Last week, we hosted our first coffee hour and drop in. We wanted a chance to talk to our community informally, to give an opportunity for people to come to us with their problems and their priorities (outside of formal, structured Q&A sessions in our regular community development activities).

We decided to host the coffee morning hour on our community slack channel, a free service we have established to enable the open science community across the Arab region to meet, exchange ideas, develop partnerships and share important news and developments.

The coffee morning was also an opportunity for us to ask the community what their knowledge gaps were, so we can use this information in the coming months to develop a more tailored programme of Community Development Activities, ensuring every stakeholder group gets workshops and webinars that meet their needs and supports them in their objectives.

So far, the highest priority knowledge gap relates to open access publishing, this is followed by questions concerning how to develop and fund open science policies, and the third priority concerns open infrastructures. In addition, the vital importance of community building and community engagement activities was raised, together with a general acknowledgement of the need for greater understanding and awareness of open science concepts, benefits, and practises.

We have already collected a number of responses, and we really value everyone’s input so far. If you would like to give us some further insights please feel free to fill in the short survey or share it with a friend or colleague who might provide a useful viewpoint.