By Camilla Gilmore, Chair of Loughborough University’s Open Research Group and Professor of Mathematical Cognition

One of the challenges of institutional change around open research practices is the diversity of disciplines involved. Open research covers a range of activities that promote the openness, transparency, rigour, and reproducibility of research. These values are relevant to all disciplines, but the way these activities are applied and the (perceived) barriers to using them can look very different in different disciplines. 

The challenges of promoting open data provide a clear example of this. In behavioural sciences, where quantitative and qualitative research data comes from human participants, one of the major challenges is how to share data ethically and anonymously. In contrast, in STEM subjects, particularly where industrial partnerships are common, the challenges are around confidentiality, commercial sensitivity and IP protection instead. Consequently, promoting open data at an institutional level must be informed by these different concerns and challenges and provide appropriate disciplinary-specific training and support.

This was a problem that I became immediately aware of when I took over the role of chair of Loughborough’s Open Research Working Group (ORWG) in early 2020. As individual researchers, our perceptions of the “state of the art” of open research are informed by our own disciplinary experience. But to make institutional change, we need to ensure that the systems supporting open research and the opportunities and incentives we promote apply to researchers in all disciplines. I felt that I didn’t know enough about what open research looks like in other disciplines.

Fortunately, I was not alone in feeling like this. Professor Emily Farran (Academic Lead, Research Culture and Integrity, University of Surrey) had similar concerns, and so we decided that it would be beneficial to draw together examples of open research practices and resources across as wide a range of disciplines as possible. This project quickly became a substantial task and benefitted from many authors and contributors. The resulting document, Open Research: Examples of good practice, and resources across disciplines (osf.io/3r8hb) was initially launched in December 2020. The document is updated annually in response to suggestions and feedback from readers (if you think good practice in your discipline is missing, why not suggest it here?).

This work has now been incorporated into the UKRN (UK Reproducibility Network) webpages, where 28 separate disciplinary pages provide case studies, examples of open research practices and disciplinary-specific resources. These highlight that, while open research practices may look different in different disciplines, there is much to learn by looking beyond our own discipline and seeing commonalities in approaches.

At Loughborough, we are ensuring that our institutional activities are sensitive to disciplinary differences by creating Open Research Leads in each school who sit on the ORWG. But we are building on the commonality of challenges by working across schools to provide training and opportunities. Look out for more opportunities in the coming academic year.

The views and opinions of this article are the author’s and do not reflect those of the University…although hopefully they do reflect Loughborough University values.

Last week we attended the Association of Research Managers and Administrators‘ (ARMA) annual conference in Brighton. We were presenting on our Research Data Repository which was launched at the end of April.

Although our session part of the last panel of the conference it was still well attended with representatives from both universities and funders. As part of our talk we had decided to hold c30-45 minute breakout/discussion sessions. Not only were these sessions an opportunity for attendees to ask us additional questions about our repository but it was also an opportunity for us to discover the lay of the land at other institutions.

As someone with a research background but who has worked in libraries for the past 10 years it was interesting to hear some of the comments from the research managers and administrators. It is a view I have heard before but until the growth of open access and research data management at universities many research office staff were not aware that the ‘Library did research’.

One of the many advantages of the current “open landscape” at universities is that many departments that previously had limited or even no contact with each other (or contact only in very specific areas) e.g. Research Office, IT, Library, now have regular and meaningful contact across a number of areas. (For example, within a week of starting at Loughborough I had met colleagues from IT and the Research Office as part of my induction and work with them on a weekly (if not daily) basis.) Not only does this regular contact help to reduce any duplication of effort but it also means that staff working in those departments now have the opportunity to have a more holistic view of how research is conducted and supported at their organisation. As such, they are able to do their jobs with an understanding of how their decisions and work may affect others at the institution. Most importantly, it means that we are better placed to provide the support that researchers and academics may require.

This holistic view is particularly important at the moment when one considers the demands on academic staff in both research and teaching.

The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) has recently released an updated version of its research data policy. This can be found at: http://www.esrc.ac.uk/about-esrc/information/data-policy.aspx (link to the PDF of the policy at the bottom of the page).

The ESRC policy now maps more clearly to the RCUK Common Principles on Data Policy. In addition, the updated ESRC policy explains in far greater detail than before the responsibilities of: ESRC grant applicants, ESRC grant holders, grant holders’ institutions, the ESRC itself, and ESRC data service providers.

If you are ESRC funded, based at Loughborough University, and wondering how this policy may affect you please do contact me (Gareth Cole – Research Data Manager) on g.j.cole(at)lboro.ac.uk.

In August 2012 re3data.org – the Registry of Research Data Repositories went online with 23 entries. Two years later the registry provides researchers, funding organisations, libraries and publishers with over 1,000 listed research data repositories from all over the world making it the largest and most comprehensive online catalog of research data repositories on the web. re3data.org provides detailed information about the research data repositories, and its distinctive icons help researchers easily identify relevant repositories for accessing and depositing data sets.

To more than 5,000 unique visitors per month re3data.org offers reliable orientation in the heterogeneous landscape of research data repositories. An average of 10 repositories are added to the registry every week. The latest indexed data infrastructure is the new CERN Open Data Portal: http://service.re3data.org/repository/r3d100011381

[Taken from a Re3data update in November 2014]