The call for Open Access to research

Progress on sharing research has been gradual since the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities (2006) and the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment – or DORA (2012).  Last year’s publication of Open Science and its role in universities: a roadmap for cultural change by LERU, lead-authored by Dr Paul Ayris, has helped shift the debate from theory to practice.  In September 2018, cOAlition S – a consortium of 12 European research funders – called for public-funded research to be published in compliant Open Access (OA) journals or platforms by 1 January 2020. The resulting guidance document, Plan S: Making full & immediate Open Access a reality, has been largely welcomed by the research community for its 10 principles:

Plan S principles:

1. the author retains unrestricted copyright – a Creative Commons licence where possible
2. robust criteria and requirements are in place for OA journal and platform services
3. funders collaboratively establish and support OA journals and infrastructures
4. funders or universities cover OA publication fees, not individuals as a rule
5. standardised funding and capping of OA fees apply across Europe
6. universities, research organisations and libraries align their policies and strategies
7. monograph and book publishing practices will require more time to change
8. open archives and repositories are important
9. hybrid Open Access models are NOT compatible with these principles
10. funders will monitor compliance and sanction non-compliance

The UCL response to Plan S

Published January 2019, the UCL response to Plan S fully endorses Open Access in scholarly publishing, calling for “a wholesale rethink of the strategy and timelines for moving to 100% Open Access”, with:

• more engagement with universities, learned societies and researchers before implementation
• more detail on how Open Access publishing could work in different subject disciplines
• a more realistic timeline of years not months to allow universities to apply DORA recommendations and set up appointment and promotions frameworks
• more detail and thought on how publishing fees and Article Processing Charges (APCs) could work, with a risk assessment
• worldwide engagement, as Europe is too small a player to make global changes

 

Draft UCL statement on reproducibility

On 10 April, UCL colleagues met for a UCL Research Reproducibility Town Hall discussion on the approach and actions needed to improve research standards through replicability.  Under specific discussion was a draft UCL statement on reproducibility in research.  Email contact: ovpr@ucl.ac.uk

 

UCL Open Science Day 23 May

Join us on Thursday 23 May 2019 9.30 – 4pm

Logan Hall, Institute of Education (IOE), 20 Bedford Way, London, WC1H 0AL View Map

This free UCL Library workshop will “explore the facets of Open Science and how these are, or could be, pursued by UCL researchers”, with morning discussions and afternoon workshops offering practical advice.

Morning talks include Registered Reports and the UKRN – Prof Chris Chambers (Cardiff University), cognitive neuroscientist, expert in registered reports and co-founder of the UK Reproducibility Network (UKRN).

 

Join UCL Reproducibility

Subscribe to the UCL reproducibility mailing list for news and updates, invitations to contribute and training opportunities. 

The next talk is on Thursday 23 May and part of the UCL Open Science Day 2019

Attend a Reproducibilitea talk

See more information and 2019 ReproducibiliTea UCL topics and dates.

Colleagues from all disciplines, sceptics and non-UCL, welcome.

ReproducibiliTea UCL talks so far:

1. Nosek et al: ‘Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science‘ (Science, 2015)
2. Marcus Munafò et al: ‘A Manifesto for Reproducible Science‘ (2017)
3. Halsey et al: The Fickle p Generates Irreproducible Results (2015)

The ReproducibiliTea journal club is supported by the UCL Researcher-led Initiative Award, and the UK Reproducibility Network has helped to spread the club to a number of universities.

 

UCL Open Access policy development:

• UCL Statement on Research Integrity
• UCL Code of Conduct for Research
• UCL’s response to Plan S
• UCL Plan S Town Hall meeting January 2019 (blog)
• UCL Open Access blogs on Plan S
• Wellcome Trust Response to UCL Response to Plan S

Key documents in the Open Scholarship movement

• Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities (2006)
• San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment
• Plan S: Making full & immediate Open Access a reality
• LERU policy paper on open science

Media articles

• How do you deal with a problem like reproducibility? (Marcus Munafò, Jisc blog)
• From coalition to commons: Plan S and the future of scholarly communication (Insights article)  
• Plan T: Scrap APCs and fund Open Access with Submission Fees (The Scholarly Kitchen article)
• Most plan S principles are not contentious (Cambridge University blog)
• Implementing publisher policies (Insights case study)
• Reddit feeds on Open Access

Resources

• FOSTER Open Science e-learning resources

This blog was updated 12 June

Perspectives for Open Education at UCL

The UCL Open Education project recently hosted Opening UCL, a symposium on Open Education to explore the current landscape in open education practice in higher education. Some highlights include:

• Innovative Open Educational Resources (OERs):  MOOCs (such as 23 Things) and interactive classroom surveys were showcased by Edinburgh and the Open University
• The Open Knowledge Foundation explained how open education is a global social and ethical imperative, how it can enrich research, and How to make data open
• Radiopaedia illustrates how online textbooks have the edge over paper versions, and can be open to all, easy to update and free for less wealthy countries
• UCL Arts and Sciences undergraduates and their tutor described how cross-discipline research honed research and meta skills, with a Wikibooks entry as the output.

OER were shown to foster learning, digital literacy, creativity, student engagement, and collaboration across disciplines.

UCL Library Services and Digital Education, co-hosts, introduced the UCL Roadmap for Open Education.  By 2021, open education will be embedded within the UCL community via supporting policies, infrastructure, and a connected curriculum of research-based teaching frameworks and student-generated research, to include:

• UCL Open: Environment, the new megajournal
• an open education resources repository
• UCL Press, the UK’s first open access university press, nearing 2 million downloads

Also read a full account of Opening UCL by Susan Koseoglu, Goldsmiths College.

Further Reading

• A Connected Curriculum, Dilly Fung, UCL Press
• The Battle for Open, Martin Weller, the Open University
• News article: UCL Open Access Megajournal Starts Taking Submissions

The 4th international Love Data Week is celebrated across the world between the 11 and 15/02/2019. Free events are taking place in London and the UK, including:

• The Birkbeck Library will run many sessions, open to all; topics include: Data Management Plans, NVivo, Open data and the GDPR. See full list of events and registration.
• The University of Liverpool Library and the LJMU Library also have several events on topics such as publishing and Gale Digital Scholar Lab. See full list

And as usual, the UK Data Service will be running free webinars about data management, finding and re-using data.

More events are taking place across the world, follow #lovedata19 for updates!

As part of open access week 2018 (22nd-28th October 2018), UCL Library services have organised a series of events covering open access, REF, RPS, data sharing and Open Science. These events include training sessions, film screenings and drop-ins.

The Research Data Support team will be running a lunchtime session on the most effective ways to share your research data.

The first half of the session will give researchers an introduction to the principles and practicalities involved in data sharing. It will also seek to outline the principles of FAIR data and how this relates to the production and use of data over the research lifecycle.

During the second half of the session, UCL’s Research Data Management team and Open Access team will host a drop-in to help answer any questions about sharing research data, Open Access Publishing, RPS or Open Science.

This session will take place on the 25th of October between 13.00-14.00 in the Common Ground, Institute of Advanced Studies, South Wing, UCL Main Building (www.ucl.ac.uk/maps/south-wing).

An Eventbrite listing is available but you don’t need to register to attend.

Full listings and further details of all the events organised as part of open access week at UCL can be found on the open access blog.

Join us for this month’s UCL open education special interest group meeting. Dr. Javiera Atenas from the Open Knowledge Foundation will talk about a pedagogical element to foster open education through the use of Open Data, which MIT is currently working on. Javiera will showcase a data-research impact tool developed by the MIT which can be used as good practice to showcase open data as OER.

Wednesday 15 August 2018, 3-4pm, in Room 712, Maple House, W1T 7NF [map]

Website: www.ucl.ac.uk/oer | Email: oer@ucl.ac.uk | Twitter: @OpenUCL | Repository: URL subject to change

What is open education?

Open education, like open access and open data, centres on a commitment to provide access to high quality education and educational resources to a global audience.

As the Open Education Consortium declares, “sharing is probably the most basic characteristic of education: education is sharing knowledge, insights and information with others, upon which new knowledge, skills, ideas and understanding can be built”.

Open education typically involves the creation and sharing of openly-licensed learning materials – open educational resources (OER) – that can be re-used and enhanced by the community. OER can include lesson and course plans, exercises, diagrams, animations, video or audio lecture recordings, presentations, handouts, mock papers/tests, reading lists, and so on.

How is research data relevant to open education?

Open Educational Data (OED) is open research data which can be reused for educational (teaching and learning) purposes and improving the quality of education. The UK Data Service states that “real data bring learning to life” and that using data for teaching “is an invaluable way for learners to confront complex […] research questions.”

UCL’s open data repository, which is currently in development, will allow users to access and use data for educational purposes. Datasets which include raw and summary data can be curated and used as research-based educational content, and can include additional descriptive and support documents such as workbooks and educational guidelines.

Research methods and data analysis can be taught using embedded discipline-specific or inter-disciplinary data; this gives students real-world and practical resources to learn with, and increases the use and impact of research data.

Why should I share research data as educational content?

Publishing research data as educational resources will have wider global reach and impact, and attributing the UCL brand to your output should provide quality assurance for other users.

Your published OED can be cited and referenced by others and can be included in your publications (tying into the Academic Promotions Framework, which rewards open behaviours, for example), adding value to your teaching and research, and raising your professional reputation.

How will this benefit my students and me?

While the initial creation of educational materials from published data can require some consideration, sharing these will allow the creators to promote good practice, collaborate with other educators and learners, and respond to UCL promotional criteria that require publication of educational materials.

There is some evidence that re-using high-quality OER is a time- and cost-saving activity, as you can edit existing educational materials to make content specific to your programme or class. OER-use can also provide the chance to learn in different ways, i.e. a flipped classroom, and insight into the research-based teaching approaches of fellow practitioners in your field might lead to collaboration, inspire your own teaching and research, or contribute to original output.

Getting involved and learning more

If you have any content (such as data-specific OER) you would like to upload to the repository or if you require further information, please contact the OER team at oer@ucl.ac.uk who will be happy to support you.

To find out more about open education or to contribute to this practice at UCL, ask to join the mailing list by emailing oer@ucl.ac.uk, or attend the next meeting of the open education special interest group (SIG). This will be held on Wednesday 15 August 2018 3-4pm in room 712, Maple House.

We will also be present at RDM/RITS drop-in sessions if you’d like to talk to us or learn more about creating OER from your research data. Information about upcoming SIG meetings and RDM/RITS drop-in sessions can be found here.

More information about the project is available on the OER website, or you can follow us on Twitter @OpenUCL.

Further reading/viewing

UDIT: using (open) data in teaching (collaboration with Toronto, Amsterdam, and Radboud (Netherlands)) is a pool of resources for teachers to help them use open data in their teaching. These are being put into OER Commons and accompanied with the UDIT module. For those interested in contributing data, the project is seeking materials to incorporate into modules and OER Commons.

Open data in education (Marieke Guy, NetworkED)

You can also learn more by reading the Open data as open educational resources: case studies of emerging practice book, which includes case studies edited by Javiera Atenas and Leo Havemann.

SES Open:  Harnessing FAIR Data Symposium

Harnessing FAIR Data (3 September 2018, 13:00 – 17:00) focuses on researchers who employ or are seeking to use data in their work. FAIR is a set of guiding principles to make data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. In this thematic context we aim to better understand the cross-disciplinary practice of sourcing, using and managing data and its associated implications, such as ownership, standards and metadata, and access and licensing. Experienced speakers from around the UK will come together to explore FAIR data and services, and a panel session will help to identify key questions that researchers face when considering using data in research.

Register online

Programme highlights:

Realising the Potential: Final Report of the Open Data Task Force. 
Prof. Pam Thomas, University of Warwick
The Re-use of Consumer Data for the Social Good
Prof. Paul Longley, Department of Geography, UCL
Using socio-ecological simulation models to make the most of hard-won paleoecological data 
Andrew Lane, Department of Geography, King’s College London
The CLOSER consortium of longitudinal studies: Opportunities and obstacles in harmonising data from diverse sources
Dr. Dara O’Neill, CLOSER, UCL Institute of Education
Publishing FAIR Data in Chemistry
Dr. Charles Romain, Department of Chemistry, Imperial College London

Panel members: Prof. Pam Thomas, Dr. Paul Ayris (UCL), Prof. Henry Rzepa (Imperial College London)

This event is hosted by QMUL, UCL eResearch Domain and the SES Consortium.

Free event for UCL researchers and staff.

This one day workshop will explore the facets of Open Science and how these are/could be pursued by UCL researcher. In the morning speakers will discuss different aspects of and perspectives on Open Science with afternoon workshops offering practical advice. There will also be opportunity to discuss the steps UCL should take to support Open Science. This free event will be open to all UCL staff and is delivered by UCL Library Services with support from UCL Organisational Development.

Speakers include:

• Prof. David Price, Vice-Provost (Research), UCL
• Dr Paul Ayris, Pro-Vice-Provost, UCL Library Services
• Catriona MacCallum, Director of Open Science, Hindawi
• Emily Sena, University of Edinburgh
• James Wilsdon, University of Sheffield
• Simon Hettrick, Sustainable Software Institute

Afternoon workshops will cover:

• How do we make Open the default at UCL
• How to make your data open (and FAIR)?
• Citizen Science
• Open Peer review
• Open Education

Registration available via Eventbrite. Please contact lib-researchsupport@ucl.ac.uk with any questions.

In 2017 we conducted a series of short interviews as part of the LEARN project. We asked several UCL researchers about data management and data sharing in their disciplines.

Dr Martin Zaltz Austwick is a Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (Bartlett). Martin’s research and teaching makes extensive use of a wide variety of data sources including government data, business data and textual data.

Our interview with Martin provides a clear example of how researchers are already making extensive use of open data and have a desire to share their own data with broad audiences. The interview also emphasized some of the challenges faced by researchers who want to make their data available as a services through interactive websites or APIs. A particular challenge is that whilst funders cover some of the costs associated with Research Data Management usually these don’t include funding after projects have finished to maintain ‘live’ data services. Supporting researchers in their efforts to present data in new and innovative ways is an area university support services may want to continue investigating.

Watch Martin’s 5-minute interview (opens a new window in Youtube).

This week is Love Data Week an international event ‘to raise awareness and build a community to engage on topics related to research data management, sharing, preservation, reuse, and library-based research data services.’As part of Love Data Week we are publishing case studies that highlight the ways in which people are working with research data across UCL. Today we are highligting case studies from the Consumer Data Research Centre (CDRC).

Consumer Data Research Centre

‘The CDRC is working with consumer-related organisations to open up their data resources; to our trusted researchers. This enables them to carry out important social and economic research.’ UCL is one of the partners in the CDRC. There will be a drop-in on Wednesday 14 February which will offer an oppertunity to learn more about the CDRC’s data.

The CDRC has a number of case studies involving UCL researchers:

• Can smart meters save consumers and British Gas money and carbon by pinpointing which consumers are most likely and best placed to install insulation in their homes?
• Clustering Market Baskets with Bagging and Latent Dirichlet Allocation at Customer and Transactional Levels
• Customer pathway and in-store activity
• An Investigation into the Potential of Bluetooth Beacons to Monitor the Movement of People on Public Transport: A Preliminary Case Study of the Norwich Bus Network

Masters Research Dissertation Programme

The CDRC have just launched their Masters Programme:

‘A host of retailers, businesses and organisations have provided details of projects and are now inviting applications from potential Masters students to carry out research on a range of exciting topics.

The programme offers an excellent opportunity to work directly with an industrial partner and to link students’ research to important retail and ‘open data’ sources. The project titles are devised by retailers and are open to students from a wide range of disciplines. In previous years, we have worked with students from Geography (and GIS), Computer Science, Business Analytics, Economics and Statistics, but projects are by no means limited to these areas.

All students will be in with a chance to present their research at an academic conference (date tbc) with three projects selected to win prizes.’

You can find out more information and apply on the CDRC website.