1

Commentary

There was a wide range of responses from course participants which reflected a range of interconnected ideas about the meaning of “open.”  In summary:

• Sharing was highlighted as an important aspect of openness and can be linked to the idea of openness as a practice.  Releasing your material into the open, making it available for comment and reuse and letting people know how you would like it to be used and attributed (e.g. through open licensing)  were all highlighted as important aspects of this
• Openness was associated with increased visibility and usability through there being “no barriers” to reuse and minimal or no technical barriers
• There was some discussion around whether releasing material in the open entailed loss of ownership of that resource. A distinction between “authorship” and “ownership” was noted to highlight that open licensing requires you to attribute the creator of a resource, for example
• Transparency and honesty. By sharing resources and material in the open you are enabling others to comment on your material and inviting feedback
• Openness was also highlighted as a potential “social justice enabler” by removing the cost to access resources, for example
• Openness was associated with a loss of control as the impact and reuse of materials cannot be controlled. However this was also viewed as exciting as it could lead to serendipitous outcomes and exchanges
• Other types of open were also highlighted in discussion, e.g. open access or open licensing

Selected participant contributions which explore one or more of these ideas:

Openness, In the first instance, for me, is about ‘being open‘; that is, being open as opposed to simply making open resources …openness requires the ability to be vulnerable, indeed super-vulnerable; either learning or making, it is after all in the open. Cameron Neylon makes this point that it’s also about humility, in that the author of open resources, despite being supremely knowledgeable about their work or resource, can’t predict the use and application to which your work might be put (for better or worse)”

For me, openness means an honesty about the messiness of research and transparency in methods and process that helps both the researcher and the audience. It helps the researcher by allowing others to comment and get involved in the research earlier if they spot flaws in the methodology or process, and the audience by showing (especially junior or first-time researchers) that research is rarely a clean progression from simply-defined goals to a final research output, and instead involves reworking and change as certain aspects of the originally-scoped research may become untenable or new areas prove to be more interesting or researchable”

For me openness is a way if thinking and a way of being in one’s professional capacity. It has both ‘negative’ and ‘positive’ aspects – ‘negative’ in that it is about removing barriers to knowledge or resources e.g. removing paywalls thus giving access to research, knowledge, data, or ideas, while the ‘positive’ is that openness is an enabler and actively giving permission to be able to use, revise and repurpose through say CC licences – which is then remixed and reshared thus perpetuating a constant state of openness.”

Commentary

Openness in the research process can occur at any point and is often ongoing through the duration. Some thoughts and ideas about open research:

• Open research is the sharing not just of outputs at the end of a project, but also throughout the duration of a piece of research. It can include the sharing of methodologies, data and other tools
• By publishing methods, findings and other aspects of your research as you go along, there is the opportunity for others to comment, advise and engage with your research as you go along, and not just at the point of publication.  Open research could therefore be described as enabling collaboration
• There is an ethical obligation to conduct open research, especially in instances where research has been publicly funded

There’s another aspect to Open Research, and that is the sharing of interim outputs in the case of long-term projects. Especially for those that deal with large amounts of statistical data and occur over several years, it’s possible to provide greater value to the public by releasing interim stats, figures of findings before the project has come to an end. This of course raises the importance of adequate and understandable metadata so that end-users of the research know exactly what time-periods those statistics refer to”

Commentary

As you’ve moved through this section of the course, you’ve probably become aware that increasing transparency, sharing and collaboration (some of the key aspects of open practice) can impact on every stage of the research process.  Let’s take a look at participant responses to get a flavour of people’s thoughts on the academics and researchers interviewed:

The most compelling examples to me were from Cheryl Hodgkinson-Williams and Martin Weller, about what ‘opening up the research process’ really means – it means having your proposal, your literature review, your conceptual frameworks and why you chose them, your methodologies, your research instruments and your data all fully (or partially?) available. Is this a bit risky / too time consuming for a newbie researcher or a perfectly achievable PhD goal, with the right planning? These are the thoughts that occupy me at this stage, learning from everyone else :-)”

… The ability to have feedback early on can really strengthen your research because you get the chance to see whether or not your research stands up to criticism early rather than later. If your statistical analysis methods aren’t good, someone may notice and tell you about it before you’ve sent it for publishing. Each person has biases and blind spots, and the ability to open the research allows others to point those out before you go down the wrong road.An additional point: open research has the ability to greatly transform what would be considered “negative” research: research where you don’t get the intended result or you get a bad result (for example, pharmaceutical tests). Without the requirement of publication in a journal, you can access what didn’t work.”

The importance of research ethics and the doubts about whether there is a danger of being plagiarised appears to be the main concern. At the same time, there are definite and measurable advantages to researching in the open. Mainly I picked up on three advantages: first the peer review that is ongoing during the research; second the additions to the project from other interested parties, notably the addition of unrecognised benefits to a project ; and finally the time saving ultimately due to the development of much larger networks that is not possible otherwise. It is important to note that open research does not preclude publishing if that is the final objective of the research project. The advantages of open research seem to outweigh the disadvantages.”

…Open research enables small-scale research, often with novice researchers, to happen more easily.” To find out more about Guerrilla Research (Weller, 2013) see: http://bit.ly/2eeVycK