Category Archives: Supporting Open Research

Enriching the institutional scholarly record: Octopus outputs in repositories via Publications Router

Supporting Open Research, Uncategorized, ,

Written by Dr Alexandra Freeman, Tim Fellows, Dr Agustina Martínez-García

Researchers at universities across the country are constantly being reminded that when they publish work in journals (or elsewhere) they have to deposit the accepted version of their article in their university’s repository as well. It ensures that this version of the article can be made freely available to the world (so-called ‘Green Open Access’) but also allows the university to keep track of their researchers’ outputs, including reporting to the all-important REF (Research Excellence Framework) exercise that takes place every few years and helps determine future government funding to each institution. It’s important that researchers deposit their works, but time-consuming for everyone involved.

In order to help automate this process, a service called Publications Router takes information from journals and other traditional academic content providers and automatically passes it along to current research information systems (CRISs), repositories, and other relevant institutional systems based upon the affiliations of each article’s authors. But Publications Router did not serve the needs of more innovative alternative publishing platforms, meaning that universities were not automatically being notified of works published on these platforms. Given that these tend to be Open Access publications, their loss to the REF assessment exercise (which counts the proportion of Open Access publications from each institution), is vital.

Thanks to the support of the Arcadia fund, the open research platform Octopus.ac is now the first alternative publishing platform integrated with Publications Router.

Octopus is designed to sit alongside journals as the place where researchers share their work in full detail. Instead of publishing a ‘paper’, Octopus allows researchers to share their work as a series of small, interconnected publications that each represent a different stage of the research process. This allows researchers to follow best practice in research, such as publishing a method before it is carried out, and to allow others to carry out linked research (such as an alternative analysis of data, or a replication of a method).

The institution that drove forward the integration was the University of Cambridge. When a Cambridge-affiliated researcher publishes their work on Octopus, a copy of the publication – along with key metadata – is now directed to Cambridge’s institutional repository, Apollo, via Publications Router.

As the structure of Octopus’ publications is different from that of a traditional research paper, one of the key challenges has been how Octopus can integrate with existing research systems designed around the traditional formats. With that issue now solved, Octopus publications can much more easily be formally recognised as part of a researcher’s academic record.

Whilst the integration has been developed by Octopus and Cambridge, it has been built to allow other institutions who use Publications Router to take advantage of it, meaning the feature is now available to numerous institutions across the UK. The integration reuses and adapts existing infrastructure, i.e. Publications Router, and increases interoperability between innovative research publishing tools like Octopus, while at the same time, it removes barriers to depositing research outputs into research repositories. More so, it provides key benefits to researchers and institutions:

  • By depositing Octopus outputs into repositories, we add redundancy to ensure that additional copies will be accessible and preserved long-term.
  • The integration helps institutions tracking the impact of their research and keeping an accurate scholarly record.
  • The integration facilitates funder compliance and institutional reporting as information about Octopus outputs is made available to institutional research information systems in an automated manner.

Find out more about this integration at https://research.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2025/01/16/octopus-is-now-delivering-records-via-publications-router/

Towards enriched open scholarly information: integrating DSpace and OpenAlex

Supporting Open Research, ,

We are pleased to announce that, thanks to the support of the Vietsch Foundation, we will be developing an integration between DSpace repositories and OpenAlex. We are partnering with 4Science, a certified platinum DSpace provider, to deliver this project that will integrate two key systems within the global scholarly ecosystem, the DSpace repository (https://www.dspace.org/) and OpenAlex (https://openalex.org/), a free and open catalogue of the world’s scholarly research system.

Using OpenAlex’s open API (Application Programming Interface), this integration will allow for the quick import of relevant research and scholarly (meta)data into DSpace repositories, helping institutions to improve the quality and completeness of their records of research outputs and streamlining researcher publication and reporting workflows by providing accurate and relevant information in automated ways. This integration will also save time for researchers and librarians, who would be able to dedicate time to more research-oriented tasks.

Reusing the data in OpenAlex will help institutions to improve the quality and completeness of data in institutional repositories and strengthen the wider open access network by increasing the number of versions and access points to content. Moreover, the availability of multiple (open access) copies of the materials can provide a more effective strategy for long-term preservation.

The research and scholarly publishing environment is changing rapidly and there is an increasing expectation that research findings will be shared, both among funders and policy makers, and the wider research and public community. We strongly believe that institutional research repositories and scholarly platforms play a critical role in supporting these open research practices by preserving and disseminating research findings and supporting materials produced by institutions. The solution developed in this project will greatly contribute to increasing and enhancing the availability of open and accurate information about research outputs in the wider scholarly ecosystem.

Project information at the Vietsch Foundation site: https://www.vietsch-foundation.org/projects/

Diamond Open Access Journals platform launch at Cambridge

Publishing, Supporting Open Research,

Dr Agustina Martínez-García, Head of Open Research Systems, Digital Initiatives

We are pleased to announce that our Diamond Open Access Journals at Cambridge platform has launched in May and can be accessed at https://diamond-oa.lib.cam.ac.uk/home. This service will be available initially as part of a one-year pilot project undertaken by the Open Research Systems (ORS) and Office of Scholarly Communication (OSC) teams within Cambridge University Library (CUL).  

Project overview

The main aim of the Diamond project is to support Cambridge’s research community in the context of a changing open research and scholarly publishing environment. To meet increasing demand to share research findings we are scoping, assessing, and implementing future services and systems that meet those needs, while contributing to a growing wider open research community and ecosystem. The pilot is being launched off the back of a project to understand the community-led publishing landscape at Cambridge (findings to be shared soon). Researchers in the Office of Scholarly Communication uncovered a vibrant ecosystem of DIY publishing projects at Cambridge that the library is exploring how to support through technical and resource-based approaches.  

As part of the project, we are engaging with Cambridge researchers and exploring whether open and community-developed platforms meet their needs around institutional publishing and can be used as the basis for service development in this area. We are using the DSpace repository platform to support this pilot. DSpace is a widely adopted, open-source repository platform, and it is currently the solution underpinning Apollo, Cambridge’s Institutional Repository. In its newest version, it offers advanced functionality and features that can potentially make it a suitable platform for journal publishing, an area we are keen to explore with this pilot. 

Where we are at

Main activities of the project are focusing on: 

  • Exploring the implementation of suitable infrastructure, built on interoperable, open, and widely adopted platforms. 
  • Gathering use cases of community-led open access journals at Cambridge, focusing on discipline, journal type, frequency of publication, production standards. 
  • Gathering insights and inform future service development in this area by a) assessing the suitability of the DSpace open-source repository platform as a journal publishing platform; and b) estimating the associated costs and resourcing requirements, both in terms of service management and infrastructure (long-term access, storage, and preservation costs). 

The following four Cambridge student-led journals have agreed initially to participate in the pilot, and we are also exploring opening participation to additional journals in the upcoming months. 

  • Cambridge Journal of Climate Research (Climate Research Society, first issue now available in the Diamond platform) 
  • Cambridge Journal of Human Behaviour (Anthropology) 
  • Cambridge Journal of Visual Culture (History of Art) 
  • Scroope (Architecture) 

What’s next

The next iteration of work for the pilot will focus on assessing the resources and costs involved in transitioning from pilot to service. Ensuring long-term preservation and access comes with several associated costs and it is critical to assess these when evaluating sustainable approaches to service development. Examples of cost elements that we will consider include onboarding (initial implementation) fees, hosting and maintenance fees, volume of content and storage costs, persistent identifier (DOIs and ISSN) minting and publisher databases indexing services costs, etc. We will also explore suitable long-term content preservation options, including approaches such as integrations with existing preservation services such as CLOCKSS (https://clockss.org/), or assessing in-house preservation via the services that are currently being developed as part of CUL’s Digital Preservation Programme. 

What we can learn from the ‘promise and pitfalls of preregistration’ meeting

Publishing, Supporting Open Research

Dr Mandy Wigdorowitz, Open Research Community Manager, Cambridge University Libraries

The promise and pitfalls of preregistration meeting was held at the Royal Society in March 2024. It was organised to address the utility of preregistration and initiate an interdisciplinary dialogue about its epistemic and pragmatic aims. The goal of the meeting was to explore the limitations associated with preregistration, and to conceive of a practical way to guide future research that can make the most of its implementation.

Preregistration is the practice of publicly declaring a study’s hypotheses, methods, and analyses before conducting a research study. Researchers are encouraged to be as specific as possible when writing preregistration plans, detailing every aspect of the research methodology and analyses, including, for instance, the study design, sample size, procedure for dealing with outliers, blinding and manipulation of conditions, and how multiple analyses will be controlled for. By doing so, researchers commit to a time-stamped study plan which will reduce the potential for flexibility in analysis and interpretation that may lead to biased results. Preregistration is a community-led response to the replication crisis and aims to mitigate questionable research practices (QRPs) that have come to light in recent years, some of which include HARKing (Hypothesising After Results are Known), p-hacking (the inappropriate manipulation of data analysis to enable a favoured result to be presented as statistically significant), and publication bias (the unbalanced publication of statistically significant findings or positive results over null and/or unexpected findings) (Simmons et al., 2011; Stefan & Schönbrodt, 2023).

The meeting brought together scholars and publishers from a range of disciplines and institutions to discuss whether preregistration has indeed lived up to these aims and whether and to what extent it has solved the problems it was envisioned to address.

It became clear that the problems associated with QRPs have not simply disappeared with the uptake and implementation of preregistration. From the perspective of meta-research, the success of preregistration appears to be largely disciplinary and legally dependent, with some disciplines mandating and normalising it (e.g., clinical trial registration in biomedical research), others greatly encouraging and (sometimes) requiring it (e.g., psychological science research), and others having no expectations about its use (e.g., economics research). The effectiveness of preregistration was shown to be linked to these dependencies, but also related to the quality and detail of the preregistration plan itself. Researchers are the arbiters of their research choices and if they choose to write vague or ambiguous preregistration plans, the problems that preregistration are assumed to address will inevitably persist.

Various preregistration templates exist (such as on the Open Science Framework, OSF) and some incentives for preregistration are recognised, such as the preregistration badges awarded by some journals, making it a systematic and straightforward exercise. In practice, however, it is not always the case that sufficient information is provided, and even in cases where preregistered plans are detailed, they are not always followed for various pragmatic or other (not always nefarious) reasons. As such, the research community are cautioned to not assume that preregistration equates to better or more trustworthy research. Rather, the preregistration plan needs to be critically reviewed as a standalone document in conjunction with the published study. This is important because preregistration plans that are usually deposited into repositories (e.g., OSF, National Library of Medicine’s Clinical Trials Registry) are seldom evaluated as entities of their own or against their corresponding research articles. Note that this is unlike registered reports which are a type of journal article that details a study’s protocol that does get peer reviewed before data is collected and if reviewed favourably, is given an in-principal acceptance regardless of the study outcomes.

Other discussions centred around the utility of preregistration in exploratory versus confirmatory research, whether preregistration can improve our theories, and how the process of conducting multiple but slightly varied analyses and selecting the most desired outcome (also referred to the ‘garden of forking paths’) affects the claims we make.

The overall sentiment from the meeting was that while preregistration does not solve all the issues that have arisen from QRPs, it ultimately leads to more transparency of the research process, accountability on the part of the researchers conducting the research, and it facilitates deeper engagement with one’s own research prior to any collection or analysis of data.

Since attending the meeting, I have taken away valuable insights that have made me critically reflect on my own research choices, and from a practice perspective, I have downloaded the OSF preregistration template and am documenting the plans for a research project.

Given the strides that have been taken toward improving the transparency, credibility and reproducibility of research, researchers at Cambridge need to consider whether preregistration plans should be included as another type of output that can be deposited on the institutional repository, Apollo. We have recently added Methods and preprints as output types which have broadened the options for sharing and which align with open research practices. Including preregistration could be a valuable and timely addition.  

References

Stefan, A. M., & Schönbrodt, F. D. (2023). Big little lies: a compendium and simulation of p-hacking strategies. Royal Society Open Science, 10(2), 220346. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.220346

Simmons, J. P., Nelson, L. D., & Simonsohn, U. (2011). False-positive psychology: undisclosed flexibility in data collection and analysis allows presenting anything as significant. Psychological Science, 22(11), 1359-1366. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797611417632

Introducing the preprint deposit service

Supporting Open Research, ,

The Office of Scholarly Communication, jointly with Open Research Systems (Digital Initiatives) and Research Information team have developed a new preprint deposit service for University of Cambridge researchers, which will be available on the week commencing 11th March 2024.

Why offer a preprint service?

Although researchers are generally well-served by existing subject repositories/preprint servers, we have identified an unmet need for those:

  • Who have no suitable subject repository/preprint server, or
  • Whose subject repositories/preprint server may be unable to offer long-term preservation, or
  • Who wish to use the University’s repository instead of existing subject repositories/preprint servers.


Why offer a preprint service now?

Following recent upgrades to both the University’s repository Apollo and Elements (the system that the University uses to hold and manage data on research activity), we are now in a position where we can offer a preprint deposit service.

What can be deposited?

Cambridge University researchers can deposit new (unpublished) preprints that have not been submitted to an external subject repository/preprint server.

Researchers can also deposit published preprints if they have concerns about its long-term preservation.

Can subsequent versions of a preprint be deposited?

New versions of a preprint can be added to an existing preprint record.

What happens once the preprint has been accepted for publication?

Researchers are asked to deposit the accepted manuscript as usual, via Elements. The Open Access Team will link the preprint record and accepted manuscript record in Apollo. The preprint and the accepted manuscript need to be separate records to ensure that the first deposit date of the accepted manuscript is not obscured, which is important for REF compliance purposes.

Open Research for Inclusion – event round up

Humanities, Open Research at Cambridge Conference, Publishing, Supporting Open Research

Dr Mandy Wigdorowitz, Open Research Community Manager, Cambridge University Libraries

On Friday 17 November 2023, participants from across Cambridge and beyond gathered for a hybrid meeting on Open Research from different perspectives. Hosted by Cambridge University Libraries at Downing College, ‘Open Research for Inclusion: Spotlighting Different Voices in Open Research at Cambridge‘ drew attention to different areas of Open Research that have been at the forefront of recent discussions in Cambridge by showcasing the scope and breadth of open practices in typically under-represented disciplines and contexts. These included the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, the GLAM sector (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums), and research from and about the Global South. A total of 84 in-person and 75 online attendees participated in the day-long event consisting of a keynote address, two talks, two panels, and a workshop.

The conference opened with a welcome address from Professor Anne Ferguson-Smith CBE FRS FMedSci, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and International Partnerships and the Arthur Balfour Professor of Genetics. Professor Ferguson-Smith emphasised the significance and timeliness of the conference and how it underscores the importance of the Open Research movement. She encouraged attendees to be open to new ideas, approaches, and perspectives that center around Open Research and to celebrate the richness of diversity in research.

Our keynote speaker, Dr Siddharth Soni, Isaac Newton Trust Fellow at Cambridge Digital Humanities and affiliated lecturer at the Faculty of English, then addressed the audience with a talk on Common Ground, Common Duty: Open Humanities and the Global South, providing an account of how to think against neoliberal conceptions of ‘open’ and to reimagine what openness might look like if the Global South was viewed as a common ground space for building an open and international university culture. Dr Soni’s address set the tone for a rich, multi-layered exploration of Open Research on the day, urging attendees to think of open humanities as a form of knowledge that seeks to alter the form and content of knowledge systems rather than just opening Euro-American knowledge systems to global publics.

Dr Siddharth Soni Common Ground, Common Duty: Open Humanities and the Global South

The next talk was from Dr Stefania Merlo from the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research and Dr Rebecca Roberts from the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research and Fitzwilliam Museum who further explored the theme of the Global South in their practical perspective on how they managed the curation of digital archives for heritage management from their work on the projects: Mapping Africa’s Endangered Archaeological Sites and Monuments (MAEASaM) and Mapping Archaeological Heritage in South Asia (MAHSA). They reflected on the opportunities and challenges relating to the production and dissemination of information about archaeological sites and monuments in projects across Africa and South Asia as well as their experience working with and learning from local communities.

Dr Stefania Merlo and Dr Rebecca Roberts Open Data for Open Research – Reflections on the Curation of Digital Archives for Heritage Management in the Global South

An Open Research panel session was next which featured panellists with diverse backgrounds and expertise who addressed registrants’ pre-submitted and live questions. Some questions included the meaning of Open Research, its advantages and challenges, how Open Research can be engaged with by researchers (and in particular, early career researchers), and how it can be rewarded and embedded into the culture of research practices. There was engaging insights and debate amongst the panellists, led by Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy, Professor Alexander Bird. He shared the platform with Philosophy of Science Professor, Professor Anna Alexandrova, Psychiatry PhD student Luisa Fassi, Cambridge University Libraries (CUL) Interim Head of Open Research Services Dr Sacha Jones, Cambridge University Press & Assessment’s Research Data Manager Dr Kiera McNeice, and Cambridge’s Head of Research Culture Liz Simmonds.

Open Research Panel

Following lunch, a second panel of scholars working across the GLAM sector (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) took place. The panel was chaired by CUL’s Scholarly Communication Specialist, Dr Samuel Moore, and brought together experts who showcased their diverse work in this sector, from software development and museum practices to infrastructure and archiving support. The panel included Dr Mary Chester-Kadwell, CUL’s Senior Software Developer and Lead Research Software Engineer at Cambridge Digital Humanities, Isaac Newton Trust Research Associate in Conservation Dr Ayesha Fuentes from the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Dr Agustina Martinez-Garcia, CUL’s Head of Open Research Systems, and Dr Amelie Roper, CUL’s Head of Research. Each panellist presented on a specialist area, including Open Research code and data practices in digital humanities, collections research, teaching and learning collections care, and Open Research infrastructure. A lively discussion followed from the presentations.

GLAM panel

In a workshop session, Tim Fellows, Product Manager for Octopus, outlined how Octopus is a free and alternative publishing model that can practically foster Open Research. The platform, funded by UKRI, is designed for researchers to share ‘micro publications’ that more closely represent how research is conducted at each stage of a project. In a demonstration of the platform, Tim Fellows showed how Octopus works, it’s design, user interface, and application all with the aim of aiding reproducibility, facilitating new ways of sharing research, and removing barriers to both publishing and accessing research. An in-depth discussion followed which centered on the ways the platform can be used as well as its uptake and application across various disciplines.

Tim Fellows Octopus.ac: Alternative Publishing Model to Foster Open Research

The final talk of the day was on Open Research and the coloniality of knowledge presented by Professor Joanna Page, Director of CRASSH and Professor of Latin American Studies. She discussed the topic with a specific focus on the questions of possession and access by outlining projects by three Latin American artists who have engaged with Humboldt’s legacy and the coloniality of knowledge. Using videos and imagery, Professor Page encouraged the audience to consider how they might identify where the principles of Open Research conflict with those of inclusion and cognitive justice, and what might be done to reconcile those ambitions across diverse cultures and communities. An engaging discussion ensued.

Professor Joanna Page Open Research and the Coloniality of Knowledge

A drinks reception brought the event to a close, allowing attendees a chance to mingle, network and continue the discussions. 

Special thanks to all speakers, attendees, and volunteers for making this event such a success. Stay tuned for information about our 2024 Open Research conference.

Methods getting their chance to shine – Apollo wants your methods!

Supporting Open Research,

By Dr. Kim Clugston, Research Data Co-ordinator, Office of Scholarly Communication

Underlying all research data is always an effective and working method and this applies across all disciplines from STEMM to the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. Methods are a detailed description of the tools that are used in research and can come in many forms depending on the type of research. Methods are often overlooked rather than being seen as an integral research output in their own right. Traditionally, published journals include a materials and methods section, which is often a summary due to restrictions on word limits making it difficult for other researchers to reproduce the results or replicate the study. There can sometimes be an option to submit the method as “supplementary material”, but this is not always the case. There are specific journals that publish methods and may be peer-reviewed but not all are open access, rendering them hidden behind a paywall. The last decade has seen the creation of “protocol” repositories, some with the ability to comment, adapt and even insert videos. Researchers at the University of Cambridge, from all disciplines – arts, humanities, social sciences and STEMM fields – can now publish their method openly in Apollo, our institutional repository. In this blog, we discuss why it is important to publish methods openly and how the University’s researchers and students can do this in Apollo.

The protocol sharing repository, Protocols.io, was founded in 2012. Protocols can be uploaded to the platform or created within it; they can be shared privately with others or made public. The protocols can be dynamic and interactive (rather than a static document) and can be annotated, which is ideal for highlighting information that could be key to an experiment’s success. Collaboration, adaptation and reuse are possible by creating a fork (an editable clone of a version) that can be compared with any existing versions of the same protocol. Protocols.io currently hosts nearly 16,000 public protocols, showing that there is a support for this type of platform. In July this year it was announced that Protocols.io was acquired by Springer Nature. Their press statement aims to reassure that Protocols.io mission and vision will not change with the acquisition, despite Springer Nature already hosting the world’s largest collection of published protocols in the form of SpringerProtocols along with their own version of a free and open repository, Protocol Exchange. This begs the question of whether a major commercial publisher is monopolising the protocol space, and if they are, is this or will this be a problem? At the moment there do not appear to be any restrictions on exporting/transferring protocols from Protocols.io and hopefully this will continue. This is a problem often faced by researchers using proprietary Electronic Research Notebooks (ERNs), where it can be difficult to disengage from one platform and laborious to transfer notebooks to another, all while ensuring that data integrity is maintained. Because of this, researchers may feel locked into using a particular product. Time will tell how the partnership between Protocols.io and Springer Nature develops and whether the original mission and vision of Protocols.io will remain. Currently, their Open Research plan enables researchers to make an unlimited number of protocols public, with the number of private protocols limited to two (paid plans offer more options and features).

Bio-protocol exchange (under the umbrella of Bio-protocol Journal) is a platform for researchers to find, share and discuss life science protocols with protocol search and webinars. Protocols can be submitted either to Bio-protocol or as a preprint, researchers can ask authors questions, and fork to modify and share the protocol while crediting the original author. They also have an interesting ‘Request a Protocol’ (RaP) service that searches more than 6 million published research papers for protocols or allows you to request one if you are unable to find what you are looking for. A useful feature is that you can ask the community or the original authors of the protocol any question you may have about the protocol. Bio-protocol exchange published all protocols free of charge to their authors since their launch in 2011, with substantial financial backing of their founders. Unfortunately,  it was announced that protocol articles submitted to Bio-protocol after March 1 2023 will be charged an Article Processing Charge (APC) of $1200. Researchers who do not want to pay the APC can still post a protocol for free in the Bio-protocol Preprint Repository where they will receive a DOI but will not have gone through the journal’s peer review process.

As methods are integral to successful research, it is a positive move to see the creation and growth of platforms supporting protocol development and sharing. Currently, these tend to cater for research in the sciences, and serve the important role of supporting research reproducibility. Yet, methods exist across all disciplines – arts, humanities, social sciences as well as STEMM – and we see the term ‘method’ rather than ‘protocol’ as more inclusive of all areas of research.

Apollo (Cambridge University’s repository) has now joined the growing appreciation within the research community of recognising the importance of detailing and sharing methodologies. Researchers at the University can now use their Symplectic Elements account to deposit a method into Apollo. Not only does this value the method as an output in its own right, it provides the researcher with a DOI and a publication that can be automatically updated to their ORCID profile (if ORCID is linked to their Elements account). In May this year, Apollo was awarded CoreTrustSeal certification, reinforcing the University’s commitment to preserving research outputs in the long-term and should give researchers confidence that they are depositing their work in a trustworthy digital repository.

The first method to be deposited into Apollo in this way was authored by Professor John Suckling and colleagues. Professor Suckling is Director of Research in Psychiatric Neuroimaging in the Department of Psychiatry. His published method relates to an interesting project combining art and science to create artwork that aims to represent hallucinatory experiences in individuals with diagnosed psychotic or neurodegenerative disorders. He is no stranger to depositing in Apollo; in fact, he has one of the most downloaded datasets in Apollo after depositing the Mammographic Image Analysis Society database in Apollo in 2015. This record contains the images of 322 digital mammograms from a database complied in 1992. Professor Suckling is an advocate of open research and was a speaker at the Open Research at Cambridge conference in 2021.

An interesting and exciting new platform which aims to change research culture and the way researchers are recognised is Octopus. Founded by University of Cambridge researcher Dr Alexandra Freeman, Octopus is free to use for all and is funded by UKRI and developed by Jisc. Researchers can publish instantly all research outputs without word limit constraints, which can often stifle the details. Research outputs are not restricted to articles but also include, for example, code, methods, data, videos and even ideas or short pieces of work. This serves to incentivise the importance of all research outputs. Octopus aims to level up the current skew toward publishing more sensationalist work and encourages publishing all work, such as negative findings, which are often of equal value to science but often get shelved in what is termed the ‘file drawer’ problem. A collaborative research community is encouraged to work together on pieces of a puzzle, with credit given to individual researchers rather than a long list of authors. The platform supports reproducibility, transparency, accountability and aims to allow research the best chance to advance more quickly. Through Octopus, authors retain copyright and apply a Creative Commons licence to their work; the only requirement is that published work is open access and allows derivatives. It is a breath of fresh air in the current rigid publishing structure.

Clear and transparent methods underpin research and are fundamental to the reliability, integrity and advancement of research. Is the research landscape beginning to change to allow open methods, freely published, to take centre stage and for methods to be duly recognised and rewarded as a standalone research output? We certainly hope so. The University of Cambridge is committed to supporting open research, and past and present members who have conducted research at the University can share these outputs openly in Apollo. If you would like to publish a method in Apollo, please submit it here or if you have any queries email us at info@data.cam.ac.uk.

There will be an Octopus workshop at the Open Research for Inclusion: Spotlighting Different Voices in Open Research at Cambridge on Friday 17th November 2023 at Downing College.

Cambridge Open Research Conference 2023: The stage is set

Open Research at Cambridge Conference, Supporting Open Research

By Nicola Swann and Mandy Wigdorowitz, Office of Scholarly Communication, Cambridge University Libraries

The programme is ready, spaces are nearly full, and we are nearing Cambridge University Libraries’ annual conference on Open Research (OR), taking place at Downing College or online on Friday 17 November 2023. This year’s theme is Open Research for Inclusion: Spotlighting Different Voices in Open Research at Cambridge.

OR is designed to promote equity and inclusion by ensuring that research is accessible to all, regardless of research background, location, or affiliation. The conference will acknowledge that OR can look different in different areas, with the common goal of advancing knowledge and understanding. Giving a voice to OR from diverse perspectives can propel learning, collaboration, and allow us to learn from one another’s approaches to openness.

“The conference looks fantastic! It’s a really fabulous mix of papers and speakers, and really exciting in terms of moving Open Research conversations into different disciplinary practices. It is the first programme I’ve seen that truly integrates research and open into a joint conversation. It’s brilliant!”

Dr Jessica Gardner, University Librarian & Director of Library Services, Cambridge University Libraries

This blog post highlights the speakers who will be joining us on the day and the topics they will explore. We’re delighted to host OR experts who will show the value of open practices in typically under-represented disciplines and contexts. These include the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, the GLAM sector (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums), and research from and about the Global South.

The day starts with a welcome address from Professor Anne Ferguson-Smith CBE FRS FMedSci, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and International Partnerships and the Arthur Balfour Professor of Genetics, who is a key proponent of OR – see her views about OR on the Office of Scholarly Communication’s (OSC) website. Our Keynote speaker, Dr Siddharth Soni, Isaac Newton Trust Fellow at Cambridge Digital Humanities and affiliated lecturer at the Faculty of English, will then addresses us with a talk on Common Ground, Common Duty: Open Humanities and the Global South, providing an account of how to think against neoliberal conceptions of the ‘open’ and to reimagine what openness might look like if the Global South was viewed as a common ground space for building an open and international university culture.

Dr Stefania Merlo from the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research and Dr Rebecca Roberts from the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research and Fitzwilliam Museum will further explore the theme of the Global South in their practical perspective on how they managed the curation of digital archives for heritage management from their work on the projects: Mapping Africa’s Endangered Archaeological Sites and Monuments (MAEASaM) and Mapping Archaeological Heritage in South Asia (MAHSA).

We will then change pace with an OR panel session comprising panellists with diverse backgrounds and expertise who will address registrants’ pre-submitted questions. There will be engaging insights and debate amongst the panellists, led by Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy, Professor Alexander Bird. He will share the platform with Philosophy of Science Professor, Professor Anna Alexandrova, Psychiatry PhD student Luisa Fassi, Cambridge University Libraries (CUL) Interim Head of Open Research Services Dr Sacha Jones, Cambridge University Press & Assessment’s Research Data Manager Dr Kiera McNeice, and Cambridge’s Head of Research Culture Liz Simmonds.

The spotlight switches to the GLAM sector in the afternoon, with a second panel chaired by CUL’s Scholarly Communication Specialist Dr Samuel Moore. This panel brings together experts who will showcase their diverse work in the GLAM sector, from software development and museum practices to infrastructure and archiving support. The panel includes Dr Mary Chester-Kadwell, CUL’s Senior Software Developer and Lead Research Software Engineer at Cambridge Digital Humanities, Isaac Newton Trust Research Associate in Conservation Dr Ayesha Fuentes from the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Dr Agustina Martinez-Garcia, CUL’s Head of OR Systems, and Dr Amelie Roper, CUL’s Head of Research. They will each expand on specialist areas, including OR code and data practices in digital humanities, collections research, teaching and learning collections care, and OR infrastructure. 

In a workshop session, Tim Fellows, Product Manager for Octopus, will outline how Octopus is an alternative publishing model that can foster OR. To round the day off, Professor Joanna Page, Director of CRASSH and Professor of Latin American Studies, will present on the considerations of OR and the coloniality of knowledge with a specific focus on the questions of possession and access.

In true Cambridge tradition, a drinks reception will bring the event to a close, allowing attendees a chance to mingle and continue the discussions.

Make sure to book your place so you don’t miss out. Take a look at the programme to register and join researchers, students, librarians, administrators, and publishers across the University of Cambridge at every career stage. Get in touch if you have any queries info@osc.cam.ac.uk.

Reflections from the Edinburgh Open Research Conference

Supporting Open Research,

Dr Mandy Wigdorowitz holds the position of Open Research Community Manager for Cambridge University Libraries where she is developing an open research community across Cambridge. She has a PhD in Theoretical and Applied Linguistics from the University of Cambridge and is a registered Research Psychologist with the Health Professions Council of South Africa. She also holds the position of Associate Editor for the Journal of Open Humanities Data.

The Edinburgh Open Research Conference 2023, offered by the University of Edinburgh Library Research Support Team and grassroots group Edinburgh ReproducibiliTea, provided a platform for the exchange of ideas and discussions about open research under the theme ‘Open Research as a Tool for Addressing Global Challenges’. Living up to its theme, the conference held numerous presentations focussing on the various ways in which open research practices can positively support efforts to address various challenges centring around open initiatives. The conference provided an opportunity for people from across the world to come together in a hybrid format to discuss how adopting the open research principles of open access, participation in research, transparency, and open data can ensure that the efforts of research are set up to help address global challenges, including in education, climate action, and global pandemics.

As a presenter and attendee, I reflect on the main take-homes from this event.  

With any conscientious and inclusive movement, clarification of terminology is important. The open research movement is no exception. Throughout the conference, many speakers acknowledged ‘open science’ as being an inclusive term, encompassing all areas of ‘openness’ or ‘open scholarship’, and one which extends beyond the ‘sciences’ to include all disciplines where knowledge synthesis and open research is considered. It was proposed that the phrase ‘open science’ is about intent and the larger goal of open research, and it should not be reduced to disciplines that fall under the ‘sciences’ umbrella per se. While the sentiment of this stance is reassuring and inclusive in intent, it is undeniable that there is weight behind the words we use. Instead, I would argue that it would be more inclusive to replace ‘science’ with ‘research’ when referring to the broad ‘open research’ movement. Doing so would safeguard against unintended misinterpretations about who may partake in and benefit from this movement.

A highlight from the conference was its celebration and acknowledgement of the growing impact of public engagement and citizen-led research. Case studies offered insight into how involving the public in data collection, analysis, and decision-making processes can enhance the relevance and societal impact of open research endeavours. For instance, UCL’s Institute for Global Prosperity aims to understand what prosperity means for people as informed by members of their respective communities. In addition, the Extreme Citizen Science: Analysis and Visualisation project employs the use of culturally appropriate geographical analyses and visualisation tools that can be used by varying communities with differing degrees of literacy to formulate research questions and collect relevant data. Attendees were encouraged to explore innovative ways of collaborating with non-academic communities to foster a culture of inclusivity, knowledge sharing, and insights that are driven from the communities under investigation, and to think about the value of smaller, local-scale projects in addition to large-scale projects.

Much attention was afforded to the dissemination avenues that prioritise FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) and open practices, as well as who the contributors and accessors of such research outputs are. These efforts have largely been attributed to the increased availability of digital collections, the development of new data-intensive methods, increased pressure from funders, the requirement of data management plans for preservation purposes, the involvement and collaboration of research libraries, and the rollout of rights retention policies. Discussions centred around digital objects and data, including how these are produced, how and where they are openly and transparently shared, how they can be accessed and preserved, and what the potential of their reuse is. Such questions lead to the need for reputable sharing outlets that service people from all parts of the world and across all disciplines. Significant outlets that were mentioned included repositories, data dashboards, and data papers.

Data dashboards provide an overview of the various aspects associated with a research project, which allows for clear access to data insights when conducting large projects. An effective use of a data dashboard comes from DecodeME, the world’s largest study of ME/CFS (myalgic encephalomyelitis). Data papers are peer-reviewed publications that describe curated datasets. Data papers can be shared in traditional research journals as one subtype of article publication, or in data journals which are dedicated to the publication of data papers. This avenue of dissemination has been active in the STEM and Health disciplines, but it is being increasingly recognised and promoted within the Humanities and Social Sciences, largely driven by data journals in these areas, such as the Journal of Open Humanities Data. Overall, these discussions shed light on the challenges and potential solutions to ensure the quality and accessibility of open outputs derived from various research projects.

In addition to the many discussions about open software, which are ubiquitous in open research, open hardware was recognised as an emerging area in this arena. Open hardware can include, for instance, computing devices, scientific instrumentation, and remote sensing satellites that contribute to the conduction of research and discovery of knowledge. Typically, legal restrictions prohibit the investigation and modification of closed source hardware, resulting in a lack of reproducibility, duplication of effort, obsolescence, and financial burdens which ultimately reinforce global inequities. There have been recent efforts, however, to develop open-source hardware tools and devices to address global challenges particularly in under-resourced communities. Real-world case studies were presented that explore where and how open hardware has been used to address global challenges (e.g., in microscopy, space exploration, environmental monitoring) and make a difference in the lives of everyday people. The Gathering for Open Science Hardware was identified as a community whose mission is to promote open hardware and the practices ensuring its success. Open hardware presents an exciting opportunity for progress as its potential for solving global problems is far-reaching and scalable.

Education also emerged as key to the open research movement. The conference presented best practices in research data management and open educational resources for postgraduate students and educators from the perspective of a university lecturer. Training and mentoring programmes about open practices were mentioned, where people interested in applying open principles in their work and becoming ambassadors in their communities could sign up to Open Life Science to participate in an open research training course, and to Open Hardware Makers to support open hardware projects.

In sum, the Edinburgh Open Research Conference was successful in showcasing the advancement of open research with a focus on addressing global challenges. Open research is a fundamentally iterative process where we can all learn and build upon the accumulated work and knowledge that has been done before us. In this way, the event illustrated the remarkable progress that has been made in various domains and throughout the research lifecycle. By bringing together individuals from diverse backgrounds and contexts, this conference provided a platform for knowledge sharing and community-building at the forefront of open research.

You can find all the talks and slides from the conference here.

Apollo achieves CoreTrustSeal certification!

Supporting Open Research

We are delighted to share the fantastic news that Apollo, the University of Cambridge’s institutional repository, achieved CoreTrustSeal certification in May 2023.

In 2020, Apollo was one of 10 repositories selected to take part in FAIRsFAIR Repository Support Programme through an open call to obtain CoreTrustSeal (CTS) certification. As a result, the Repository team was awarded funding to support the required certification activities.

What does this mean for Apollo?

CTS is an international, community based, non-governmental, and non-profit organisation that promotes sustainable and trustworthy data infrastructures. CTS is a self-assessment status for repositories, awarded based on meeting 16 requirements that reflect the characteristics of trustworthy repositories.

The achievement of CTS status for Apollo is a particularly important milestone, and one that is critical to several areas currently being developed as part of a wider Open Research Infrastructure programme led by Cambridge University Libraries (CUL).

Following certification, the Libraries are in a much stronger position to demonstrate the value of Apollo to key internal stakeholders, as well as our research communities. More importantly, CTS provides us with the opportunity to not only demonstrate the trustworthiness and robustness of the systems and processes involved in curating, making available, and preserving the University’s research outputs for the long-term, but also to meet funder requirements which are increasingly requiring more open practices and the deposit of publicly funded outputs in repositories with a trustworthy status.

The certification preparation and submission has been a remarkable collaborative effort across teams within Digital Initiatives and the Office of Scholarly Communication (OSC) and has provided our services with a fantastic opportunity to assess all processes and policies relevant to the delivery of our repository and data services. This work has involved reviewing all existing processes, workflows and underpinning policies, and more importantly, identifying areas where policies did not exist and subsequently developing them and making them publicly available where appropriate. It has also led to a full review, update, and improvement of key Apollo service pages.

This work has been critical to formalising key policies and demonstrating best practice for system management and service delivery, which has led to continuous improvement and further professionalisation of key services supporting Cambridge’s open research communities.

Towards better support for our research communities

For Apollo and underpinning services, it is not only about achieving certified status. It is important that researchers, and our user communities, do trust Apollo and are reaffirmed about the University of Cambridge’s commitment to preserve its research outputs for the long-term and ensure widest possible access, following the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles:

Findable: we know that content in the repository scores high in search results on Google and Google Scholar and receive large numbers of downloads based on our use of COUNTER-compliant usage tracking services such as IRUS UK.

Accessible: as outlined in Apollo’s succession plan and digital preservation policy, CUL strives to maintain the availability of deposited works in Apollo indefinitely. Apollo’s core activities include the preservation, curation, and dissemination of the research outputs it holds with the aim of guaranteeing that all content entrusted to it by depositors remains suitable for the needs of its primary users now and in the future. Once a research output is published in Apollo, a persistent Digital Object Identifier (DOI) is minted and associated with the output.

Interoperable: Apollo makes use of open, community-driven, and well-adopted standards and technologies: all public content is available via a REST (REpresentational State Transfer) API (Application Programming Interface) and high-quality metadata for repository content is available via OAI-PMH and DataCite Search endpoints. This is critical to ensure continued access, dissemination, and the long-term availability of research outputs being produced and shared via institutional, research repositories.

Reusable: to reassure our users that they are accessing and using quality data, we provide careful and detailed guidance for data depositors about how to make their data FAIR, clearly outline the review and quality checks we perform upon submission, as well as require that every repository submission must include some human-readable documentation.

Find out more

More detailed information about Apollo and CoreTrustSeal is available in the following pages:

Apollo, trustworthy digital repository

Apollo’s CoreTrustSeal application (full application)

CoreTrustSeal

Acknowledgement

We would like to acknowledge the support of FAIRsFAIR in our CoreTrustSeal certification journey. FAIRsFAIR is playing a key role in the contribution to policies and practices for broader adoption of FAIR practices, and in the development of standards for FAIR certification of repositories.

The Team

Dr Agustina Martínez-García, Head of Open Research Systems, Digital Initiatives

Dr Sacha Jones, Research Data Manager, OSC

Peter Sutton-Long, Repository Manager, Digital Initiatives

Caylin Smith, Head of Digital Preservation, Digital Initiatives

Digital Services’ DevOps team, Digital Initiatives