education
Raising PhD students’ awareness of Open Science at Institut Pasteur
At Institut Pasteur, Open Science, which appeared in the ambitions of the Pasteur 2030 Strategic Plan is now part of the mandatory training pathway for PhD students, alongside bioinformatics, artificial intelligence and ethics in science. It is structured within the “Introduction to Open Science for PhD students” training, created and coordinated by the Student Life Office, within the Doctoral Unit of the Education Departement.
A first session with the participation of UNESCO
On 13 January 2026, the first half‑day introductory session brought together new PhD students around Rania Sabo, Associate Programme Specialist in the Science, Technology and Innovation Policy team at UNESCO, where she works on the implementation of the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science..
She presented Open Science as a set of practices aiming to democratise the entire research process, from knowledge production to the reuse of results, and encouraged PhD students to nourish their curiosity and start by training themselves, in particular by reading the UNESCO Recommendation to understand its global approach.
Rania Sabo also reminded that “the transition to Open Science does not rely only on individuals, but on a systemic change that requires the joint action of all actors in the ecosystem: institutions, research teams, funders and decision‑makers. Institutions such as the Institut Pasteur have a key role to play in creating an enabling environment so that researchers can easily integrate these practices into their daily work”.
This perspective particularly resonated with the PhD students in attendance.
“For me, open science is about helping people access science. Today, research can still feel inaccessible and a bit ‘dark’ for many people. Everyone should be able to access and read scientific work, and this workshop really helped shed light on the UNESCO perspective and what open science can look like in my daily PhD practice. I’d rate my motivation to take action in open science an 8 out of 10 – you should definitely join this workshop, it’s really worth it.”
Flavie, 1st year PhD student, Institut Pasteur
An integrated training pathway
The “Introduction to Open Science” includes:
a mandatory core module (two sessions per year, automatic enrolment of new PhD students) with a presentation of the UNESCO Recommendation, a practical workshop “Open Science – what’s in it for me?” and an overview of the resources available on campus, by the CeRIS team
complementary activities like, training sessions offered by CeRIS (HAL‑Pasteur, data management plans, Recherche Data Gouv, etc.) and external resources (OpenPlato, the “Open Science” MOOC).
This scheme is part of the broader training offer for PhD students, alongside the Bioinformatics and Data Science programme, Artificial Intelligence applied to Life Sciences workshops, research integrity and ethics workshops. The full offer is detailed on the “Training for PhD students” internal page.
The Student Life Office: a key point of reference for PhD students
The Student Life Office, coordinated by Stefaniia Ivashchenko, oversees, in addition to housing and Master’s and student mobility programmes, the offer of doctoral training, in collaboration with several entities on campus, it:
- Centralises compulsory and optional courses and workshops for PhD students;
- Guides them towards the right contacts (scientific skills, transversal skills, career development);
- Helps deliver attendance certificates that can be recognised by doctoral schools and contribute to each student’s training portfolio.
To find out more: