Open Research

The University of Edinburgh and the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences are committed to making the full record of research fully and freely available through Open Research

Open Research is research conducted and published via a combination of two or more of the following attributes:

• Open Access publication
• Open research data
• Open source software and code
• Open notebooks
• Open infrastructure
• Pre-registration of studies

The drivers behind Open Research are both idealistic and pragmatic: it argues that publicly funded research is a public good, and ought to be accessible by everyone with minimal barriers or paywalls, and also that openness benefits society by speeding up the research process, facilitating the reuse of research outputs for new purposes, and increasing transparency and public trust.

Open Research data

Managing and providing access to your research data is an important aspect of Open Research. Research Data Management (RDM) refers to the methodical handling of the information produced or re-used during the course of academic research. Managing research data effectively is a policy requirement of many funders, as well as being a legal responsibility.

By making the full record of research "as open as possible and as closed as necessary", and taking active steps to preserve not only research publications but also the data, protocols and documentation that support them, the conclusions of research remain accessible and reproducible for contemporaries and future generations alike.

Further information and guidance about Research Data Management is provided by the Research Data Service.

The University of Edinburgh road-map outlines the path the Library, and the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences will be taking to facilitate and encourage Open Research at the University, it can be found at the IS Open Research pages.

Further details on Open Research, funders' policies, processes and training resources are available for University of Edinburgh staff at the CAHSS Open Research SharePoint.

CAHSS Open Research Strategy

The CAHSS Open Research denotes research that is conducted in an open and transparent manner, in which the processes followed, the data collected, and the outputs produced, are available openly and freely. It implies ways of working that make research more transparent, inclusive, open, collaborative and efficient.

The agenda towards openness in research has been driven by a combination of cultural and technological changes, including digitisation and the availability of big data, the internationalization and standardization of research methods, the drive to improve the rigour and integrity of research, and the commitment to ensuring data and outputs are freely available to all researchers. It is being actively promoted by major UK and EU funders and by the REF.

CAHSS Open Research Strategy (461.94 KB PDF)