Open Research has been defined as 'the practice of research in such a way that others can collaborate and contribute'. It takes place when 'research data, lab notes and other research processes are freely available, under terms that enable reuse, redistribution and reproduction of the research and its underlying data and methods'. (Foster Open Science).
The benefits of conducting research in an open way are understood to be:
- increasing the exposure of your work
- sharing knowledge with practitioners outside academia
- reproducibility
- efficiency
- public good
- innovation
Some of the distinct elements of open research are:
- Pre-registration of research
- Open Data
- Open source code/software
- Open lab notebooks/processes
- Open peer review
- Open Access
- Preprints
- Publishing of negative results
- Citizen Science
- Open Educational resources
- Persistent identifiers (PIDs) such as ORCiD (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) which enable research systems to interoperate.
The University of Birmingham has published an Open Research Statement and Commitment.
Further training and support
Library Services and IT Services have collaborated to develop a self-enrol Open Researcher online canvas course.
Library Services' Research Skills Team offer an Engaging with Open Research Culture workshop. You can also view our Open Research introductory video (login required).
The BEAR team in IT Services can support you in conducting research in a more open way, with services such as the Research Data Store for storing and sharing working data within a research group, BEAR GitLab for managing and sharing code and Software Carpentry training workshops to allow you to use more reproducible data analysis tools, such as Python and R.
University Open Research Conference June 2021
The University of Birmingham held its first Open Research conference over 4 days in June 2021. Speakers ranged from early career researchers to internationally regarded experts in their field. The Open Research Forum event canvas course includes details of the conference programme, and resources such as slide decks and videos, where available.