1 Open Research
Open Research is the notion that our research should be as open and accessible as possible. The purpose of Open Research is:
“to transform research by making it more reproducible, transparent, reusable, collaborative, accountable, and accessible to society”. The Turing Way Community
Stemming originally from the term, Open Science, over the last 20 years the terminology has widened to include all research, as other disciplines including the humanities, saw the benefit of these approaches and the need for more inclusivity in the dissemination of our research.
“Open research[….]relates to how research is performed and how knowledge is shared based on the principle that research should be as open as possible”. UK Research and Innovation
This quote by the UKRI is useful in understanding how Open Research is viewed today. This defintion provides some practical considerations in making your research as open - that it should be as open as possible, rather than assuming that all of your research must be accessible. Practically speaking, it may not be possible in all cases, for your research data to be open. An example of this relates to personal data. In this case while this original data cannot be shared without permission, perhaps you could share either an anonymised version or just the results that stem from analysing that data.
1.1 Open Research and Research Funding
It is important to understand the growing movement towards Open Research in the UK as major funding bodies, including UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), are actively promoting these concepts as part of their key principles. Moreover, a number of UK based research organisations including Universities UK, Research Councils UK, the Wellcome Trust and the Higher Education Funding Council have signed the Concordat on Open Research data, which was created to “ensure that the research data gathered and is made openly available for use by others wherever possible”.
As such, future applications for research funding should take into account Open approaches (as outlined below) as in the future it may be that these principles are mandated in the design of research projects.
1.2 Open Research in Practice
How, in practice, do we make our research more open and accessible to all? There are three main ways in which this is achieved within a research environment.
- Open Access: Making all published outputs created through our research, whether journal articles, monographs, or other, freely accessible for maximum use and impact.
- Open Data: Documenting and sharing research data, usually by depositing that data in an appropriate digital repository.
- Open Methods: Documenting and sharing the processes, procedures and materials used to undertake research. This is usually undertaken in two ways:
- Open Source Software: Documenting research code and routines, and making them open and freely available.
- Open Hardware: Documenting designs, materials, and other relevant information related to hardware, and making them open and freely available.
1.3 Open Research for Archaeologists
How does Open Research relate to archaeology as a profession and why is it important for the sector? Open Research:
- Improves our practice - Open Research allows us to be more transparent and reproducible in the way that we undertake archaeological research, which will only help to improve standards across the profession.
- Disseminates knowledge - These approaches allow archaeologists to share our knowledge more widely, within academia but also with the general public, and helps to drive new research and innovation.
- Fosters community - Sharing our data, methods and outputs fosters a wider research community and enables collaboration both within and across disciplines.
The paper listed below, authored by Ben Marwick and others, provides background to the nature of Open Research in archaeology and some practical advice about how we can incorporate open access, methods and data into our own archaeological research.