Interviews with scientists 

Winners of open science prizes or awards are suitable for criterion-guided sampling insofar as it can be assumed that, in the course of the selection process for the award, a jury or awards committee ensured that Open Science practices are anchored in the research practice of the award-winning scientists to a pioneering and comprehensible extent. They thus become feature carriers and signify the necessary feature characteristics for the case selection. The research of the award winners in Q3 and Q4 2021 revealed a basic potential of 40 cases.

As a result, of the 40 interview partners who had been awarded a total of 8 different open science prizes and were thus potentially eligible, 25 cases were excluded as not relevant to the research interest using the exclusion criteria outlined as can be seen in the illustration. This direct research strategy led to 15 eligible interviewees who had been awarded Open Science prizes in the German science system. These persons were contacted and approached by email between 22.07.2021 and 19.11.2021. Of the 15 scientists contacted, 13 responded and expressed their willingness to participate in the interview. In a few cases, follow-up questions about the research interest and the handling of the interview data were answered in bilateral communication. The interviews were then scheduled and the participants were informed in advance by means of a handout about the handling of their personal data in accordance with data protection regulations and asked for their consent to participate in the interview and to use the data for the formulated research purposes by means of a declaration of consent. Of the 13 interviews conducted, a total of 11 interviewed researchers agreed in advance or afterwards to the release of the transcript for in-depth analysis and publication as open data.