An Open Research culture encourages the adoption of openness throughout the research cycle, via collaborative working and sharing.
Open Research aims to
- improve the quality and reliability of research
- ensure that other researchers can easily follow a research procedure and replicate its results
- support a culture of transparency, openness, and honesty towards other researchers and the public
- maximize public benefit and avoid resource waste
At Kent we are encouraging an open research culture and supporting the sharing of data through:
Positioning and networking
We are working with our Eastern Arc colleagues on an Open Research position statement for the consortium.
Eastern Arc is an affiliate member of the UK Reproducibility Network and Kent, Essex and UEA have representation in this network as local network leads
Workshops and training
We’ve run workshops as part of Graduate and Researcher College’s Grant’s Factory training programme. These explain the issues that Open Research is trying to solve and the ways and means of conducting open research. See the recordings and slides of two “Open Research – how to do it” sessions
Eastern Arc are also considering delivering Eastern Arc Open and Reproducible Research events
Practical guidance
https://www.kent.ac.uk/guides/openresearch
Our Open Research guide outlines the stages in the research process which can be made open. It suggests the tools and platforms that can be used at each stage.
Kent DMP Online
We are developing Kent Data Management Plans (DMP) Online. This will provide bespoke Kent-specific templates and examples of DMPs to make it easier for researchers to plan to manage their data for sharing. This complements our extensive guide on managing research data for sharing
Kent OSF Platform
We have Open Science Foundation (OSF) membership to provide a Kent OSF platform. We will promote this OSF platform to enable collaboration and granular openness at all stages of the research project lifecycle.
Enchanced discovery tools
We have set up trials to a package of tools including LeanLibrary, that will help staff and students to find quality Open Access material online, build up a research question and a search strategy, and support inter-disciplinary research through the AI discovery of previously unseen connections across disciplines.
Embedding at PhD level
Since 2014 all our PhDs have been made available in digital form in our institutional repository. All PhDs are now allocated a Digital Object Identifier and students must select a Creative Commons licence to facilitate re-use The recent digitisation of 1200 of our older print theses. means that 50% of our theses holdings from the 1960’s onward will be available openly online under a Creative Commons licence