DCU Open Research survey results announced at national strategy event
The results of a survey on awareness of open research practices among researchers at Dublin City University were revealed to staff at today's event. The in depth survey took place over two months and collected data on awareness of the breadth of the open research movement, as well as services already on offer at DCU.
Today's event situated these findings within the national strategy on open research. The National Open Research Forum Ireland has ambitious targets such as 100% access to research publications by 2030. National Open Research Co-Ordinator Dr Daniel Bangert outlined this and other policy in the first presentation of the afternoon.
Dr Bangert's presentation followed an outline of the open research initiatives already in place at DCU, along with the analysis results. Kim Huijpen from Universities of the Netherlands and Dr Paul Ayris from UCL also delivered presentations.
Open research is the practice of increasing accessibility throughout the research cycle. This process involves collaborative working, sharing details of research methodology, and making software, code, equipment and publications freely available.
There was also discussion of an analysis of open access publishing. The findings indicate that ensuring research papers are openly accessible contributes to an increase in citations, a key aim of the university's research strategy.
While other measures such as publishing in high impact journals and securing international authorship have a greater impact on citations, these findings are significant. In the first instance, researchers at DCU are encouraged to publish their papers on the university's repository for research.
Professor John Doyle said
"The new university strategy sets out a clear ambition to increase the impact of DCU research, in both international academic debates and in social, economic and cultural outcomes. Ensuring research is open and accessible to potential readers is an important part of this agenda."
In cases where article processing charges are covered by external funders, this should be pursued. Paying these charges means articles which would otherwise be behind a paywall are freely accessible. There are different forms of open access, according to academic discipline and publication timelines of different journals, but open access publication of some form should be a priority for researchers.
In some cases these charges are covered by agreements managed by DCU Library. In cases where they aren't covered by existing agreements or external funders, researchers should upload their research to the research repository.