Open Research

Please find below our latest Open Research Newsletter: 

Issue: 3 | Tuesday, 19th March, 2024

Hello everyone! 

our spring edition of the Open Research Newsletter here at Sheffield Hallam is now ready. One of the exciting events from last February is the Open Research Week 2024. We are happy to share the recordings from Loughborough University, De Montfort University and University of Leicester. If you haven't had the chance to join any of those sessions, please go to the link above to learn more about Connecting Education, Research Cultures, Open Data, and more on Connecting and engaging with communities.  We have also attended sessions hosted by LJMU, Edge Hill University, University of Liverpool, and the University of Essex. To re-watch sessions around citizen science, open journals, the UK Reproducibility Network, and other open research related talks please go here. 

We have also found some interesting articles and events around Open Research that we've linked out below, so please scroll down to read more.

Your Library Research Support team 

News from Sheffield Hallam: 

We are now moving beyond traditional metrics-based CVs in order to shift away from quantity towards the quality. What does it mean? In January we launched a professional activities module on Elements that allows you to evidence your skills and experience in terms of generation of new ideas/tools/methodologies or knowledge; development of others and maintenance of effective working relationships; wider research and innovation community and broader research/innovation- users and audiences and towards wider societal benefit. A module on the University's Elements system can be used to develop and store evidence for Narrative CVs. We have linked guidance and a recorded training session on that. Also, our Researcher Development team has created a dedicated SharePoint page. Finally, to read more about the general idea of narrative CVs please go to the UKRI webpages.

News around Open Research:

AI and web metrics: Have we reached the limits of altmetrics? To answer that question, please read the full article on Research information platform.

 

IOP Publishing joins OA Switchboard: how to make it easier for institutions to manage OA agreements? By setting up a central information hub that enables AO output monitor process. Please read more about the improved visibility of published OA research.

 

AI to give you an idea for your next research project – Craig Nicholson wrote an interesting article on responsible use of AI in the context of recent World Economic Forum in Davos and the stand Ursula von der Leyen took when highlighting the importance of AI and R&D.

Initiatives:

Transforming research for an Open Science world - which means being more collaborative across countries, making research more impactful, discoverable, and open.

 

Have you ever heard about “Team Science”? Please read more about the report on recommendations on how to shape a more supportive research culture.

 

Springer Nature is now developing a new peer review platform. The initiative has been named as "a key investment from the company in the future of publishing". The plan is to link the existing technology with new AI tools to boost the quality of published research. To read all details about this project, please read the full article liked above.

 

DORA announces a new career assessment tool. To get familiar with the new RRA (responsible research assessment) tool please visit their webpages.

 

A promise for a greater research impact for Sage OA authors has been made. ResearchGate and Sage expand Journal Home partnership with the aim to expand accessibility and readership for more journals. 

 

Upcoming events:

Foundations of Peer Reviewing course
There are five funded places available on the new Open Access Publishing Association (OAPA) Foundations of Peer Reviewing Course that starts in April. The course is 'discipline agnostic' and would be of benefit to both early- and mid-career researchers. Please check out the details and submit your expression of interest by Monday 18 March. 

 

The Open Research Champions meeting is scheduled for 30th April - to find out more about our Open Research Champions Network and how to join please visit our webpages.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Please see below the spring programme for the Open Research Conversations at University of Sheffield: 

Open source hardware for reproducibility, equity and progress. Book your place.

Wednesday 10 April 2024, 12-1pm

Open source hardware - the designs for which are publicly available and can be reproduced by anyone - can offer powerful benefits, democratising research and making methodologies accessible regardless of a researcher’s institutional context.

In this session, two researchers from the University of Sheffield explore their own relationship to open source hardware, including the factors behind their adoption of open source, key considerations regarding how and where to make hardware specifications available, documentation, licensing decisions, and more. Our speakers will explore the far-reaching benefits of an open source approach to hardware development and open a discussion about potential support needs for researchers considering this route.

David Polson is a Senior University Teacher in Mechanical Design with an interest in designs which can be built and controlled using emerging technologies including 3D printing, microcontrollers, low-cost sensors and low-energy communications. Harry Wright, a Research Associate in the Department of Chemistry, was awarded the University’s Open Research Prize 2023 for his development of FoamPi, a free and open source low-cost alternative for measuring polyurethane foam reactions.

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Evaluating (Open) Research: Capturing open practices in research evaluation. Book your place. 

Wednesday 15th May 2024, 12-1pm

In anticipation of REF 2029’s increased emphasis on research culture, many UK institutions are reflecting on how open research activities might best be captured in articulations of research quality. 2023 also saw the tenth anniversary of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), which sought a change in approach regarding criteria for research evaluation.

This Open Research Conversation will explore the ways institutions and the sector as a whole can, and should be, capturing open research activities in research evaluation and ensuring credit is appropriately distributed. Speakers will include Lizzie Gadd, Head of Research and Innovation Culture and Assessment at Loughborough University, Chair of the International Network of Research Management Societies (INORMS) Research Evaluation Group and Vice-Chair of the Coalition on Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA); Simon Hettrick, Professor at the University of Southampton, Deputy Director of the Software Sustainability Institute and Chair of the Hidden REF Committee; and Robert Darby, Research Data Manager at the University of Reading and founder of the UKRN’s Open and Responsible Research Reward and Recognition project (OR4), part of the Research England-funded Open Research Programme.

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Diamond open access: The future of academic publishing? Book your place. 

Wednesday 12th June 2024, 12-1pm

Diamond open access is a model of open access publishing in which academic outputs such as articles or books are free both to read and to publish. This contrasts with the more prevalent Gold open access model, where publications are free to read but authors wishing to make their publications open incur an article or book processing charge, which can be a costly barrier to those whose institutions or funders are unable to pay.

This Open Research Conversation will explore the rationale behind and benefits of Diamond open access, the infrastructure and community support required to achieve it, key challenges in the growth and upscaling of Diamond OA initiatives, and more. We’ll hear from the following speakers:

Samuel Moore is Scholarly Communications Specialist at Cambridge University Library and a researcher in information studies. He has written and spoken extensively on all aspects of open access, including Diamond OA, and is an organiser of the Radical Open Access Collective. 

Antonios Ktenidis and Kirsty Liddiard (School of Education, University of Sheffield) are managing editors for the interdisciplinary Diamond open access Journal of Disability Studies in Education, within the field of Critical Disability Studies.

Caroline Mackay is the Licensing Manager at Jisc, with involvement in Jisc’s support for Diamond OA publishing initiatives.

Issue: 2 | Tuesday, 16th January, 2024

Open Research Newsletter in 2024 

We hope you had a good start into the New Year. We welcome you back with some interesting news around open research. There are plenty of initiatives related to open research practices. Please have a look through our reading selection from various information platforms and scroll down to learn more about events our university is taking part in! 

Your Library Research Support team 

News from Sheffield Hallam: 

New Open Access policy at SHU:

We have now introduced an updated right retention policy at SHU. The new SHU Research Publications and Copyright Policy (Open Access policy) was initially introduced on the 15th October 202. From the 1st January 2024, authors will additionally be able to retain their rights over the peer-reviewed manuscript of a chapter in an edited collection such as a book. 

Sheffield Hallam University in "OR4" project:

This week, the UK Reproducibility Network (UKRN) launched a large-scale national collaboration to create a community of practice and case studies to participate in the ‘OR4’ project, part of the UKRN Open Research Programme. OR4 is a major collaborative initiative to reform how open research is recognised and rewarded in recruitment, promotion and appraisal practices. 43 UK academic research institutions, including Sheffield Hallam, participate in the initiative – 14 as case studies and 29 in a wider community of practice. Working together, we hope to reform the way we recruit, promote and appraise our research staff, prioritizing openness and transparency in research. The project runs until August 2026 and aims to provide freely available tools to institutional leaders incentivizing recognition and reward for open research practices, measure institutional improvement in implementing responsible research assessment recognising open research and foster a community involved in implementing research assessment reforms.

News around Open Research:

“Be ready for UKRI’s new open access policy” - Anna Hughes, scholarly communications and engagement officer from Jisc shares her advice on how to prepare your work for the new UKRI OA policy that applies to long-form publications from 1 January 2024.  

 

“Harmony of Minds: The Tale of Open Science and the Healing of Progressville” - OPUS project has now published a story tale on Open Science as an alternative and quite creative way to explain the main principle behind the concept of open research.  

 

"The Power of Social Media in Making Science and Research Accessible to All” - OPUS team is explaining why the engagement with social media is crucial to make Open Science more powerful.  

 

“What does it mean to do generous research?” - in her recent article published on LSE platform Rachelle Chadwick writes about the open receptivity and points out the value of generosity to critical thinking and research.  

 

"Preprints, conspiracy theories and the need for platform governance” - LSE has published an article on how scientists are engaging with preprints on social media platforms.  

Also, in response to the above article we recommend to get familiar with our SHU guidance on preprints.

Initiatives:

Mandatory open access to all publicly funded scientific knowledge by 2030 - The Frontiers Research Foundation has launched an Open Science Charter, calling upon governments, research institutions and funders, the scientific community, and citizens everywhere to support the OA initiative.  

 

The launch of new OA journal for a sustainable future:  

IOP Publishing (IOPP) is launching Sustainability Science and Technology, an interdisciplinary, open access journal dedicated to advancing sustainability through research in science, technology, and engineering.  

 

New feature in Octopus: Make changes to your existing publications 

Octopus is designed to allow researchers to publish early, and get open, constructive, quality-focused feedback from the community. The new reversioning feature allows authors to make use of that feedback by publishing new versions of their work.  

 

Upcoming events:

 

The Open Research Champions meeting is scheduled for 24th January - to find out more about our Open Research Champions Network and how to join please visit our webpages.

 

Open Research Conversations in Sheffield - Spring 2024 programme:

The University of Sheffield has just announced their Spring programme of Open Research Conversations - lunchtime online sessions which take place monthly and are open to all. Each focuses on a specific aspect of open research and features talks from 2-3 speakers followed by questions and discussion.  

 

Editorial mass resignations: Collective action towards open research - register via Eventbrite: 

In this Open Research Conversation, University of Sheffield has invited key participants in growing mode of collective action: Johan Rooryck, now of Plan S, was editor-in-chief at the hybrid Elsevier journal Lingua before resigning to establish the OA alternative Glossa. Judith Green edited and co-edited Critical Public Health between 2010-2023 before a mass resignation to found a new journal on an open source platform; Chris Chambers was among the editorial team at Neuroimage who resigned in protest against publisher profiteering in April 2023. From different disciplinary contexts, these scholars share their overlapping experiences of the pursuit of equity, openness and academic freedom in publishing, examining the potential of collective action and open access alternatives to provide a corrective to publishing oligopolies.  

 

Open Science Days 2024 in Berlin:  

The Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL) is hosting Open Science Days 2024. The conference will be held as a hybrid meeting, with the attendance part again taking place at the Harnack House in Berlin. The conference language will be English. The participation fee is 100€ for on-site attendance and 40€ for digital attendance.  

 

Open Research Week 2024 in UK: 

Loughborough University, De Montfort University and the University of Leicester have joined together to celebrate Open Research Week 2024. A series of online talks promotes the practice of openly sharing and re-using research-related materials, for both education and research. Included are a range of disciplines, research life-cycle stages and experiences.

University of Liverpool, Liverpool John Moores University, Edge Hill University, and the University of Essex will also be celebrating and promoting open research for researchers and colleagues who support open research. Whilst some sessions are UK-focused, others will be of interest to colleagues around the world. This year’s Open Research Week programme includes sessions on citizen science, research culture and open research in Europe.

 

Issue:1 | Monday, 20th November, 2023

Launch of the Open Research Newsletter

Starting with the November edition and with a planned release every other month we are launching our Open Research Newsletter with the aim to create a digital space for essential information and the latest updates around discussions and developments in the open research landscape.

The Library Research Support team

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News around Open Research 

 

The UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science is the first international standard setting instrument on open science. UNESCO now has developed a toolkit to help organisations to implement the recommendations. The organisation will be adding more resources to the toolkit soon. Please read more about the UNESCO Open Science toolkit.

Here is the article on how DORA is expanding its social media presence.

‘Scholarly communication needs to change. But how?’ 

“cOAlition S – an international consortium of research funding and performing organisations, committed to making full and immediate Open Access a reality – is seeking input from the global research community on a proposal to establish a community-based scholarly communication system, fit for open science in the 21st century.”

Here are the links to: full proposal from cOAlition S and cOAlition S survey.

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Recent conversations on Open Research 

 

“Researchers shouldn’t have to fear going public” - the latest article in ResearchProfessional News highlights the importance of open discussions in the research community.

“The open science movement is changing how we think about and practise science” says Louise Bezuidenhout and Hugh Shanahan in their article Open science is more open in some places than others published on ResearchProfessional News platform.

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News from Sheffield Hallam

 

‘How is our Open Access policy making research more accessible to the public?’

In October last year, we approved a new Open Access policy which allows academic staff and research students at Sheffield Hallam to retain key rights over their scholarly papers published in journals and conference proceedings. Under the policy, all journal and conference papers can be shared under a liberal re-use licence (CC BY) immediately from the day of publication, rather than after a delay stipulated by the journal. To achieve this, authors need to include the following declaration in their submission: “For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission.” Since its launch, the policy has been well received.

Publishers have, on the whole, been happy to comply and we know that initial fears from some authors for editorial rejections and non-cooperative co-authors have not materialised. A very healthy three quarters of all journal and conference papers (!) published by Sheffield Hallam authors were made available to the public via Open Access immediately upon publication under a liberal re-use licence (CC BY).

Other universities are now following our lead by implementing rights retention policies, including King’s College, Lancaster, Leeds, Manchester, Oxford, Swansea and Sheffield.

This excellent result supports our vision to be the world's leading applied University and the Library teams' goal to advance open research.

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Upcoming events: 

 

SheffieldR : November Meetup 20th Nov 2023, The power of interactive data visualization

A showcase of innovative R-Shiny projects. Details: We'll dive into two innovative R-Shiny projects. The first project introduces the fascinating world of mapping to investigate the dynamics of segregation among neighbouring regions, a concept we fondly refer to as "social frontiers." In the second project, we explore economic sectors with a focus on aiding South Yorkshire's mayoral authority in their strategic growth planning endeavours. 

Sheffield ReproducibiliTea Journal Club - December session:

Abstract : Failures to replicate evidence of new discoveries have forced scientists to ask whether this unreliability is due to suboptimal implementation of methods or whether presumptively optimal methods are not, in fact, optimal. This paper reports an investigation by four coordinated laboratories of the prospective replicability of 16 novel experimental findings using rigour-enhancing practices: confirmatory tests, large sample sizes, preregistration and methodological transparency. In contrast to past systematic replication efforts that reported replication rates averaging 50%, replication attempts here produced the expected effects with significance testing (P < 0.05) in 86% of attempts, slightly exceeding the maximum expected replicability based on observed effect sizes and sample sizes. When one lab attempted to replicate an effect discovered by another lab, the effect size in the replications was 97% that in the original study. This high replication rate justifies confidence in rigour-enhancing methods to increase the replicability of new discoveries.

Neil Shephard (Research Software Engineer at University of Sheffield) will give a brief summary of the article and will open discussion by highlighting some of the points he thought were good/bad about the paper.

This time slot sits between sandwiched between Open Research Conversation x Lunchbytes : Making research software more visible and reusable - Open Source Software and FAIR4RS and the Annual Open Research Lecture.