The Open Research at Cambridge conference took place between 22–26 November 2021. In a series of talks, panel discussions and interactive Q&A sessions, researchers, publishers, and other stakeholders explored how Cambridge can make the most of the opportunities offered by open research. This blog is part of a series summarising each event.
As part of the 2021 Open Research Conference at Cambridge, we hosted a panel discussion on the future of open access monographs, specifically those that do not require author payment in the form of book processing charges. This is especially timely given the fact that UK Research and Innovation recently announced a books component to its open access policy. In the humanities, where funding is limited, book processing charges have the potential to make open access a preserve of only those that can afford to pay, potentially excluding junior scholars, unfunded researchers and colleagues from universities outside the Global North. This panel therefore explored the alternatives to author payments that exist and the ways in which the research community can prevent processing charges from becoming the standard model for open access book publishing.
The panel was moderated by Samuel Moore, Scholarly Communication Specialist at the Office of Scholarly Communication, and featured three expert speakers from publishing and policymaking. Kicking off was Rachel Bruce, Head of Research at UK Research and Innovation, to discuss their open access books policy that was recently announced. We learned more of the details of the policy but also how much of the detail relating to funding is yet to be announced. Following Rachel’s presentation were talks by Ben Denne of Cambridge University Press and Rupert Gatti of Open Book Publishers. Ben described the Flip it Open model devised by Cambridge University Press that makes a book openly accessible when it reaches a certain revenue threshold. Rupert described the overall approach of Open Book Publishers to make books available without the need for author payment, through a combination of print sales, grant income and other sources.
The ensuing discussion covered important topics such as the sustainability of such approaches, the technologies that underpin them and the importance of green open access for open access book publishing. We learned that funding needs to be equitably distributed to enable a diverse ecosystem of OA presses and that there is no one-sized model for open access book publishing. The work for this is at once the responsibility of policymakers, publishers, librarians and researchers alike.
The Open Research at Cambridge conference took place between 22–26 November 2021. In a series of talks, panel discussions and interactive Q&A sessions, researchers, publishers, and other stakeholders explored how Cambridge can make the most of the opportunities offered by open research. This blog is part of a series summarising each event.
Much faith is being placed in narrative format CVs, like the Resume for Researchers, to bring about a shift in how we recognise and reward researchers, but is Cambridge, or indeed the wider academic sector, ready for the change?
Rewards and incentives are one of the eight pillars of open research, and so the open research festival was an ideal opportunity to look at how narrative CVs might help to drive change in open research practice, and improvements to the wider research culture. Our session focused on the Resume for Researchers format (R4R), which was developed by the Royal Society is being adopted by UKRI. The format provides space for researchers to write in detail about their contributions to the generation of knowledge, the development of others, the wider research community, and broader society. The hope is that selection panels will start to consider these broader contributions to research in their decisions, and that researchers in turn will be incentivised to contribute in ways that lead to an improved research culture.
The R4R was only formally launched in 2020, and so most of our workshop participants weren’t familiar with it. Given the momentum behind narrative CVs at the moment, it was interesting to get a sense of how our research community is likely to react to these changes, and what kind of support we might need to provide them with to make narrative CVs a success.
The session participants could see that the R4R format offered applicants the chance to highlight non-traditional career paths, something which they felt might support a more diverse applicant pool. They were also positive about the way the format gave profile to activities like public engagement, and could see how this might encourage more people contribute is such ways.
There were also a number of concerns raised. The participants expressed some scepticism about whether the new format would really change recruitment practice, particularly noting that a lot of the content contained within a narrative CV would be contained within a cover letter in many recruitment scenarios. There was also a concern that the format might drive new inequalities, favouring those who were good at crafting convincing narratives and those whose funders and/or PIs provided them with the support and opportunity to engage in the wide range of activity showcased in the R4R.
It’s clear that more work needs to be done to make this new format really work for the research community at Cambridge – and we hear these same concerns being voiced elsewhere in the sector. An academic in the audience called for the format to be ‘tested’ alongside a standard format, to iron out some of these concerns and encourage uptake. In 2022, the Research Culture team at Cambridge will be starting a project to do just that, to contributing a much needed evidence base on whether and how narrative CVs affect recruitment decisions and hence how they might contribute to culture change.
The Open Research at Cambridge conference took place between 22–26 November 2021. In a series of talks, panel discussions and interactive Q&A sessions, researchers, publishers, and other stakeholders explored how Cambridge can make the most of the opportunities offered by open research. This blog is part of a series summarising each event.
The session described here was on ‘Open data sharing and reuse’ and is summarised by the session chairs, Dominic Dixon (Research Librarian) and Dr Sacha Jones (Research Data Manager) at the Office of Scholarly Communication, Cambridge University Libraries.
The recording of the event can be found here:
Have you wondered how research data is used after it has been shared publicly as open data? What are some of the impacts of sharing data and of its subsequent reuse by others? Are there ethical factors to consider? Does the researcher or research group who shared their data openly benefit in any way from its reuse? What are the essential properties of a reusable dataset? This session on ‘Open data sharing and reuse’ explored these questions and more via presentations delivered by a panel of University of Cambridge researchers from various fields. They included: Professor Richard (Rik) Henson, Deputy Director of the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the Department of Psychiatry and President of the British Neuroscience Association; Professor John Suckling, Director of Research in Psychiatric Neuroimaging in the Department of Psychiatry and chair of the University of Cambridge Research Ethics Committee; Dr Mihály Fazekas, Assistant Professor at the Department of Public Policy, Central European University, and scientific director of an innovative think-tank at the Government Transparency Institute; and Professor Simon Deakin, Professor of Law in the Faculty of Law and Director of the Centre for Business Research.
All speakers discussed challenges and concerns around data sharing, including how and when to share. Rik asks, “Why wait until publication?” to share research data, and perhaps consider publishing a data paper where a dataset is celebrated in its own right, without the narrative of a traditional article. Researchers are often concerned about scooping but there’s little evidence of this and it may be a “paper tiger”. There’s an additional fear that data sharing will expose errors in work but as Rik noted, “I think we just need to get over our egos and accept that everyone makes errors”. One particular challenge can be to control what people (or bots) do with your data, but researchers have a choice over where to share (e.g., which repository to choose) and how to license their data. Something that was implicit in all talks, and stated explicitly by Simon, is that the benefits of sharing data openly vastly outweigh the costs.
Sharing data deriving from research involving human participants is understandably complex due to data protection regulations (e.g., GDPR), obtaining informed consent, and the challenge of anonymising datasets, particularly those containing qualitative data. Participants need to be informed about how their data will be used, so the message is that data sharing needs to be planned far in advance, even at the gestation of the project idea. It is important to be aware of the repository options; for example, if managed/controlled access to data is required then hear about the set-up at MRC CBU discussed by Rik, or the UK Data Service for sensitive qualitative data, as highlighted by Simon. John discusses the import and export of datasets from an ethical perspective, giving two examples from the biomedical and social sciences with a focus on secondary data use. He says that these examples illustrate just how far in the future you might need to think when considering how your data might be reused by others: it is “a lot better to ask for permission from all the stakeholders in these studies than it is to ask for their forgiveness”.
Data must be shared well for both researchers and society to reap the benefits. To do this, select an appropriate repository, adhere to any ethical/legal requirements, follow discipline-specific standards and make your data FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable). A key element of the latter is data documentation, an issue raised repeatedly during this session. Sharing the data alongside any associated code and detailed information about the data will enable it to be reused effectively and mitigate against misuse. Mihály discusses sharing the Digiwhist project data, which has been reused by academia, policy, civil society and the media, and emphasises this: “Every time I put out bits and pieces of my data and code that was not clear, I just kept on receiving the same question over and over again. So actually, it’s in your own best interests to document your work fully because then it is a lot more efficient for you”. Providing data about data is part of being completely transparent about the research process and results, enabling others to understand exactly what was done and to build on it. In some fields, this is an essential part of research reproducibility and replicability. As another example, Simon describes sharing the CBR Leximetric datasets – currently, the 2nd most downloaded dataset in Apollo and 8th of all UK institutional repositories – where not only the data were shared but also the methodology and an extensive codebook.
In both examples, being transparent in this way has led to wider reuse of these data and many citations of the data and associated publications. The benefits of FAIR data sharing and data reuse certainly do not rest solely in the number of resulting citations. Ethical and transparent research leads to credible research and researchers, enhancing reputations and quality of outputs. These are elements that all speakers highlighted in their talks. To end on a quote from Simon about the outcome of sharing data and of its subsequent reuse: “It’s been a very very positive experience for us”.
We’re always happy to receive any questions or comments you may have about data sharing and reuse. You can contact us at info@data.cam.ac.uk and see our Research Data website for more information.