10 ways to be a more open researcher

Open research embodies good research practice by opening up access and participation in the research lifecycle (UKRI). Engaging in open research brings benefits for both research and wider communities; and for individual researchers it has the potential to enhance professional development, impact and practice. So it’s a good thing all round for everybody.

Here are 10 things that you can do to become a more ‘open’ researcher. You may be doing some of them already (in which case keep up the good work!) Many are small practices which don’t take a lot of effort (though some will be more relevant to certain disciplines) but together they will enable you to contribute to a culture of openness that brings benefits for all. 

Publish your work open access

Open access is not just about REF compliance- it’s about making research as widely available as possible and ensuring equity in access to knowledge across the globe regardless of an individual's ability to pay.  You can make your work open access by publishing Gold open access with a publisher or by depositing your work in the institutional repository WIRE (the Green route). The university has a number of deals with journal publishers to publish Gold open access which you can read about here. 

Other open access publication options include using platforms such as Open Research Europe.

Share your data and make it FAIR

If there aren’t any good reasons why you may not share your data, make it available to others as soon as you can. Not only do many funders require data to be shared, it’s also good practice in terms of ensuring transparency and reproducibility in research. Think about making your data FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable). This blog post highlights how to ensure your data are FAIR by depositing them in a repository under an open licence, in usable formats with appropriate documentation, metadata and a persistent identifier.

Publish pre-prints

Pre-print servers which are particularly important in scientific and technical disciplines are another option for sharing research openly as quickly as possible. A helpful list of preprints across disciplines is provided by ASAPbio. Be aware that some journals don’t accept articles that have been shared as preprints, so make sure to check the policies of the journals you’re thinking of submitting to before you share your work in pre-print form.  

Share your methods and materials

The open sharing of methods and protocols can enhance the replication and reproducibility of research. Sharing research design including methods can also help researchers develop new methodologies and tools. There are several platforms where you can share methods and materials including Octopus and the Open Science Framework. You could also share methods through an electronic lab notebook or by publishing a methods article in a journal.

Advocate for openness

One of the most important ways to embed openness in research culture is for those in leadership roles to model good open research behaviours which can help inspire and promote good practice throughout institutions. If you are in a position of influence, consider becoming an open research champion. Are there any ways you could use your position to further the aims of open research? For example, if you are an editor for a journal, your role could enable you to influence journal policy on open access or open data. The University of Wolverhampton’s institutional commitment to open research is embodied in its Open Research Statement.

Share your knowledge through teaching

An important way to ensure open research culture flourishes is by supporting future researchers to develop open research practice. If you teach students, passing on your knowledge of open research practice is a great way to do this. Demonstrate how open research can benefit them by using open data in your teaching and encourage your students to value openness. Both staff and students at the university can access a module on Open Research created by the Scholarly Communications team which you can enrol on here.

Engage with open research communities

Consider creating or becoming part of a community of practice focusing on open research in your department or discipline. This blog post highlights how researchers might establish open research communities of practice. The university has an Open Research Group where interested staff come together to look at practical ways of addressing open research and developing good practice. For more information, please contact the Scholarly Communications Team.

Share your software and code

If your research involves the creation of code or software, could you make it available to others? Software and code can be deposited in a repository like GitHub, Zenodo or Figshare where it can be licensed for re-use. Sharing your code in this way ensures that it has a persistent identifier and can be cited by others, so you get recognition when others reference or re-use it.

Get involved with open peer review

Open peer review is concerned with embedding greater transparency, accountability, and inclusivity in the peer review process. This article highlights some of the routes to opening up peer review that you might want to engage with as authors and reviewers.

Pre-register your research

Pre-registration, which is relevant in empirically-driven disciplines, is the practice of documenting and sharing your research plan at the beginning of your study. It’s a helpful way to counter publication bias towards positive results which blights the credibility of research. You can pre-register a study on a platform like the Centre for Open Science (part of OSF). Another option is to publish a registered report (this is where a study proposal is peer reviewed prior to the research being conducted, and the journal commits to publishing it as an article based on the robustness of the proposal.)

Why stop at 10? 

Like a lot of good practice ticking things off a list can feel great, but there are always more things you can do to promote openness in your research practice.

If you’d like to explore how research can be made more open in your discipline, UKRN has some resources which could help you start thinking about what you might do.

The library’s Scholarly Communications Team is here to help you explore ways of making your research practice more open. If you’d like more information please get in touch at WIRE@wlv.ac.uk 

Sarah Dar, Scholarly Communications Officer

Image reproduced under a CC0 licence.