Open Research Action Plan published

The Committee for Open Research and Research Integrity, chaired by Pro-Vice-Chancellor Parveen Yaqoob, is excited to announce the publication of its second Open Research Action Plan (ORAP) for the University.

The University is committed to building a culture of Open Research, as set out in its 2018 Statement on Open Research and 2019 Research and Innovation Strategy. Researchers are expected to adopt practices that make research accessible, transparent, re-usable and reproducible, as relevant to the discipline and type of research they are doing. 

“For knowledge to benefit research and society, it must be trustworthy. Trustworthy research is robust, rigorous, and transparent at all stages of design, execution, and reporting.” 

Mohe, D., et al. (2020). The Hong Kong Principles for assessing researchers: Fostering research integrity. PLOS Biology, 18(7), e3000737. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000737 

Policies on Open Access and Research Data Management require Open Access publication of peer-reviewed research outputs, the inclusion of data availability statements in journal articles, and the use of repositories wherever possible to preserve and make accessible data that support published findings, in accordance with the FAIR Principles for Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable data management. 

It is the University’s ambition to increase and keep assessing staff engagement with these practices to continually improve the quality of research output. Over the next five years the University will undertake the strategic activities outlined in this second action plan to further develop its culture of Open Research. 

Our vision is of a modern research-intensive University where the principles and methods of Open Research are intrinsic to research practice, where researchers have the knowledge and skills, and are incentivised and enabled to use Open Research practices to maximise the quality, usefulness and impact of their research, and to flourish in their careers. 

ORAP 2024-29 follows from ORAP 2021-23, which has been hugely successful. In addition to empowering Open Research Champions and funding training for colleagues, it inspired UNESCO to develop their own checklist for Open Research Action Plans, and it was also identified as a leading example of best practice by the Knowledge Exchange, a consortium comprising six key national organisations in Europe tasked with developing infrastructure in research. 

Get involved

As an early adopter of open research practice, we are playing a leading role in the sector, including providing training for other universities about how to write an open research plan.

There will be a string of activities and training available. There is a new team on MS Teams, Open and Robust Research at Reading | General | Microsoft Teams, where you can share with colleagues the amazing Open Research practices you are doing.

You can also add a shared calendar for activities and training, either by searching “Open Research Training” in the shared calendar search-box, or by downloading the .ics file at https://bit.ly/our-open-research-calendar.

If you are organising activities yourself and want to send them to the calendar, simply invite Open-Research-Training@reading.ac.uk.