Open Research

Open Research Data is data which has been collected, processed, and shared in as open a manner as is possible.  

This could mean the use of open source tools for collecting and processing data, sharing your data collection methods and protocols via a website, and sharing data via a repository. 

Many funders now require that data from projects which they support be shared openly, whilst recognising that there are potential limits to sharing such as ethical issues and commercial relationships. 

Why?

Sharing data makes it available for others to use in research, supports the integrity of your research, and helps with reproducibility of research.

How?

Use SHURDA, our institutional data repository, to make your data available to other researchers.

Open-notebook is the practice of making the entire primary record of a research project publicly available online as it is recorded. This involves placing the personal, or laboratory, notebook of the researcher online along with all raw and processed data, and any associated material, as this material is generated. Licences can be added to notebooks to regulate reuse of the data contained therein, as with any open publishing project. 

Why?

The case for using open notebooks rests upon the recognition that data from failed or incomplete experiments are potentially as important as those from successful ones but that the current models of academic publishing provide few incentives to publish such data, nor are there places to put them.

How?

With open notebooks you can share your whole research project workflow. You can use them to share how your project proceeds, including notes, data and ‘null results’ from failed or otherwise insignificant experiments. You can also share software code with accompanying annotations and visualisations. Keeping an open notebook can also be applied to projects that do not conduct experiments, for example in the humanities, where the problem of ‘null results’ exists as anywhere else. 

Replication studies are studies that are ‘an independent repetition of an earlier, published study, using sufficiently similar methods (along the appropriate dimensions) and conducted under sufficiently similar circumstances.’ Such studies can be usefully carried out in all empirical forms of research, including in the humanities. It is also desirable that these replication studies are frequently carried out to ensure the integrity of the research record, and to rectify cases of fraud, questionable research practises, and the lack of effective peer review.  

Why?

Trust in our research findings not only depends on effective peer review, but importantly also on those findings being replicable and successfully replicated.

How?

Identify published studies in need of replication and repeat using sufficiently similar methods and under sufficiently similar conditions.