Open Science
Research is becoming progressively more open, transparent and accessible to society. Open Science is all about making publications free to access (Open Access), rendering data and code available to re-use and share (Open Data, Open Source) and changing towards more transparent and collaborative practices.
The LLC is committed to supporting researchers in their academic research. We will continue to develop our support services for you and share information via the Research Ticker, here on the LLC webpages and on ORBilu.
What is Open Science?
Open Science is an opportunity. Open Science aims to increase scientific collaboration and make scientific research (or scholarly communication) freely available to benefit science and society. Open Science ensures that research is more transparent, and it helps to accelerate research uptake and new innovative research through its knowledge and data sharing opportunities. Most importantly, it opens up science beyond the traditional scientific community. In the future, it is likely that Open Science will feature highly in research evaluations, where funders demand greater societal impact in the future though knowledge transfer, collaboration more broadly even outside of academia and importantly offer a better return on investment (ROI) for public funding.
You have probably already become familiar with Open Science if you are a researcher at the University. If you have published Open Access or shared your research data, you have already been involved in Open Science. This is an opportunity for all of us to improve how we do research through the possibilities of more collaborative ways of producing and sharing knowledge and data. You can implement elements of Open Science into your research where you consider it appropriate.
Scholarly publication practices and Open Science
Scholarly publication practices, or Academic Publishing, is an essential step to further knowledge. When publishing, scholars ensure that research output is disseminated, read, commented upon and this dissemination inspires new research.
Often academic work is published in an academic journal in the form of articles, or books or chapters in books, theses, conference proceedings or even reports to funders. Those that are not ‘formally’ published are referred to as grey literature, whereas the formal publications are based on peer review, and editorial proceedings, to qualify a text for publication. Publishing is the backbone of academic scholarship, increasing the visibility of the researcher, linked to academic funding and career progression. You can read more about why academics publish in a recent article in Times Higher Education written by our Vice-Rector Catherine Léglu.
By embracing Open Science, we can reach across disciplines, geographies and sectors and share discoveries globally. It enables us to contribute to, learn from and grow our knowledge from diverse perspectives. By sharing your research, anyone can find it and build on it. This gives you visibility as a researcher and your research reaches the maximum possible impact. By openly sharing, we also enable transparency and trust in our research.
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