.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>Python-based web-scraping scripts were used to collect texts from a selection of European Masters program websites, which were then analysed using statistical tools. A total of 14 countries, 27 universities, 1303 European Masters programs, 3305 web-pages and almost two million words were studied using this approach.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>While agrifood and forestry Masters programs were aligned with the NextFood Project 'Categories of Skills' equal to or more often than unrelated Masters programs, we found evidence for the relative underuse of words associated with networking skills, such as collaboration, communication and teamwork. Agriculture-related programs used these words the least among the agrifood Masters programs. In contrast, agrifood programs used words associated with sustainability and system thinking more than the non-agrifood Masters programs.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>The informatics approach provides evidence that many European agrifood and forestry Masters programs are following the educational paths for meeting future challenges as outlined by the NextFood Project, with the possible exception of networking skills. This approach allows a complementary and time-efficient overview of the current state of education in the agrifood system in Europe.</p>","PeriodicalId":74359,"journal":{"name":"Open research Europe","volume":"4 ","pages":"93"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11757921/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143048485","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Open research EuropePub Date : 2024-10-17eCollection Date: 2024-01-01DOI: 10.12688/openreseurope.18160.2
Magdalena Zborowska, Jakub Brózdowski, Jakob Starlander, Jiri Woitsch, Erika Ribechini, Rodica-Mariana Ion, Oliver Nelle, Koen Deforce, Anna Varga, Péter Szabó, Elena Badea, Johannes Tintiner-Olifiers, Katja Tikka, Jeannette Jacqueline Lucejko
{"title":"Network for forest by-products charcoal, resin, tar, potash (COST Action EU-PoTaRCh).","authors":"Magdalena Zborowska, Jakub Brózdowski, Jakob Starlander, Jiri Woitsch, Erika Ribechini, Rodica-Mariana Ion, Oliver Nelle, Koen Deforce, Anna Varga, Péter Szabó, Elena Badea, Johannes Tintiner-Olifiers, Katja Tikka, Jeannette Jacqueline Lucejko","doi":"10.12688/openreseurope.18160.2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.12688/openreseurope.18160.2","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The COST EU-PoTaRCh Action establishes a network focused on the past, present, and future significance, production, and use of major forest by-products in Europe and beyond. The Action centers around forest by-products-primarily potash, tar, resin, and charcoal (PoTaRCh), along with plant extracts-which have been produced and utilized for over 100,000 years due to their unique chemical, biological, and therapeutic properties. The primary goal of the Action is to demonstrate the importance of these products for the socio-economic development of European countries and beyond, as well as their impact on biodiversity and the natural environment. The Action's objectives are organized into five Working Groups (WGs), each aligned with specific areas of interest: heritage, chemical characterization, archaeology, environmental history, and future perspectives of PoTaRCh materials. A key aspect of the Action is its support for stakeholders outside the scientific community who possess knowledge of PoTaRCh products through their use in industries such as production, education, and the promotion of forests' natural and cultural heritage. In doing so, the Action brings together stakeholders with diverse activity profiles, including museums, state forests, the forestry industry, associations dedicated to preserving traditions, and the tourism sector. The EU-PoTaRCh Action adheres to the three key principles of COST's inclusiveness policy: participation of inclusiveness target countries, gender balance, and the involvement of young researchers, including in leadership positions.</p>","PeriodicalId":74359,"journal":{"name":"Open research Europe","volume":"4 ","pages":"176"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11489833/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142482549","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}