At the most busy moment, nearly 100 attendees participated in the 5^th edition of the Pomeranian Open Science Conference 2021 (POSC 2021), which was held at the Gdańsk University of Technology on 1-3 December 2021. The event under the patronage of the Fahrenheit Universities in Gdańsk was organised by the Gdańsk Tech Main Library. The conference scientific committee included representatives of all the three FarU member universities: Prof. Dariusz Mikielewicz, Prof. Grzegorz Lentka, Associate Professor, Anna Wałek, Ph.D. and Paweł Lubomski Ph.D. Eng. of the Gdańsk Tech, Jarosław Skokowski, Ph.D., of the Medical University of Gdańsk and Prof. Adam Krężel of the University of Gdańsk.

The central theme of the 5^th edition of the POSC was cooperation-based services. The conference task was to summarise the previous activities in research data management and disclosure, present the tools supporting the development trends in that kind of services, and appoint a national working group under the patronage of GO FAIR and the Bridge of Data bringing together experts in Data Management and Data Stewardship of various Polish research units. The following were held as part of the three-day-long Pomeranian Open Science 2021 conference:

• workshops on dataset deposition and description based on the example of the research data repository in the Bridge of Data portal (day 1), 
• discussions within topic panels (day 2),
• workshops dedicated to the Data Stewardship Competence Centres PL Polish Working Group (day 3).

During the event, three topic panels were organised: Data Management, Open Access to periodicals and monographs as well as Open Research Data, in which a total of 19 speakers took the floor, including three persons online. After each speech, the participants had a chance to ask questions to the speakers directly or in the chat. The conference sessions that day were moderated by: Anna Wałek, Ph.D., Director of the Gdańsk Tech Main Library, and Paweł Lubomski, Ph.D. Eng., Director of the Gdańsk Tech IT Centre. 98 persons took part in the second day of the conference. In one of the panels, Kamila Jendernalik, M.Sc. of the Division of Medical Laboratory Diagnostics of the MUG delivered a speech titled The Use of the Digital Atlas of Tissues and Cells in education, which was prepared jointly with the department representatives, Prof. Leszek Kalinowski (the head of the unit) Jarosław Skokowski, Ph.D., Dr. Thierry van de Wetering, doctor Anna Lewandowska  and Marika Bolcewicz, M.Sc., as well as Jacek Gulczyński, Ph.D. of the Division of Pathology and Neuropathology. 

The workshop days attracted 29 and 49 attendees respectively. On the first day, the workshop participants had a chance to prepare a research dataset on their own and check if the particular dataset was correct. One of the tasks was the correct description of the dataset and data preparation for reuse. On the last day of the conference, officially launched was the Data Steward Competence Centres PL (DSCC-PL) Polish Working Group, which is the national branch of the GO FAIR Implementation Network with Anna Wałek, Ph.D. being its active member and representative in Poland. The DSCC-PL Working Group is the first such national initiative targeted at data stewards and all those who are involved in research data management. A dedicated tab with detailed information was created for the Group’s needs on the web site of the Gdańsk Tech Open Science Competence Centre. The initiative aroused a keen interest of the librarians and scientists, who came from various Polish higher education institutions.

The entire conference was recorded for the BRIDGE OF DATA project needs. The event was held as part of the BRIDGE OF DATA project – the Multidisciplinary Open Knowledge Transfer System – stage II: Open Research Data, co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund as part of the Operational Programme Digital Poland for 2014-2020.

Photo: Gdańsk Tech