Open Research

Open Access is about making research publications freely available, enabling the results to be read and built on by anyone. 

Why?

Making your outputs Open Access maximises the public benefit and helps you to increase your readership, raise your profile and increase your impact. 

Without Open Access, your research outputs will only be available to readers with access through their institution, or who pay for a copy or a subscription. 

How?

The ‘green’ route to Open Access is via self-archiving of your author accepted manuscript in a repository such as the SHU institutional repository, SHURA, alongside publication in a subscription journal.   

The ‘gold’ route to Open Access involves making the final version of record Open Access via the publisher’s website.  This usually involves paying a fee.  

Gold Open Access is when your publisher makes the final published version of the manuscript Open Access on their website. 

• The manuscript will be available immediately to everyone on publication 

• There are no costs to readers to read the final published version 

• Publishing Gold Open access usually requires payment of a fee known as an Article Processing Charge to the publisher by the author, their funder or institution. Make sure you have funding in place before committing to Gold Open Access. 

• Some journals are fully open access, which means all articles are Gold Open Access. 

• Many subscription journals offer you the option to make your article Gold Open Access on payment of a fee. 

• Some publishers offer this option for monographs or chapters. 

How do I find out more?

Research whether Gold Open Access is possible in the journal you are considering publishing in: 

• is the journal a fully open access journal? 

• is it a subscription journal which offers an option to publish Gold Open Access? 

If you want to publish Gold Open Access, investigate the costs involved for your chosen journal.  

The Library has several transformative deals (also called “read and publish” deals) with publishers which eliminate the cost to SHU authors in some or all of that publisher's journals. The Library also has deals with some publishers which reduce the costs. 

It is important to be aware that some journals and publishers operate an exploitative business model (sometimes known as ‘predatory’) by charging Article Processing Charges without providing proper editorial and publishing services, such as peer review.  The journals therefore lack academic rigour and credibility. Make sure you choose where to publish carefully. 

Find out more about the Library deals with publishers and getting funding for Gold Open Access.  

The Library's web pages about Open Access provide more information about how to make your work Open Access, support with Open Access charges and about rights retention. 

Preprints are versions of articles which are made available before they are peer-reviewed and published. The preprints are not peer-reviewed, edited, or typeset before being posted online. For a useful overview see this 2019 JISC report. 

Preprints are usually made available on a preprint server by the author(s).  Preprint servers are often dedicated to articles in a specific discipline or group of disciplines. Examples of preprint servers include: 

• arXiv – physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science, and economics 

• bioArXiv - biology 

• MedArXiv – health sciences 

('ArXiv' in the name of most of these servers is pronounced 'Archive') 

Some publishers post preprints as part of their publication processes either to an existing preprint server or to a publisher owned platform. 

There are also publisher owned platforms that authors can post to, e.g. SSRN  

Note that not all preprints go on to be published in a peer reviewed journal or other venue. 

Why?

There are several advantages to publishing a preprint: 

• a preprint allows you to make your work available quickly without waiting for the peer review and publication processes which can be slow. 

• your preprint wiil be freely available to all, increasing dissemination and raising your profile. 

• you establish priority - there is a public record of your research findings, including a timestamp. 

• if the final, published output is still pending, a preprint gives you a citable output which you can refer to in grant and job applications, etc. 

• you may get feedback on your work which will help you to improve it before submitting it for publication. 

• negative results can be harder to publish. A preprint may be a way to make these available. 

How?

1. Check your publisher's policies. 
   Many academic journals allow posting of a preprint on a preprint server prior to publication, but some do not. They may not be willing to publish your work if has been published as a preprint or they may look less favorably on work that has already received considerable attention as a preprint.  The practice can also vary between disciplines where preprints are established to a greater or lesser degree. It is very important to check potential publisher's policies and practice in your area, before making your work available as a preprint.   
     

2. Consider your licensing options. 
   You must be able to retain your copyright, so check that this is the case.  You may need to decide on a license under which you wish to make your work available.   You will usually be asked to choose one of the Creative Commons Licenses.  Make sure the licence you choose fits with your publisher's polices.  Some publisher's specify particular licences. 
     

3. Get agreement from your co-authors 
     

4. Factor in time to make your preprint available. 
   You will need to register for the preprint server that you intend to use, read their policies, upload your manuscript and provide details about your preprint  This can take time to do. 
     

5. Consider how you  are you going to respond to feedback. 
   You may receive positive and negative comments about your preprint.  Consider how are you going to respond to these and use them to develop your output.  For example, are you going to allow time between posting your preprint and submitting your work for publication, in which to adapt your work in response to comment. 
     

6. Be sure 
   Making a preprint available is  irreversible, they become a permanent part of the scholarly record.  Seek advice if you are unsure whether to post a preprint. 

If your work goes on to be published, you should also consider how you are going to make the peer reviewed version of your work Open Access in your chosen journal or by self-archiving on SHURA. 

Preprints can be useful to find out about current research. However, they have not been scrutinised or critiqued in a peer review process.   

Some preprint services will undertake some moderation of content, for example if the preprint is in the wrong format or to prevent posting of offensive content, but they do not undertake peer review. You must therefore evaluate preprints while bearing in mind that there has been no review.  There may also be major differences between a pre-print and any final published version which will come later. 

MedRxiv gives the following warning:  

"Caution: Preprints are preliminary reports of work that have not been certified by peer review. They should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information." 

If you find an interesting preprint, you can check to see if it has gone on to be published. There may be a later peer-reviewed version available, for example in a journal. 

However, many preprints do not go on to be published. 

Peer review is the process in which authors' submitted works are scrutinised by experts in the same field.  The aim is to help ensure that only high quality research is published and for feedback to be provided to authors on how they may improve their manuscript. 

Traditionally, peer review has been a closed process.  For example, the reviewers' identities are not usually disclosed to the authors and their reports are not made public.  There has been criticism of this process, because it can be slow, open to bias, and open to abuse.   

Peer review is evolving and in some publications openness is increasing. 

Open peer review opens up the peer review process, trying to bring greater transparency, accountability, and inclusivity.  Some of the common aspects of Open Peer Review are: 

• authors and reviewers are made aware of each other's identities. 

• reports from reviewers are published with the article. 

• the wider community can contribute to reviews. 

There are a number of models of Open Peer Review involving various combinations of aspects and it may take place pre- or post- publication. For example, a journal may operate a system where  the reviewer reports are published online alongside the article, but the reviewers are not named.  

Why?

The following are some of the possible advantages of Open Peer Review: 

• Revealing identities of authors and reviewers increases transparency.  

• The process may foster direct discussion between authors and reviewers. 

• Reviewers providing publicly visible reviews will hopefully be diplomatic and constructive. 

• The pool of reviewers and number of reviews a paper may receive is potentially larger. This could therefore result in the following: 

• increasing the speed of review 

• providing more opportunity for errors and inconsistencies within the research to be spotted 

• greater consistency and reduction in bias 

• Where reviews are visible, reviewers can get credit for their reviewing work and can cite and link to their reviews if they wish to. 

The following are some of the possible disadvantages of Open Peer Review: 

• Reviewers may be less critical if the reviews are public. 

• Reviewers may fear retaliation if they give an unfavourable review and their identity is visible.  For example an early career researcher may not wish to review a senior researchers work. 

How?

To find out more about Open Peer Review: 

• have a look at this guide to Open Peer Review from the Foster consortium 

• read this article: Ross-Hellauer T. What is open peer review? A systematic review [version 2; peer review: 4 approved]. F1000Research 2017, 6:588. https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.11369.2 

As an author you can choose to submit your work to a journal which undertakes Open Peer Review. 

You may wish to  be a reviewer for a journal which undertakes Open Peer Review or be a public reviewer if this is an option. The SHU principles of good research practice for peer reviewers provides a code of conduct for individuals who review the work of others. 

If you are an editor of a publication, you may wish to discuss how to make the peer review process more Open with your publisher.  The paper below is a starting point for considering Open Peer Review for editors and publishers. 

Ross-Hellauer, T., Görögh, E. (2019) Guidelines for open peer review implementation. Research Integrity and Peer Review, 4:4. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41073-019-0063-9 

To ensure the trustworthiness of scholarly work, your data, other materials, and methods of analysis, should be sufficiently documented for others to be able to reproduce. replicate, verify or validate your findings in whatever way is appropriate for your discipline and context.  

Why?
Whether we call this reproducibility or replicability or perhaps even repeatability, the underlying concept to ensure the trustworthiness of research is the same and has long played an essential role in all scientific disciplines, namely  

1. that data and analysis are laid out with sufficient transparency and clarity that the results can be checked.  

2. that the data and analysis offered in support of the findings, do in fact support the reported results.  

3. that the results reported can be found again in the specific study context originally investigated, or indeed in a broader set of study contexts. 

How?

See section on replication studies. [link!]

A key thing to do is to create an ORCID.  This is a persistent digital identifier that distinguishes you from every other researcher. 

Why?

Your ORCID identifier will do the follow: 

• identifies you, even if you have  various versions of your name 

• distinguishes you from other researchers with a similar name 

• provides a record of your works 

• facilitates communication with other systems in the university and those managed by research funders and publishers 

How?

You can find more about managing your researcher identity here.

The Library's web pages about sharing data provide detailed information about how to select and share research data.

Why?

Before sharing your data you must consider: 

• what data you must share because of funder or legal requirements. 

• what data you can share- there may be ethical or legal restrictions on what you can share. 

• the license you will use to share the data- who can download the data and under what conditions? 

• the structure of your data- is it well organised with clear file names and a README file? 

How?

You can share your data in a number of ways: 

• By depositing your data in the Sheffield Hallam University Research Data Archive (SHURDA) If you use another site to share data you should still register the data on SHURDA. 

• By depositing your data on a repository such as the UK Data Service. 

• By publishing it in a specialised journal. 

When you publish work based on your data  include a data availability statement which will enable readers to find your data and where possible download and use it. This is a requirement of UKRI funded research. 

If you create code / software as part of your research, for example a data collection or analysis tool, you can share it in a number of ways: 

• depositing it with the Sheffield Hallam University Research Data Archive (SHURDA). Even if you deposit the code / software elsewhere you should register it on SHURDA. 

• adding it to a code development site / repository such as GitHub or BitBucket 

• publishing it in a specialist journal 

• sharing it through a project site 

Sharing code and software helps with reproducibility of particular research and also contributes to the tools available for research in general. 

The Open Source Initiative  describes the main Open Source licenses for software. 

If you make your research data open, it will usually be distributed under the terms of one of the Creative Commons Licenses.  The Creative Commons Licenses are summarised below, but please check the full details to fully understand each licence. 

CC BY 
This license lets others distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. 

CC BY-SA 
This license lets others distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. 

CC BY-NC 

This license allows others to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon your workl in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to you 

CC BY-ND 
This license lets others copy and distribute your work, including commercially; however, it cannot be shared with others in adapted form, and credit must be provided to you. 

CC BY-NC-SA 
This license lets others distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. 

CC BY-NC-ND 
This license is the most restrictive license, only allowing others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially. 

Your profile(s) is your shop window to the world.  Consider where you would like to have a presence and remember to update your profiles on the services you have decided to use. 

Why?

Your online profile is one of the first things many will see of you as an academic.

How?

Maintain your SHU Profile 

If you are a member of staff, your claimed outputs on Elements are used to populate the publications section of your SHU profile on the University’s externally facing web pages. It is therefore important to keep the record of your outputs up to date in Elements. 

Manage your SCOPUS identifier 

If your work appears in Scopus, you will have a Scopus Author Identifier created by Scopus.  This helps to identify and pull together your work in Scopus.  It can be linked with your ORCID ID to help you to maintain your record and can be used for automatic claiming in Elements. 

If your Scopus author identifier needs amending, find out how to do this on the Scopus page Manage my author profile. 

Curate your Web of Science profile 

You can use the ‘Researchers’ option to find your profile on Web of Science, including a list of your outputs (those that are indexed in this database). You can claim your author record, verify your work and control how your name, title, institution, and profile image appears. 

Consider using Academic Social Networks: ResearchGate, Academia, etc 

You may wish to create profiles and publication lists in social networks for researchers such as ResearchGate or Academia.  If you are thinking of using these sites to share your work as well as to have a profile, please have a look at our page about sharing your research to help you share your research in line with your publisher’s policies. 

Consider having a profile on Google Scholar 

Another option is to set up a Google Scholar profile using Google Scholar Citations.   You can create a public or private profile in Google Scholar with information about you and links to your publications. 

If you are responsible for teaching, you can introduce your students—undergraduates as well as postgraduates—to the concepts and practices of Open Research, perhaps even using one of your own research projects.

Why?

Embedding Open Research in your teaching ensure the continuation of good practice.

How?

For example: explain why Open Access, and data and code sharing are important; use open data in your teaching and exercises; ask students undertaking experimental projects to pre-register their hypotheses and study designs; integrate preregistration and preprints in assessment; introduce students to open source platforms and educate them on creating reproducible code; design group problem-solving activities involving open practices; teach replicability by setting an assignment to replicate a published study; get students learning programming to set up an online code repository in GitHub; run an open peer review exercise.