Activity 2: Thinking about open research
You can share your definition and thoughts about openness in research below. How is open research different from other kinds of research? What characteristics does it have? What tools and methods does it adopt?
Once you’ve finished sharing your ideas and checking out others’ contributions, head on back to section 1.2.
Open Research are those practices that allow transparency, ideally all of the inputs will be made available to the public, the methodology described in detail in order to allow others to replicate the experiment (even if it’s a social one) and also allowing others to follow the process and/or contribute when applicable. Open Access is the last step. I think the semantic web is very important in all the process as well.
I like the thoughts of @jorgeandr3s and would add that I believe open research reflects best practices such as pre-registration of hypotheses to prevent HARKING (hypothesizing after the results are known), providing materials to enable replication by other researchers, and even uploading one’s raw data to facilitate reanalysis.
The difference between Open Access (to data and results) and Open Research (open participation) seems to highlight the dilemma for leading/ambitious researchers. Open Access still enables the ‘lead’ status, narrow focus and academic exclusiveness of conventional publishing for self-selected groups of researchers. Open Research, while more democratic and potentially more powerful in scale of resource application, would seem inevitably to lack such leadership and focus. Narrowly, one also wonders how academic appraisal and reward would function if all research were open?
Open research is carried out in an open and free environment. The research methodology, findings are shared in open. The methodology and findings are available for open access and adaptation. Open research encourages collaborative research, which brings in value from multiple researchers and experts.
Open research is conducting your research (methods, data and results) as transparently as possible. I am just not sure when one begins, for example, do you tell people what you are about to research before the idea is fully formed, or do you wait until you have completed your research and then open up everything?
Open research is about sharing research ideas, approaches, data and analysis as early as possible and throughout the life of the research on open platforms. It involves actively
contributing to debates and discussions surrounding the research topic and
being ready to consider different approaches to issues which arise as the research progresses. It also means being open about decisions made or conclusions reached – i.e. explaining them clearly in open platforms so that anyone interested in the research can engage in it and contribute if they choose. It is about having the academic courage to recognise and practice the benefits that researching in the open can bring, rather than protecting an idea or discovery for too long due to fear of losing credit and recognition. The benefits include more enjoyable research and improved motivation as the collaboration develops, often with more robust results and sometimes leading to new ideas or a fresh perspective.
Open research is a visible and transparent process, the published findings of which are open access.
Open research is transparency in all aspects of research. The methodology and results are shared for free in the hopes that other researchers can improve or supplement the research.
Open research is a process which is transparent from the first steps of defining the research question, determining methodologies and explaining the rationale for different methods used. Finally the research findings are disseminated through open avenues, perhaps shared through videos, podcasts, blogs and online courses available to the public. This might be contrasted with traditional methods of research which are “guarded” by the researchers and are circulated within more closed academic circles. This might be because of a fear that ideas might be taken by other researchers, and may be the case with competitively funded research.
Perhaps more in the context of art practice, open research is being transparent in the processes of working.
Often these aspects of art are a bit secretive, partly because it takes discipline and the invention of system of documentation.
Increasingly artists use blogs to document projects, but this is not always rigorous research practice.
Perhaps openness in research is also being in a state of readiness to disclose and to engage in debate.
My tentative definition:
Open research is research publicized in ways that are accessible and that facilitate collaboration around it. This publicization includes, first and foremost, the results of the research; but also, as much as possible, of its materials, procedures, intermediate findings, raw data, preliminary designs, funding information and so on.
Nice; hadn’t thought about the “usefulness” of open research re: HARKING (and didn’t even know that acronym, by the way).
@joreandr3s I agree with your definition open research but I think guy like me need a mentor , for example I need to know how to use the tools to conduct the research in the area of Interest to me. I want to study “how chess can be used to augment your analysis skills” ? I don’t even know is it a viable topic? What is your opinion?