Open Research

Open Research at University of Edinburgh

Open Research is research conducted and published via a combination of two or more of the following attributes:

• Open Access publication
• Open research data
• Open source software and code
• Open notebooks
• Open infrastructure
• Pre-registration of studies

The drivers behind Open Research are both idealistic and pragmatic: it argues that publicly funded research is a public good, and ought to be accessible by everyone with minimal barriers or paywalls, and also that openness benefits society by speeding up the research process, facilitating the reuse of research outputs for new purposes, and increasing transparency and public trust. By making the full record of research "as open as possible and as closed as necessary", and taking active steps to preserve not only research publications but also the data, protocols and documentation that support them, the conclusions of research remain accessible and reproducible for contemporaries and future generations alike.

Open Research at University of Edinburgh

Vitae: What is open research? and What is an open researcher?

UK Reproducibility Network

The UK Reproducibility Network primer series is designed to introduce the important topics in open and reproducible scholarship.

Open Research Primers

Open Research Tools, Processes and Funds

Electronic Notebooks and other workflow tools to help you maintain reproducibility in your research and sharing of information.

Open Research Tools

Making your publication open access

Information and support on how to publish open access, your funders policy and requirements, and open access publication funds available at University of Edinburgh.

Making your research open access

Plan S

A new initiative to accelerate the transition to full and immediate open access to research publications was announced by Science Europe, under the name of ‘Plan S’.  Plan S has been endorsed by a group of Science Europe member organisations (including UKRI and the Wellcome Trust), it puts forward a number of fundamental principles for developing Open Access to publications more fully than is currently the case.  As Plan S develops there are likely to be implications regarding where you can publish your work, depending on your funder.

The key Plan S principles are as follows:

• No scholarly publication should be locked behind a paywall.
• Open Access should be immediate, ie without embargoes.
• Full Open Access is implemented by the default use of a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY licence.
• Funders commit to support Open Access publication fees at a reasonable level.
• Funders will not support publication in hybrid (or mirror/sister) journals unless they are part of a transformative arrangement with a clearly defined endpoint.

Plan S

Open Access Methods & Protocols

Protocols.io

The University has a subscription to the protocols.io online service, available to all staff and students of the University for the creation, management, and sharing of research protocols or methods.

Protocols.io

Electronic Notebooks

The University has various options available for electronic note or lab books.

R Space Notebooks

Wikibench

Computational Notebooks