-
Open Research at Cambridge Conference – Opening session
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 opening session, chaired by Dr Jessica Gardner (University Librarian and Director of Library Services) included talks by Professor Anne Ferguson-Smith (Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research), Professor Steve Russell (Acting Head of Department of Genetics and Chair of Open Research Steering Committee), Mandy Hill (Managing Director of Academic Publishing at Cambridge University Press) and Dr Neal Spencer (Deputy Director for Collections and…
-
Practical steps toward more reproducible research
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. On 26 November 2021 the University’s Reproducibility Working Group hosted a workshop for researchers from across Cambridge to explore approaches to supporting more reproducible research. Talks were provided by Professor Alexander Bird (Faculty of Philosophy), Dr Florian Markowetz (Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute) and Dr Maria Tsapali (Faculty of Education) exploring approaches to reproducible research and reasons to work reproducibility…
-
Cambridge Data Week 2020 day 3: Is data management just a footnote to reproducibility?
Cambridge Data Week 2020 was an event run by the Office of Scholarly Communication at Cambridge University Libraries from 23–27 November 2020. In a series of talks, panel discussions and interactive Q&A sessions, researchers, funders, publishers and other stakeholders explored and debated different approaches to research data management. This blog is part of a series summarising each event: The rest of the blogs comprising this series are as follows:Cambridge Data Week day 1 blogCambridge Data Week day 2 blogCambridge Data Week day 4 blogCambridge Data Week day 5 blog Introduction The third day of Cambridge Data Week consisted of a panel discussion about the relationship between reproducibility and Research Data…
-
Beyond compliance – dialogue on barriers to data sharing
Welcome to International Data Week. The Office of Scholarly Communication is celebrating with a series of blog posts about data, starting with a summary of an event we held in July. On 29 July 2016 the Cambridge Research Data Team joined forces with the Science and Engineering South Consortium to organise a one day conference at the Murray Edwards College to gather researchers and practitioners for a discussion about the existing barriers to data sharing. The whole aim of the event was to move beyond compliance with funders’ policies. We hoped that the community was ready to change the focus of data sharing discussions from whether it is worth sharing…
-
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…
-
The case for Open Research: reproducibility, retractions & retrospective hypotheses
This is the third instalment of ‘The case for Open Research’ series of blogs exploring the problems with Scholarly Communication caused by having a single value point in research – publication in a high impact journal. The first post explored the mis-measurement of researchers and the second looked at issues with authorship. This blog will explore the accuracy of the research record, including the ability (or otherwise) to reproduce research that has been published, what happens if research is retracted, and a concerning trend towards altering hypotheses in light of the data that is produced. Science is thought to progress through the building of knowledge through questioning, testing and checking work. The…
-
Consider yourself disrupted – notes from RLUK2016
The 2016 Research Libraries UK conference was held at the British Library from 9-11 March on the theme of disruptive innovation. This blog pulls out some of the highlights personally gained from the conference: If librarians are to be considered important – we as a community need to be strong in our grasp of understanding scholarly communication issues We need to know the facts about our subscriptions to, usage of and contributions to scholarly publishing We need high level support in institutions to back libraries in advocacy and negotiation with publishers Scientists are rarely rewarded for being right, so the scientific record is being distorted by the scientific ecosystem Society needs…
-
Software Licensing and Open Access
As part of the Office of Scholarly Communication Open Access Week celebrations, we are uploading a blog a day written by members of the team. Wednesday is a piece by Dr Marta Teperek reporting on the Software Licensing Workshop held on 14 September 2015 at Cambridge. Uncertainties about sharing and licensing of software If the questions that the Research Data Service Team have been asked during data sharing information sessions with over 1000 researchers at the University of Cambridge are any indicator, then there is a great deal of confusion about sharing source code. There have been a wide range of questions during the discussions in these sessions, and the Research Data Service Team…
