The purpose of this section is to share ideas and examples of Open Research approaches used by DMU researchers and others. This section will be added to, as we identify more ideas and examples. Please contact us at openaccess@dmu.ac.uk if you have anything you would like us to consider including.
Pre-registrations and Registered Reports adhere to the principles of open science by encouraging transparent pre-specification of outcomes, methods and analyses, and (for Registered Reports) by stimulating peer discussion early in the lifecycle of scientific work. (See: Pre-registration and Registered Reports: a Primer from UKRN.)
Social Media can be a tool for academic openness, not only for the dissemination of research to wider audiences, but also for networking, framing, investigating and assessing aspects of research. (See: McCarthy & Bogers, 2023, The Open Academic...)
Open Peer Review involves opening up what has traditionally been a closed process. This increases opportunities to spot errors, validate findings and to increase overall trust in published outputs. (See: What is Open Peer Review? - a 3 minute video by Foster Open Science)
Octopus is a new way of publishing. It sits alongside journals and other outlets, allowing those to specialise in delivering key findings to their audiences whilst Octopus acts like a 'patent office' to record who has done what and when, and ensure the quality, integrity and accessibility of all primary research, in full. (Find out more in this 2 min video introduction, and try it out using this handy author guide)
Community engagement is an integral part of Open Research, as ideally it should promote openness and equity in sharing power, information, and expertise between researchers and communities. It is a complex topic, with approaches varying between disciplines. This UKRN primer is aimed at researchers, particularly those who are new to community engagement.
Open Code is openly licensed and available for scrutiny, adaptation and re-use, helping others reproduce research results. Software source code can also be made open, resulting in Open Source Software (OSS). Making code open and using open code encourages collaboration between code users and developers, resulting in enhanced functionality of software and more efficient code. (See this short animation from UKRN, and this UKRN Primer on Open Code and Software)
The Shaxican project, initiated by DMU researcher Prof. Gabriel Egan, aimed to test Prof. Donald Foster’s theory that it is possible to deduce the plays in which Shakespeare acted through analysis of the rare words in the plays he wrote. This was based on the idea that an actor-playwright’s writing would be influenced by words used in the part they most recently acted. Foster’s claims had not been substantiated because the underlying database he used was never shared...
DMU Associate Professor, Dr Nadia Svirydzenka uses Community Engagement Methodologies in research with marginalised communities in India, focusing on gender-based violence. In this video presentation, delivered as part of the DMU/Leicester/Loughborough Open Research Week 2024, she reflects on the benefits and challenges of using participatory research methods. [Nadia's presentation starts at 1.53 min and is approx. 15 mins long.]
Entrepreneurship Policy Learning is a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), with openly licensed content, developed by DMU researcher, Dr. Abiodun Egbetokun in association with a non-profit, i4Policy. The course is aimed at policy-makers, particularly in Africa and the Global South, and contains material based on Abiodun's (Open Access-published) research, looking at The supply of high-quality entrepreneurs in developing countries: evidence from Nigeria.