Open Research

Welcome to the Library Research Support team’s guide to Open Research!

These pages are designed to help you, the researcher, make your research open at every stage of the process, from working out the original idea through carrying out the research to sharing the finished work.

No matter where you are in your research career, PhD to Professor, there are three strands to making your research open:

1. Re-think: how do we design our research to be open from its inception?
2. Re-use: how do we make use of what’s already out there (data, methods, etc.) and make sure anything we produce can be re-used by others?
3. Re-connect: how do we share our research outputs in an open manner, so the knowledge we create can be put to use in society?

Our job is to help you make your research open, to provide practical support in all of these areas. 

So, wherever you are in your research journey, take a minute to explore our site, and ask yourself how you can apply these ideas to your research. 

'Open Research' refers to being open about research at every stage of the process, from working out the original idea through carrying out the research to sharing the finished work.  

Open Research is an interchangeable term with 'Open Science' which is often seen in European context, where it used to embrace the full spectrum of knowledge. 

The UKRI says that: 

"Transparency, openness, verification and reproducibility are important features of research and innovation. Open research helps to support and uphold these features across the whole lifecycle of research – improving public value, research integrity, re-use and innovation" 

The principles of Open Research are increasingly reflected in the policies of public funders of research, in developments in scholarly communication, and in the practices of the wider academic and research community. 

• The Open University has produced a detailed course on open research.
• The University of Reading have created a handy list of things you can do to make your research open and to support open research generally. 
• University College London have produced an English version of a useful brief guide to open research for doctoral students. 

That's what this guide is here to help with! Here are some brief ideas on how to do that:

Conceptualisation 

• Blog about your project plans 

• Pre-register your research plans 

Data gathering and Data analysis 

• Consider citizen science by involving the public in data gathering and analysis 

• Share data and preliminary findings before project end or publication 

Publication 

• Share a preprint 

• Publish Open Access 

• Make your data available (open data) and release your code 

• Share your methods and protocols 

• Participate in open review 

• Write a lay summary to increase impact beyond the academy