Open Scholarship

Reflect on your own research practices

Are there open access requirements associated with your current funding? What are they?

How might you make your research processes and results more transparent to collaborators, other researchers and the public?

What habits and skills can you use or build to make your research more accessible?

Open sharing of methodology, data, results and the products of scholarship makes transparent our research process, which can promote greater research integrity, stimulate collaborations and create opportunities for interested members of the public to engage with us.

Many funding agencies are embracing open scholarship in their policies, to democratize access to knowledge, accelerate innovation and increase the return on public investment in research. As researchers and scholars, we have an ethical obligation to make our research accessible and more inclusive to enhance the use, application and impact of research results.

Increasing the transparency of the research process and knowledge exchange efforts enables system-wide research integrity.

 

PROMISING PRACTICES

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Make research publicly accessible according to the relevant funding agency and journal policies

We are responsible for ensuring that we adhere to all applicable funding agency and journal policies. The Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications requires that all peer-reviewed journal publications resulting from Agency-supported research be freely accessible within 12 months of publication. As you fulfill funding agency requirements for open scholarship, also consult your publisher’s copyright policies to verify that you have the appropriate permission to archive the publication. The university’s digital repository, cIRcle, supports the open access deposit requirements and ensures the long-term reach and accessibility of your work.

 

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Adopt measures that improve the transparency and reproducibility of research

There are many ways we can proactively plan and implement improvements to our research processes that make our results more reproducible and transparent for others. For example, pre-registering your study plans — publicly or not — can help maximize research integrity and reproducibility. You may find UBC's Open Science Framework useful for publicly documenting your research processes. Additionally, it may be helpful to share data in public repositories, such as Scholars Portal Dataverse and FRDR, which can also support you in making your research replicable, transparent and accessible to others.

 

Seek support and resources

Learning about alternative academic publishing models and adapting open research practices into your own can feel daunting. UBC’s service and support units, such as the Knowledge Exchange unit, Research Commons, as well as university librarians specializing in Scholarly Communications, Research Data Management and Open Science, can help make your research practices more open, transparent and accessible. The Programs for Open Scholarship and Education (POSE) also offers tools and strategies to help you become proficient in supporting and advocating for open practices.

 

CHALLENGES

Making time for open scholarship practices

Data quality control, careful documentation and archiving for long-term access are integral to open and reproducible research. Completing these additional steps takes more time, especially as you begin to integrate some of the open research practices. Plan to include the time to learn and adopt these practices as you develop your research plan and consult with available support services to develop an efficient and effective workflow from the start. The time invested upfront will pay off in the long run: best practices in transparency and reproducibility increase research productivity.

Falling victim to predatory journals

Legitimate open access journals often charge an article processing charge (APC) to cover costs associated with conducting a rigorous peer-review process, editorial and publishing services. Predatory journals charge APCs to authors and publish the paper without the corresponding rigorous peer-review or other editorial and publishing services. This threatens the validity of your research findings and subsequent research that cites them. Seek support from your mentor, supervisor or subject librarians to identify reputable open access journals and to learn how to distinguish legitimate journals from those that may be predatory.

 

RESOURCES


Helpful Links


Relevant Policies

 

 

 

Office of the Vice-President, Research + Innovation

Suite 580, Walter C. Koerner Library, 1958 Main Mall
Vancouver, BC Canada V6T 1Z2
E-mail research.innovation@ubc.ca

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