Edinburgh Open Research is an Open Access journal of conference proceedings from the Edinburgh Open Research Conference, which is run annually by the University of Edinburgh Library Research Support Team and grassroots organisation Edinburgh ReproducibiliTea.
The Edinburgh Open Research Initiative (EORI) is a grassroots organisation based at the University of Edinburgh. Led by a mix of research and professional services staff, EORI works to cultivate a more open research culture at the institution. Through regularly scheduled talks (ReproducibiliTea) and spaces to come together to talk about the challenges researchers and professional services face, EORI provides a community for change.
Copyright (c) 2026 EORI https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Enabling open data sharing in the Humanities and Social Sciences
Open science practices have traditionally been associated with the research cultures of the biomedical and physical sciences, focused on quantitative data sharing, preprints, and the publication of protocols and methods. When it comes to the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS), it's clear that the core principles of openness and transparency have value, but the use case, need and challenges can vary significantly. Routledge and Taylor & Francis, with a long-standing focus and extensive publishing portfolio in the humanities and social sciences, have been embedding a variety of pathways to support open science specifically for HSS disciplines. This presentation will share, and reflect upon, a range of scholarly publishing solutions designed to enhance the openness, transparency, and the discoverability of HSS research, whilst also ensuring appropriate recognition and credit for the full spectrum of research contributions. We will highlight case studies outlining how Taylor & Francis is evolving its services to better support HSS researchers in sharing their work openly. These include the development of open data policies specifically designed for HSS research, the introduction of open peer review within specific subject communities, and pilot programs focused on community models for open access journal and monograph publishing. This session aims to explore the unique needs of HSS researchers in relation to open science and provide concrete examples of how publishers can respond to these needs. By sharing these initiatives, we hope to spark discussion and generate ideas that can contribute to building more practical and sustainable pathways to support HSS research being shared openly.
Copyright (c) 2026 Mitali Bidkar , Dr. Rebecca Taylor-Grant https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Seventeen Students, Six Conferences, One Mentor. Rethinking Open Access Equity in South African Higher Education
UNESCO's Recommendation on Open Science (UNESCO, 2021) envisions equitable participation in scientific knowledge production regardless of socioeconomic circumstance. Yet as Chan et al. (2020) argue, open science as currently operationalised risks reinforcing inequality in asymmetrical systems, privileging institutions already embedded in the knowledge ecosystem while leaving marginalised communities further behind. This paper draws on direct mentorship of 17 undergraduate Mathematical Sciences students undertaking industry-based learning in South Africa to examine where this gap materialises in practice. Most arrived with passing grades masking shallow understanding: unable to interpret their own findings or sustain subject-matter conversations. Following structured mentorship and real-world exposure, students answered faculty and industry panel questions with a depth of understanding that visibly distinguished them from peers, a transformation directly attributed to real-world engagement. Karassellos et al. (2025) document precisely this disjuncture: formal university access does not equate to participation in the knowledge ecosystem, particularly for students whose backgrounds are not reflected in institutional cultures. Financial precarity compounds the problem. Socioeconomic status significantly moderates academic adjustment and dropout intention among South African undergraduates (Mtshweni, 2021), with students frequently unable to access the conferences and professional networks that contextualise academic knowledge (Letseka, 2010). In 2024, South Africa's largest mathematical conference was co-chaired by a Vice Chancellor whose own mathematics department were not informed of free attendance opportunities; external mentorship intervened. Through facilitation across six major events including the ACIAM Conference, Africa Tech Festival, and the Interledger Summit, all 17 students attended a minimum of three. A hackathon team peer-voted second place had never previously attended such an event. Drawing on Chan et al.'s (2020) framework for open science for and with communities, this paper proposes mentored open access as a replicable bridge and asks what structural obligations institutions must assume to make individual intervention unnecessary.
Copyright (c) 2026 Kemone S-G Brown, Kelebogile Tshabalala https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
UKRN Open Research Programme Survey 2025
The UKRN 2025 Open Research Survey collected responses from researchers across UK Higher Education Institutions. I conducted an end-to-end exploratory analysis comparing UoE respondents to the national aggregated sample across four domains: Awareness; Active Use; Attitudes; Facilitators. Results were disaggregated by College (CAHSS, CMVM, CSE) and School, enabling targeted identification of disciplinary differences in open research engagement at UoE.
Copyright (c) 2026 Nicola Burns https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
PLOS OSI Open Research Indicators & PURE Cris Record Parity
The Public Library of Science (PLOS) tracks global open science adoption through its Open Science Indicators (OSI) dataset in collaboration with DataSeer, an AI platform using natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning to identify data repository links within raw texts. To move beyond self-reported feedback, I constructed this programmatic audit framework to track actual, evidence-verified repository execution. By evaluating real outputs, I cross-analyzed open behaviors directly against our internal PURE CRIS instance to locate systemic ingestion deficits.
Copyright (c) 2026 Anshita Priyadarshini Mekatotti https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The Outwith Field Guides Series provides a pathway for our team at the Library along with their collaborators (our “Partners in Paricipation”) to communicate the lessons we learn through our work in involvement. The guides are intended to capture this knowledge and communicate it in a nonprescriptive, discipline agnostic way. Whether a project is citizen science or Public and Patient Involvement, many of the challenges remain the same. The guides therefore draw from real experience; whether through case study or co-production; they embrace the messy complexity inherent within any form of involved research practices. Read them from cover to cover, or pick out the sections, chapters, or activities that can help to inform and enhance your own participatory work. Download a copy for free on Edinburgh Diamond, the University’s Open Access publications platform
Copyright (c) 2026 Nel Coleman https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
If you’re not aware of a policy, how can you follow it? If you don’t know a resource exists, how can you use it? Regardless of the strides being made to facilitate best practice in open research, getting the word out has to take place alongside this progress. The problem is, communications and promotional work is taxing, resource intensive, and requires specialist skills that many working in Open Research contexts have not had the opportunity to develop. The Open Research Promotional Toolkit is intended to help. Composed of a set of training modules and a graphic design package, the Toolkit can help to streamline promotional work. All materials are open access, and can be tailored to your institutional context.
Realising the Potential of Student Research through the Edinburgh Student Journal of Science
We present the Edinburgh Student Journal of Science (ESJS), a multi-institutional academic journal, founded at the University of Edinburgh and designed specifically for undergraduate and Master’s students. Throughout their degrees, most undergraduate STEM students are encouraged to undertake their own scientific research through a dissertation or a research project. This research is too-often discarded by the student as soon as a grade has been awarded, the value of their research equal only to the mark they received. The Edinburgh Student Journal of Science (ESJS) offers undergraduate and Master’s students the opportunity to professionally publish their original research, preventing the loss of student-led research to the scientific community and helping students understand the innate value of their work. The ESJS tackles the ‘hidden curriculum’ of publishing, while addressing two key institutional priorities: we enhance student belonging through partnership, and educate the next generation in open research practices. The journal is run by postgraduate students and provides a supportive and educational environment for students to engage first-hand in the process of peer-review (by PhD students) and publishing. This supports students in their transition from knowledge-consumers to contributing members of the scientific community, while acquiring key transferrable skills for the next steps in their careers. As a Diamond Open Access journal, the ESJS is free to submit to and read, removing financial barriers and directly addressing the need to use open outputs to train future researchers. In this way, students learn about open and ethical research by practicing it while obtaining tangible (DOI-assigned) outputs. The success of the ESJS demonstrates that by integrating professional publishing standards with a pedagogical focus, we foster a profound sense of academic identity and a research culture where students are recognised as genuine researchers, equipped with the values and skills necessary for the future of open science.
Copyright (c) 2026 Jack Lee Smith, Milly Mead https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Next Generation Global Health Research through a Federated, Truth-First Data Collaboration Framework
Background: Traditional global health data-sharing is stifled by centralised repository risks and operational bottlenecks. Progress is frequently stalled by the unwillingness of data producers to share micro-level datasets due to complex legal barriers, sovereignty concerns, and evolving national regulations. For the NIHR RESPIRE network, these challenges are magnified across diverse jurisdictions in the UK and South/Southeast Asia (India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Bhutan, and Pakistan). Methods: We propose a transformative framework shifting the paradigm from moving micro-level data to sharing high-level insights via five strategic pillars. The Foundational Pillar establishes a secure Trusted Research Environment (TRE) using the OMOP Common Data Model for global standardisation. The Innovation Pillar deploys federated analytics and dashboards, enabling partners to execute studies locally. To ensure compliance, the Regulatory Pillar implements a "Trust-First" model with standardised ethics processes and cross-jurisdictional governance. Finally, the Evidence Pillar validates the framework through LMIC-based use-cases, while the Growth Pillar ensures sustainability via local data engineering and regional training hubs to maintain partner ownership. Results: This decentralised ecosystem preserves absolute institutional sovereignty. By eliminating physical data transfer, the framework resolves the primary legal and trust concerns of data producers, enabling seamless, real-time cross-border analytics. Pilot results demonstrate a scalable blueprint for generating high-impact respiratory health insights without compromising security or autonomy. Conclusion: By integrating federated analytics with robust privacy guardrails, this framework transforms siloed, legally sensitive data into a powerful collaborative asset. It empowers NIHR RESPIRE partners to lead high-fidelity, evidence-based interventions while retaining full data control, providing a sustainable model for global health research in low-resource settings.
Copyright (c) 2026 Tathagata Bhattacharjee, Tapas Kr Mohanty, Sandeep Bhujbal, Sanjay Juvekar https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Preserving Textual Data on Librarianship in Indonesia through Open Data
There is a growing trend among library and information science students in Indonesia to apply textual analysis and text mining, with some outputs published in academic journals. However, many Indonesian library journals face challenges such as missing issues, discontinued publication, and limited accessibility. This project addresses both issues by creating an open textual dataset of library and information science articles and supporting long-term content preservation. Articles are converted into six standard sections (abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion, and conclusion) and stored in an open data repository with a dedicated platform for searching and downloading. To date, more than 5,500 library-related articles published in Indonesia have been collected. The project uses open infrastructure to minimise costs and provides a reader-friendly interface that allows users to customise display features. Future work will expand journal coverage and develop a database that maps grassroots initiatives and movements in Indonesian library practice.
Copyright (c) 2026 Faizhal Arif Santosa, Mochammad Riski Destrianto, Yasmin Ananda Putri, Azellia Anggun Viedyarani, Aishamanda Maretya Widyadhana https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Session Four Panel Discussion: Open Research Knowledge, Skills, and Training
Join Louise Saul, Milena Dobreva, Tapas Kumar Mohanty, and Camilla Elphick, along with panel chair Simon Smith to discuss their talks and to think about the impacts of Knowledge, Training, and Skills on the challenges of open research.
Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
The Development of an Open Access Open Research Course and Interactive Decision Tree for Researchers Across Disciplines
The development of an open access Open Research course and interactive decision tree for researchers across disciplines. Open Research encourages interdisciplinary collaboration, enabling researchers from diverse fields to interact with and build upon each other’s work, providing opportunities for underrepresented groups in academia to contribute and gain recognition, and accelerating innovation and advancements in various scientific fields. As such, it is essential for addressing global challenges such as climate change, health crises, and technological advancements. However, the shift to Open Research faces challenges, including concerns about intellectual property, funding models, and the infrastructure required for data sharing. We have sought to mitigate some of the challenges of Open Research and promote its use in academia with the creation of an open access online course “Open Research for Researchers” and accompanying decision tree interactive that were developed with critical input from cross-disciplinary academics and open research advisors from the university library. The course introduces researchers from across disciplines and methodologies to three principles of open research (transparency, integrity, and accessibility) and why these are important. It also provides practical steps they can take to make their own research open, and to identify transparency, integrity, and accessibility in the research of others. The interactive decision tree allows researchers to apply open research practices to their own research, at any stage of a project.
Copyright (c) 2025 Camilla Elphick, Lydia Devenney, Sarah Laurence, Ailsa Strathie https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Open Science, Data, and Methodologies: Lessons learned from the NIHR-RESPIRE Network in Asia
NIHR-RESPIRE, a Global Health Research Unit funded by NIHR, is committed to advancing respiratory health research in Asia. We prioritise Open Science, Data, and Methodologies to maximise research data utility securely, sharing the lessons encountered across seven LMIC partner countries (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka). Our strategic shift from traditional data sharing to LMIC-tailored Open Science practices ensures data privacy and security. This includes refining Data Management Plans, metadata standards, and mandating FAIR Data sharing, providing methodological support, and developing Open Science Policy Guidelines. We advocate for the adoption of open science principles to maximise secure data use and value with a focus on FAIR data. We also provide aid to partners in enhancing their data-related skills, hosting regular meetings, and establishing internal data monitoring structures to bolster cross-cutting activities within RESPIRE. Through capacity building, we have enabled high-quality respiratory health research using Open Science principles, enhancing data sharing efficiency, research visibility, and ultimately respiratory health outcomes in Asia and beyond. Our experience underscores the following lessons: Flexibility in data sharing, tailored to LMIC researchers' needs, is essential; Training and support to enhance knowledge of methodologies and dispel misconceptions are key to successful data stewardship; Appointing a focal person for structured anonymised data sharing and supporting the internal Data Monitoring Committee are critical. We recognise Open Science's potential to foster innovation, collaboration, and knowledge sharing in respiratory health research.
Copyright (c) 2025 Tapas Kumar Mohanty, Simon Smith https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Is Knowledge Exchange the Silver Bullet for Fostering Open and Responsible Research and Innovation? A Case Study on Bulgaria
Bulgaria is one of the European countries with a very uneven Open and Responsible Research and Innovation (ORRI) landscape. On one hand, in terms of legal framework, the latest national law on scientific research from May 2024[1] places open research at the core of the scientific enquiry. It is supported by the Implementation Plan for the National Strategy for the Development of Scientific Research 2017–2030. However, the national and institutional ORRI infrastructures in the country are not fully developed. There are only 11 institutional repositories from Bulgaria listed in the Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR). With 52 Universities and 42 academic institutes only within the Academy of Sciences, this evidence shows that the majority of institutions do not have visible digital repositories. Paradoxically, the major national repository BPOS (Bulgarian Portal for Open Science) is not listed in ROAR. In January 2025, 73,759 open-access (OA) publications were deposited in BPOS. There are 4292 registered users of this platform, while there are some 14,000 researchers in Bulgaria.[2] There is no information on any repositories in Bulgaria that support the deposit of research data, methodologies, or reuse tools, such as Jupyter Notebooks. These data demonstrate that the majority of Bulgarian researchers are not users of the national OA infrastructure, and the datasets deposit is still underdeveloped. Furthermore, a recent study among researchers in Bulgaria found that only about one-third of recently surveyed academics are familiar with the EU's OA goals.[3] The authors’ primary is to offer more OA training to researchers. In line with this recommendation, we present an ongoing project which contributes to capacity building with a particular focus on early-stage and experienced researchers. This paper analyses the quadruple helix of ORRI in Bulgaria, exploring the role of government, academia, businesses and citizens. It draws from the experiences of the ORBIT[4] (Open Research Bulgarian Incubator) project funded by a cascading grant of the REINFORCING (https://openresearch.bg/). The University of Strathclyde in Glasgow contributed to the design and delivery of the knowledge exchange (KE) programme implemented by ORBIT. This effort started with a co-creation phase involving local stakeholders (academics, citizens & businesses, and research managers & policy makers). This informed the design of workshops for experienced researchers and a Knowledge Exchange (KE) programme for PhD students. While stand-alone training programmes have a positive role in raising awareness, it is common that participants often lack sufficient support to implement what they have learned in real life. To provide additional support to the participants, ORBIT designed its own pedagogical approach which combines a stage of active knowledge acquisition (an intensive winter school), a stage for experimenting with a specific ORRI instrument with the support of a mentor (a mentorship programme), and an opportunity to present this experience to the wider community (dissemination during a final conference). To measure the progress of participants, ORBIT also developed a self-assessment tool that captures researchers’ ORRI knowledge and skills. While various institutional self-assessment tools exist, the individual one is an innovative outcome and will help to measure the impact of ORRI KE. Collaboration in designing training programmes helps to offer new programmes addressing specific needs. There are two major takeaways from the work of ORBIT. First, aligning knowledge exchange activities to specific local challenges and addressing the capabilities of the local researchers is a necessary preparatory step to offer a programme fine-tuned to the local needs. However, it is not always trivial, as for many countries, there is insufficient information on the local attitudes and needs in the domain of open research. To fill this gap, ORBIT organised a series of focus groups with different stakeholders. Second, for countries where researchers are not incentivised to contribute to open research through the existing research assessment processes, it remains vital to offer training that reinforces the skills and the usefulness of their efforts. This is why ORBIT opted for a mentoring programme. The future will show if this was a productive way forward. I would like to conclude with a personal note of thanks to the organisers of the Edinburgh Open Research Conference. When I attended the conference in 2024, I was impressed by the diversity of institutional approaches to open research. This was a great personal inspiration for me in contributing to the design of the ORBIT activities. Seeing how many institutions offer different flavours and combinations of activities was really helpful and I think we will arrive at a deeper analysis on the usefulness of the various intervention as a community in the future. Beyond the number of attendees onsite and online and those who would check the digital presence, the Edinburgh Open Research series of conferences leads to a wider international impact in improving the open research practices. In this particular case it led to activities which directly impacted over 150 researchers and other stakeholders in Bulgaria, the first case studies of best practices from the country, and inspired the first national award. [1] Law on the promotion of scientific research and innovation. Published in the State Gazette, No. 39, May 1, 2024 (in Bulgarian). https://lex.bg/bg/laws/ldoc/2137242579 [2] Deloitte (2013) Researchers’ Report 2013. Country Profile: Bulgaria. https://www.euraxess.lt/sites/default/files/policy_library/bulgaria_country_profile_rr2013_final.pdf [3] Boock, M. et al. (2020), "Bulgarian authors’ open access awareness and preferences", Library Management, Vol. 41 No. 2/3, pp. 91-102. https://doi.org/10.1108/LM-08-2019-0059. [4] ORBIT: “Open Research Bulgarian IncubaTor” is financed by REINFORCING Project funded by the EU (REINFORCING-I1_4).
fostering open and responsible research and innovation
Copyright (c) 2025 Milena Dobreva https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Delivering OR Training: Creating Development Opportunities for Research Enabling Staff
Librarians and research support staff play an essential role in promoting engagement with Open Research Practices at UK Higher Education Institutions (UK HEIs), through providing training and academic engagement. However, individuals in these roles may not often gain the opportunity to contextualise the content of their teaching within the wider field, or to receive recognition for their work in driving academic standards. We describe the development of a pedagogical wrapper at the University of Bristol by Dr Kirsty Merrett. The aim of the wrapper is to support research enablers, such as librarians, in disseminating their areas of expertise to research support staff at other UK HEIs who are then supported to deliver the content in a form that is tailored to their institution. We evaluate how this has been implemented via the UK Reproducibility Network’s ‘Train-the-Trainer’ programme. We also describe how this has led to career development incentives for librarians that are aligned with the UK Professional Standards Framework. The importance of retaining the specialist knowledge of research enabling individuals, by providing defined career pathways and opportunities, is acknowledged for roles such as technicians however remains undefined for research support staff such as librarians. We hope that by sharing our experiences in this, we will provide a case study to support other research enablers.
Copyright (c) 2025 Louise Saul, Nicki Clarkson, Neil Jacobs, Kirsty Merrett https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Session Three Panel Discussion: Open Research Systems and Infrastructure
Join Sayeed Choudhury, Mahesh Karnani, Simon Bowie, and Evangeline Gowie along with panel chair Theo Andrew to discuss their talks and to think about the impacts of systems and infrastructure on the challenges of open research.
43 Actions to Overcome Eight Barriers to Qualitative Data Sharing
We present the preliminary findings of a scoping study on the actions a researcher can take to overcome common barriers to sharing interview transcripts. In preparing our own transcripts for deposit, we struggled to identify guidance addressing the practical issues we were facing at a detailed enough level to be helpful to us. As we searched through the extensive literature on the subject, we reasoned that it may be beneficial for other researchers to have access to the results of this exercise. We therefore began a formal scoping review, focusing specifically on the practical steps that researchers can take towards opening their transcripts. From the extracted concerns, we constructed eight themes: confidentiality, consent, misappropriation of data, context, copyright, IRB approval, researcher distress and time and money. We have presented the preliminary findings in the form of a table based ‘tool’, organised via these themes, which we used to develop our own data management plan. This talk gives an overview of this tool, with the hope that it will save time for people who, like us, are new to the practice of open qualitative data.
Copyright (c) 2025 Evangeline Gowie https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
small changes: taking back control of research through open software
The academic research process in the UK is hindered by the corporate software ecosystems imposed by universities. For all the advancement of open research practices, the use and distribution of open source software in academic research has been neglected in favour of the proprietary software defaults provided top-down by our institutions. Despite progress on open access publishing and open data sharing, academic researchers still use closed software like Microsoft Word for writing, Microsoft SharePoint for document management, and Microsoft Teams or Zoom for communication and conferencing. In this talk, I discuss the failures of proprietary software in UK Higher Education and advocate for open researchers to take back control of their research process using open source software. In particular, I focus on small software changes that academic researchers can make to their research practices. This includes using Zotero for reference management, using kMeet for videoconferencing, and using Zettlr for note-taking and academic writing. I argue that these small acts lay the groundwork for larger cultural change in open research such as divesting from proprietary software platforms like Elsevier's Pure or the Ex Libris suite of academic library systems. By embedding open source software in open research practices, we can divest from expensive and unreliable corporate software and take back control of the research process.
Copyright (c) 2025 Simon Bowie https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Peer Community in Neuroscience: Making Publishing Inclusive and Efficient Through Free Preprint Peer-Review
Incentives to have work peer-reviewed by traditional journals are problematic for a globally inclusive research community. The process of years-long delays in sharing new results, on ultimately paywalled venues, builds walls within research communities and is very costly. Many research fields could achieve much more with less through rapid, limitless sharing. In this talk, I discuss an operational solution to the peer-review component, Peer Community In (PCI) (https://peercommunityin.org/) which is a community of active researchers peer-reviewing and acting as editors to recommend publicly accessible preprints. This low-cost system is operated from core funding of the PCI organization, allowing cost of use to authors and readers to remain completely free. The resulting diamond open access, journal-independent, refereed, and recommended preprints can be submitted to journals along with the review reports, thus constituting a preprint-review-curate model. PCI currently includes 19 subject specific platforms [https://peercommunityin.org/current-pcis/], has the support of over 200 institutions/universities, and has won several open science awards. New PCIs can be launched in fields that are not represented yet, and to give insight into this process, I discuss our experience launching PCI Neuroscience. Our usage statistics show that the use of PCI is increasing in several fields in the sciences and humanities, demonstrating the usefulness and need for grass-roots-up communities within open research.
Copyright (c) 2025 Mahesh Karnani https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Our university has launched the first academic, large-scale automated science facility in the US. This facility will include shared data, compute, protocols, AI/ML, etc. that will empower open research. By emphasizing open data, open source software, and open source AI, this automated science facility represents a major opportunity for developing and sharing open research practices. This talk describes our university's approach and platform, along with potential opportunities and challenges related to reproducibility, defining openness for AI, and examining changes in research practice. Early examples include the benefits of audit trails or provenance with automated tools, balanced out by challenges associated with the opaqueness of AI. Additionally, there is early evidence that training of students might change as automated tools are used for tasks previously implemented by people. One of our university professors has developed an AI "co-scientist" to manage laboratory tasks. We are partnering with a researcher at another university, who is conducting an ethnographic study of how research and education practices are changing. Regarding AI, our university is leading a multi-institution program focused on defining openness in AI, and outlining the various benefits and possible risks. This work builds upon the early work and initial version of the Open Source AI Definition, which was designed through a community process led by the Open Source Initiative. This concept of openness in AI has been noted in various AI forums, including the Paris AI Action Summit. This talk relates to the conference topic of how technology, including AI, is helping or hindering open research good practice, particularly as it relates to automated science, across a range of scientific disciplines and lab practices for both research and education.
Copyright (c) 2025 Sayeed Choudhury https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Session Two Panel Discussion: Open Research Policy and Procedures
Join Sara Sharp, Varina Jones-Reid, Damon Querry, Ali Kay, Crispin Jordan, and Will Cawthorn along with panel chair Dominic Tate to discuss their talks and to think about the impacts of policy and procedures on the challenges of open research.
Open Research and the Research Culture Action Plan at the University of Edinburgh
Open Research improves research quality by increasing transparency and opens resources to society generally. Universities across the UK are adapting to incorporate and encourage open research by academics. In this talk, we describe how an Open Research theme is being incorporated in the next iteration of Research Culture Action Plan (RCAP), which reflects work with the Library Team's Open Research roadmap. For example, the RCAP includes Open Research in Reward and Recognition for the promotion process. These initiatives dovetail with work being done by the UK Reproducibility Network (UKRN) through its Open Research Programme. We then ask for audience feedback to gain cross-university and international suggestions on how to promote Open Research through the RCAP, and to identify potential barriers, which may vary across Schools and Colleges.
Copyright (c) 2025 Crispin Jordan, Will Cawthorn, Alex Peden https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Do Mandates Work? Investigating the Impact of the REF 2021 Open Access Policy at the University of Leeds
This talk investigates the effects of the REF 2021 OA policy at the University of Leeds, both analysing the data on institutional deposit patterns, and drawing on interviews conducted in summer 2021 with School and Faculty staff from across the University who were involved in administering the Open Access policy. These administrators were responsible for explaining the policy requirements to research staff, encouraging deposit and monitoring compliance rates, and in some cases depositing manuscripts on behalf of authors. As such they engaged directly with a wide range of researchers from many different disciplines, and the interviews paint a nuanced picture of the contested open access landscape. Thematic analysis of the interviews suggests that, though there were some barriers to deposit in the early days of the policy, by the end of the policy period institutional deposit had become embedded in researchers’ practice; however, this had not led to increased understanding of or enthusiasm for open access, and deposit continued to be motivated by the need for REF compliance rather than any broader benefits. Participants also related variance in researchers’ attitudes towards open access to differences of discipline, seniority, and investment in “traditional” research practices such as publishing in high impact journals. The research suggests that whilst mandates for institutional deposit can be a useful tool in increasing open access rates rapidly, other – potentially more transformative – approaches are needed to genuinely engage researchers and create lasting change.
Copyright (c) 2025 Ali Kay https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
An Examination of the Application of FAIR Data Principles to Institutional Research Management Data
Defined by Wilkinson, M D, et al. 2016 in “The FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data mmanagement and stewardship” the FAIR data principles propose a framework to enable the findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability of scholarly data. But are there lessons which could be learned from this and applied to data arising from institutional research administrative processes? Institutional data suffers from the same sorts of problems the FAIR principles were designed to overcome. In a large institution it can be difficult to know what data exists and how to locate it, difficult to access it and have it in a form which means it can interact with other data without needing a great deal of manual intervention, which leads to barriers when wanting to reuse it. This lightning talk examines some of the issues we might experience when applying FAIR data principles to institutional data, with an emphasis on research management data, who’s currently applying these principles and what we may need to do to adopt them within the University of Edinburgh.
Copyright (c) 2025 Damon Querry https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Supporting Early Career Researchers through Diamond Open Access publishing: The story of the Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies ‘New Voices’ special issue
The simple answer to the question ‘What’s stopping you (publishing open access)’ for many scholars is very simple: money. The dominant open access publishing model at the present moment is one built around APCs and BPCs. This biases OA publishing in favour of established researchers capable of pulling grant funding, and it biases it in favour of the sciences, with Humanities researchers struggling the most to access publication funds. This model brings into question whether ‘open access’ is actually accessible, or even truly open. We launched Aberdeen University Press in 2022 as an open access press with the aim of supporting inclusive, fair and sustainable publishing practices . Our aspiration is to become a fully diamond open access publisher – ensuring high-quality academic research is open to all. This is not without financial challenges but through meaningful partnerships, support from the University and Scholarly Institutes that we hope to achieve our mission. We are committed to not charging mandatory fees to authors, and not basing publishing decisions on author’s access to funding. Our talk showcases how our partnerships support bibliodiversity and allows a wider range of authors to publish, including early career researchers and unaffiliated authors. We do this by looking at the forthcoming issue of our Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies, a special issue titled ‘New Voices’ and featuring early career researchers in History. This issue grows out of workshops focused on mentoring new researchers through the process of preparing their work for publication. By removing the financial commitment for researchers, we have been able to include a broader range of voices and share their research openly to increase readership and reach.
Copyright (c) 2025 Varina Jones-Reid, Sarah Sharp https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Session One Panel Discussion: Open Research Communities
Join Judith Fathallah, Kevin Sanders, Ailsa Niven, Zuzanna Zagrodzka, and Fiona Ramage along with their chair Simon Smith (he/him) to discuss their talks from Session One of the Open Research Conference 2025.
Discovering and Confronting Bias Head on in Behavioural Neuroscience – My PhD Experience
In 2017, I began a PhD in nutritional neuroscience aiming to investigate how high-fat diets impaired cognition, using dietary and behaviour experiments in mice. During the first few months of my PhD, I was aiming to replicate the finding that high-fat diets do in fact impair some types of memory in mice, which should have been an easy task. At first, my results looked ideal, but I had performed them unblinded to dietary group, and I had an inkling this was a problem. Despite this being perceived as a waste of time, I measured and plotted blinded scores – and my ideal results vanished. When considering possible next steps, it was suggested that the best thing for my PhD would be to repeat the experiment until I successfully replicated it, and could proceed from there. This was not the approach I took. This talk discusses how I confronted an issue in my own research, and used it to shape my future research trajectory. I discuss my experiences learning about reproducibility in research, how I tried to use my own experience and my learnings to inform and guide other researchers, and why I ultimately transitioned into a career in meta-research, leaving behind bench research for good.
Copyright (c) 2025 Fiona Ramage https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Characteristics of Professionals Involved in Open Science in Ecology and Evolution
Understanding how different demographics and professional groups support or engage with open science, as well as identifying those less involved, can help institutions, organisations, and policymakers create tailored recommendations, training resources, and support to increase engagement across these groups in open science practices. This can also help to normalise the collaborative and open process of knowledge mobilisation. In this study, we surveyed ecological and evolutionary professionals to evaluate the influence of familiarity, attitudes, and factors such as experience and gender on engagement with open science. To achieve this, we conducted an online survey targeting a diverse group of stakeholders, including knowledge creators (working within research institutions), knowledge mobilisers within academia (e.g., journals, repositories, learned societies), and those outside academia (e.g., governments, industry, and charity organisations). Our study revealed that familiarity with open science increases with years of experience but remains consistently high across professional groups. Participants identified positive aspects of open science, such as increased visibility, trust, collaboration, satisfaction, and efficiency. However, they also highlighted concerns, including financial and time costs, as well as a lack of personal or organisational rewards. Notably, while familiarity with open science grows with experience, researchers (knowledge creators) tend to perceive open science less positively as their experience increases
Copyright (c) 2025 Zuzanna Zagrodzka https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Using Behavioural Science to Support Open Research Behaviour Change
Changing open research behaviour is hard! Drawing from behavioural science provides an approach that is evidence-based to guide efforts to change behaviour. Specifically, the Behaviour Change Wheel (BCW; Michie et al., 2014) was developed to support the design and implementation of behaviour change interventions, and has been applied to a wide range of behaviours. Central to the BCW, is the COM-B model, which outlines how Behaviour is influenced by three broad factors: Capability, Opportunity, and Motivation. The first step in implementing the BCW, is to use the COM-B model to undertake a ‘behavioural diagnosis’ of the target behaviour. By doing this behavioural diagnosis, the prominent influences on behaviour can be identified and strategically targeted for change. Researchers in health psychology have advocated for the use of mthe BCW to inform interventions to support increased engagement in open research behaviour (Norris & O’Connor, 2019). The Directorate of Research Engagement and Impact in Moray House School of Education and Sport at the University of Edinburgh are aiming to support researchers to engage in open research practices, in line with the University Open Research Roadmap, and emerging REF PCE guidance. In this talk, we outline how we have used behavioural science to inform this approach through data collection and analysis to identify priority areas for focus and implementation
Copyright (c) 2025 Ailsa Niven https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Choosing Open Access for Books: Author Agency and the Open Book Collective
The Open Book Collective (OBC) brings together libraries and small-to-medium OA scholarly books publishers from across the world via a unique consortial funding model to enable the publication of OA books with no fee. Judith Fathallah is the Research Lead for the OBC and an academic author who decided in 2023 to publish her third monograph Open Access with a small, scholar-led, innovative press whose director is an expert in the field of media studies. In the first part of this talk Judith explains how she came to this decision, leaving behind the cachet of traditional publishing names, and why she would urge other academics to do the same. Academics cannot be asked to bear all of the risk of transition to a sustainable open access landscape for scholarly books – but, as we stand to benefit from this transition as educators, readers, authors and human beings, she contends that even precariously employed scholars such as myself we must bear some. Open Access Engagement Lead Kevin Sanders then briefly introduces the Open Book Collective's funding model, and the range of small-to-medium scholarly publishers who are currently members of the OBC. We encourage authors, librarians and educators to explore these high quality publishers as options to work with and support. The OBC supports presses to move away from inequitable, unsustainable Book Processing Charges, towards an OA fairer, more inclusive and more diverse landscape for OA books. The options are available to us: now the time has come for authors and scholars to take up a more active role as key stakeholders in this change. See www.openbookcollective.org and www.openbookcollective.pubpub.org
Copyright (c) 2025 Judith Fathallah, Kevin Sanders https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0