Open Research Resources
Our Open Research pages offer:
- Guidance on making your publications and other outputs open access.
- Support for managing research data
- University policies relating to open research
- Funder policies relating to open access and research data
- Training in research data management, open access and open research
There is an Open Research channel in the Research Culture Commons team where events are advertised and topics can be discussed.
There is an informal open research working group at the University and we are planning to roll out some wider open research 'champion' type groups.
There are also a wide range of other resources relating to open research; these are listed below. If you’re looking for support in a particular area, and you can’t find it here, please get in touch with us.
Training
Our standard introductory training courses cover best practice in research data management, data management planning, and open access for publications. This training is delivered through Moodle and Zoom and can be delivered in person on request. See our Training page for more information.
The University of Glasgow is participating in the UK Reproducibility Network Open Research Programme. A Team from the University will coordinate the train the trainer programme and assess open research training tools and resources. More details will be shared as activity gets underway.
Open Research Events
Protocols.io training webinars
Protocols.io are running three free training webinars over the next few month on different aspects of their service.
All research staff and students at University of Glasgow have free access to the premium protocols.io service.
Research papers and protocol organization in labs often lack detailed instructions for repeating experiments. protocols.io is an open-access platform for researchers to collaboratively create step-by-step, interactive and dynamic protocols that can be run on mobile or web. Researchers can share protocols with colleagues, collaborators, the scientific community or make them public, with ease and efficiency. Real-time communication and interaction keep protocols up to date with versioning, forking/copying, Q&A, and troubleshooting. Public protocols receive a DOI and allow open communication with authors and researchers to encourage efficient experimentation and reproducibility.
You can sign up to these webinars at the links below.
National Centre for Research Methods
Research Data Management guides
As well as the information on our web pages listed above, we have also prepared guides on the following topics:
• Research data management policies for postgraduate taught students
• Pre-registration of research projects
• ReadMe files
• Data selection and appraisal for long-term deposit
• Identifiers, citation and Data Statements
• Anticipating the costs of Research Data Management
• Publishing and sharing research software
• Project initiation with personal data
• Enlighten: Research Data deposit form
Data Management Case Studies
The Research Data Management service collects examples of open research practice at the University of Glasgow. Below you can read case studies of the examples we have gathered so far.
- Research Data Management in Ethical Consumption
- Research Data Management in Natural History
- Open Research in Psychology
- Working in the Psychological Science Accelerator
If you are engaged in research and creating or working with open data and would be interested in contributing to a case study, please get in touch at research-datamanagement@glasgow.ac.uk.
CREATe Copyright and Licensing guides
The CREATe UK Copyright & Creative Economy Centre has produced a series of guides on licensing research data: https://datasetlicencing.wordpress.com/outputs/ as well as many other resources relating to copyright: https://www.create.ac.uk/resources/.
General copyright advice can be found here: https://www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/library/help/copyright/guidance/
We also recommend https://www.copyrightuser.org/.
For information on the University of Glasgow Research Publications and Copyright Policy, please see our Open Access process.
Data Availability Statements
All publications and theses should include a data accessibility/availability statement which explains where the data which support the publication can be found. Data accessibility statements should include a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) which directs readers to a record for the dataset in a repository. This way, a dataset can be cited correctly even if the data themselves are not suitable for sharing. If no data is available, a data accessibility statement should indicate this. A good data statement should also include the terms on which the data are made available.
Please note that an instruction to contact the author directly would not be considered acceptable by most research funders – authors should create a record for a dataset in an appropriate repository and direct readers there.
Your journal’s or publisher’s guidance for authors should indicate the format and placement of a data access statement. If no ‘Data access’ or ‘Data availability’ section is specified, we suggest placing your statement in the ‘Acknowledgements’ section.
For examples of data statements, please see our guide to identifiers and citation: https://edshare.gla.ac.uk/1419/
Support for Research Integrity
The University offers extensive support for activity that improves the integrity of research, including training and guidance: https://www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/ris/researchpolicies/researchintegrity/.
Support for Data Protection and Freedom of Information
The DP/FOI Office can offer support for researchers collecting or processing personal data: https://www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/dpfoioffice/. For advice on where to start with Data Protection paperwork relating to a research project, see our Project Initiation Workflow for Projects Involving Personal Data.
Support for Ethics
Information about the University’s Ethics Committees can be found here: https://www.gla.ac.uk/research/strategy/ourpolicies/ethics/.
Glasgow Open Journals
Glasgow Open Journals is a service provided by the University of Glasgow Library that supports the publication of academic and student-led open access journals.
Glasgow Open Journals is based on the Open Journal Systems (OJS) platform. This service is provided free of charge to University of Glasgow staff and students.
Protocols.io
The University of Glasgow provides Protocols.io premium accounts for all students and staff.
Protocols.io is an online platform for the creation, management, and sharing of research protocols or methods. Users can create new protocols within the system or upload existing methods and digitise them. Those with access to a protocol can then update, annotate, or fork it so that it can be continually improved and developed.
Users can publish their protocols making them freely available for others to use and cite or, with the enterprise version, keep them private. The tool supports the Open Science / Open Research agenda by helping to ensure that methods used to produce data and publications are made available, assisting with reproducibility.
https://www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/it/softwareandonlinetools/protocols-io
You can view a recording of an introductory webinar on Protocols.io at the University of Glasgow.
Open Research Coordination Group
There is an open research coordination group. This group is working to set up a network of open research champions and discussion channels. More information will be posted here soon.
Contact research-openaccess@glasgow.ac.uk if you have a question in the meantime.
UKRN Open Research Programme
The University of Glasgow is a partner in the UKReproducibility Network (UKRN) Open Research Programme.
The programme aims to facilitate training in Open Research. Shared training sessions are being defined and there will be a Train-The-Trainer programme. We will also be contributing to and reviewing resources.
There is 25-minute overview of the project here https://arma.ac.uk/recording-introduction-to-uk-reproducibility-network/
Contact research-openaccess@glasgow.ac.uk if you have any questions regarding this programme.
External resources
Below are a selection of resources managed by external organisations which you may find useful in thinking about open research.
UKRN Open Research Programme
The UK Reproducibility Network has collected, for each discipline, a list of open research case studies, examples of open research practices, and links to resources to support open research (open methods, data, outputs, etc):
https://www.ukrn.org/disciplines/
UK Reproducibility Network Primers
The UKRN primers introduce different aspects of open research, intended for a broad audience.
The Turing Way
The Turing Way is a handbook for reproducible, ethical and collaborative data science. It is structured as a series of guides, each containing chapters which cover best practices, guidance and recommendations.
The Turing Way is not meant to be read from start to finish. Start with a concept, tool or method that you need now, in your current work. Browse the different guides that make up the book, or use the search box to search for whatever you would like to learn about first.
Open Science: A practical guide for PhD students
A UCL-produced UK guide to Open Science for PhD students, based on the original French version produced by the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research.
This guide is designed to accompany you through your research, from developing your academic approach to the dissemination of your results. It provides a set of tools and best practices that can be directly implemented and is aimed at researchers from all disciplines.
Open Science Framework (OSF) Guides
The Open Science Framework (OSF) is a platform that supports open and reproducible research in a number of ways.
There are a number of guides available which you may find useful:
A data management plan helps ensure that your data remains usable to both you, your collaborators, and other researchers beyond the end of your project. Here is how you start.
A data dictionary is critical to making your research more reproducible because it allows others to understand your data. The purpose of a data dictionary is to explain what all the variable names and values in your spreadsheet or dataset really mean.
OSF encourage sharing of all data, materials, and software code whenever possible. The likelihood that sharing any particular research output will contribute to the benefit of a field depends on many factors including how complete it is, how completely it is documented, where it is stored, and how it is shared.
The OSF is streamlined to facilitate data sharing. This guide explains the process from a new user perspective, assuming minimal experience with the OSF.
UK Research Integrity Office Open Research resources
The UK Research Integrity Office has a large number of resources relating to Open Research and related questions regarding research integrity: https://ukrio.org/ukrio-resources/open-research/