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Reflections on Open Research – a PI’s perspective
As part of the Open Research Pilot Project, Marta Teperek met with Dr David Savage and asked him several questions about his own views and motivations for Open Research. This led to a very inspiring conversation and great reflections on Open Research from the Principal Investigator’s perspective. The main points that came out of the discussion were: Lack of reproducibility raises questions about scientific rigour, integrity and relevance of work in general Being open is to work in a team and be collaborative Open Research will benefit science as a whole, and not the careers of individuals Peer review remains a critical aspect of the scientific process Nowadays, global collaboration…
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Open at scale: sharing images in the Open Research Pilot
Dr Ben Steventon is one of the participants in the Open Research Pilot. He is working with the Office of Scholarly Communication to make his research process more open and here reports on some of the major challenges he perceives at the beginning of the project. The Steventon Group is a new group established last year which looks at embryonic development, in particular focusing on the zebrafish. To investigate problems in this area the group uses time-lapse imaging and tracks cells in 3D visualisations which presents many challenges when it comes to data sharing, which they hope to address through the Wellcome Trust Open Research Project. Whilst the difficulties that…
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“Become part of the research process” – observations from RLUK2017
When is a librarian not a librarian? Rather than a bad joke, this was one of the underlying interesting discussions arising from the 2017 RLUK conference held earlier in March. The conference Twitter hashtag was #rluk17 and the videos are now available. The answer, it appears is when we start talking about partnerships with, rather than support of, our research community. As always with my write-ups of conferences, these are simply the parts that have resonated with me, and the impression I walked away with. This write up will be very different from anyone else’s from the conference, such as this blog from Lesley Pitman, and the RLUK conference report. I have…
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Open Research Project, first thoughts
Dr Laurent Gatto is one of the participants in the Office of Scholarly Communication’s Open Research Pilot. He has recently blogged about his first impressions of the pilot. With his permission we have re-blogged it here. I am proud to be one of the participants in the Wellcome Trust Open Research Project (and here). The call was initially opened in December 2016 and was pitched like this: Are you in favour of more transparency in research? Are you concerned about research reproducibility? Would you like to get better recognition and credit for all outputs of your research process? Would you like to open up your research and make it more…
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We are going OPEN – the Open Research experiment has begun!
There has been much discussion recently about the reproducibility crisis and about the growing distrust among the public in the quality of research. As illustrated in our ‘Case for Open Research’ series of blog posts, one of the main reasons for this is that researchers are currently rewarded for the number of papers they publish in high impact factor journals, and not necessarily for the quality of work that they are doing. Indeed, Cambridge researchers clearly indicated that the lack of incentives to do anything other than publishing in these types of journals is one of the main blockers discouraging them from adopting a more open research practice. Joining forces with…
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Creating a research data community
Are research institutions engaging their researchers with Research Data Management (RDM)? And if so, how are they doing it? In this post, Rosie Higman (@RosieHLib), Research Data Advisor, University of Cambridge, and Hardy Schwamm (@hardyschwamm), Research Data Manager, Lancaster University explore the work they are doing in their respective institutions. Whilst funder policies were the initial catalyst for many RDM services at UK universities there are many reasons to engage with RDM, from increased impact to moving towards Open Research as the new normal. And a growing number of researchers are keen to get involved! These reasons also highlight the need for a democratic, researcher-led approach if the behavioural change necessary…
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Walking the talk- reflections on working ‘openly’
As part of Open Access Week 2016, the Office of Scholarly Communication is publishing a series of blog posts on open access and open research. In this post Dr Lauren Cadwallader discusses her experience of researching openly. Earlier this year I was awarded the first Altmetric.com Annual Research grant to carry out a proof-of-concept study looking at using altmetrics as a way of identifying journal articles that eventually get included into a policy document. As part of the grant condition I am required to share this work openly. “No problem!” I thought, “My job is all about being open. I know exactly what to do.” However, it’s been several years since…
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Making the connection: research data network workshop
During International Data Week 2016, the Office of Scholarly Communication is celebrating with a series of blog posts about data. The first post was a summary of an event we held in July. This post looks at the challenges associated with financially supporting RDM training. Following the success of hosting the Data Dialogue: Barriers to Sharing event in July we were delighted to welcome the Research Data Management (RDM) community to Cambridge for the second Jisc research data network workshop. The event was held in Corpus Christi College with meals held in the historical dining room. (Image: Corpus Christi ) RDM services in the UK are maturing and efforts are increasingly focused on…
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Could Open Research benefit Cambridge University researchers?
This blog is part of the recent series about Open Research and reports on a discussion with Cambridge researchers held on 8 June 2016 in the Department of Engineering. Extended notes from the meeting and slides are available at the Cambridge University Research Repository. This report is written by Lauren Cadwallader, Joanna Jasiewicz and Marta Teperek (listed alphabetically by surname). At the Office of Scholarly Communication we have been thinking for a while about Open Research ideas and about moving beyond mere compliance with funders’ policies on Open Access and research data sharing. We thought that the time has come to ask our researchers what they thought about opening up the research process and…
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The case for Open Research: solutions?
This series arguing the case for Open Research has to date looked at some of the issues in scholarly communication today. Hyperauthorship, HARKing, the reproducibility crisis, a surge in retractions all stem from the requirement that researchers publish in high impact journals. The series has also looked at the invalidity of the impact factor and issues with peer review. This series is one of an increasing cacophony of calls to move away from this method of rewarding researchers. Richard Smith noted in a recent BMJ blog criticising the current publication in journal system: “The whole outdated enterprise is kept alive for one main reason: the fact that employers and funders…
