Open Research Week 2025

British Social Attitudes and ‘Dividing Lines’: 40 years of open-access research

10:00 – 11:00 GMT/11:00 - 12:00 CET

The British Social Attitudes (BSA) Survey is the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen)’s flagship study, and has been tracking social and political attitudes for over 40 years. As a result of its longevity and its random probability sampling, it is considered to be a ‘gold standard’ in attitudinal research. Last year, as part of the  Dividing Lines project, NatCen released a new set of profiles of British voters, which was based on decades of data from BSA. This analysis, which created a set of six ‘voter profiles’ to showcase the key divides among the British electorate, provides just one example of how the many years of archived, freely accessible BSA data can be utilised. Given its unique position as a survey, the potential for further re-use of the data to create research of lasting value is high.

In this presentation, Alex Scholes will discuss the history of BSA and the key findings from the Dividing Lines study. He will also cover the relationship between BSA and open research more generally to answer: how can NatCen maximise the impact that BSA has as an open-access dataset? Is there anything that could be done in addition to data archiving that would increase levels of engagement with the survey among the research and policy communities, as well as with the general public? And how would this fit in with NatCen’s approach to open data, both for BSA and the wider research we conduct? Reflecting on the last four decades of BSA can help to answer these questions, and provide a guide to how to most effectively deliver open access research into the future.

Alex Scholes is Research Director at NatCen, and works on the British and Scottish Social Attitudes Surveys, the NatCen Panel and also contributes to the What UK Thinks:EU and What Scotland Thinks websites. He joined NatCen in 2018, and has contributed to numerous BSA reports on a variety of topics, including on the role and responsibilities of government, constitutional reform and, most recently, on national pride and identity.

Open Qualitative Research: Challenges, Limitations and Possibilities

14:00 - 15:00 GMT/15:00 - 16:00 CET

Among other objectives, the Open Research movement seeks to assure transparency in research methods and accessibility to existing data for secondary analysis.  How does this work with qualitative data? What points should one consider when designing qualitative research? Where do the limitations lie? Does open research archiving also present opportunities?  Dr. Pat Danahey Janin, Independent Researcher, University of Essex will give an overview of where qualitative research sits within the open research movement and address these questions through examples of practical experiences.

Pat Danahey Janin, Ph.D., obtained her doctorate from Indiana University, Lilly School of Philanthropy in the United States.  She was a Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Government, University of Essex working on values, preferences and trade-offs in marine planning and is currently an Independent qualitative researcher, lecturer and consultant based in Paris, France.  Her research, which uses a case study approach, is centered on international philanthropy, ocean conservation, the SDGs, and climate change and mitigation.

Recognising and Rewarding Open Research

10:00 – 11:00 GMT/11:00 -12:00 CET

The importance of open research is widely accepted by many in the research ecosystem with touted benefits for research impact, integrity, reproducibility. Democratising research through open research is widely valued. But are we lagging when it comes to recognising and rewarding the work done by the wide range of researchers, research enablers and others involved in the culture of research? In this session we hear from three experts in the space of embedding institutional reward and recognition practices.

Karen Desborough from the UKRN’s OR4 project will discuss their goal to increase open research practices by improving institutional reward and recognition of open research. Delphine Doucet from the University of Sunderland will discuss their institutional engagement with the OR4 community of practice and Georgina Endfield from the University of Liverpool who will discuss the institutional changes underway through Project Thrive.

Dr Karen Desborough, Responsible Research Assessment Officer at Cardiff University is responsible for OR4 community of practice engagement and content review as part of the UK Reproducibility Network’s Open Research Programme.

Dr Delphine Doucet, Research and Scholarly Communications Librarian at the University of Sunderland is responsible for the University of Sunderland’s engagement with the OR4 project’s community of practice.

Prof. Georgina Endfield, Associate Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research Environment and Postgraduate Research at the University of Liverpool works together with a team of people on Project Thrive which considers research environment, excellence and inclusivity.

Open research and AI - both changing the nature of scientific research

14:00 – 15:00pm GMT/15:00-16:00 CET

The Royal Society's Science in the Age of AI report, published in May 2024, states that research funders and scientific communities should ensure AI based research meets open science's principles and practices to realise AI’s full potential in advancing science.  In this session, Nicole Mwananshiku, Policy Adviser at the Royal Society, will explore the report's key findings, focusing on the roles of transparency, reproducibility, and equity in ensuring trustworthy and inclusive AI-driven research.

Nicole Mwananshiku is a Policy Adviser in the in the Data and Digital Technologies team at the Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of sciences. The team focuses on how data-driven technologies and artificial intelligence can, and should, be used to benefit humanity. She works on the following projects: Science in the Age of AI (exploring how AI is changing the nature and method of scientific research) and The online information environment (exploring how the internet and data-driven technologies affects the production of disinformation). She holds a masters degree in Conflict, Security and Development from the University of Exeter.

Lessons learned from setting up REPOPSI – supporting open psychology research in Serbia

10:00 - 11:00 GMT/11:00 - 12:00 CET

We are delighted to have Aleksandra Lazić, the winner of the Sarah Jones Award for Exceptional Contribution to Fostering Collaboration in Open Science, established by the Research Data Alliance (RDA) in June 2024, talking about her experiences of setting up REPOPSI and promoting open science.

The RDA selected Aleksandra for her impactful work, her passion in promoting open science practices, her understanding of the complexities of building repositories, and her strong belief in the value of international collaboration. Aleksandra is a PhD Researcher at the University of Belgrade - Faculty of Philosophy, doing work in social and health psychology. She is a co-founder and manager of REPOPSI, established at the LIRA Lab in 2020. REPOPSI allows everyone to freely access and share open psychological scales, tests, and other research instruments translated into Serbian or developed by Serbian scientists. In 2022–2023, Aleksandra led an EOSC Future and RDA funded REPOPSI improvement project. She has also been engaged in improving the inclusivity and accessibility of open and big-team science as part of the communities such as the OSCS and ABRIR. In this session, Aleksandra will talk about her experience of setting up REPOPSI – the milestones and challenges, reliance on open source tools, and getting people on-board.

Measuring, Monitoring and Evaluating Open Research

14:00 to 15:00 GMT/15:00 to 16:00 CET

There is an ecosystem where open research is increasingly prioritised with a range of frameworks, concordats, policies and recommendations for increasing open research practices. Monitoring and evaluating uptake of open research practices helps us to understand compliance with policies, gain insight on the impact of engagement with open research practices and evaluate the effectiveness of those policies and recommendations. However, the research ecosystem brings together a wide range of inputs with considerations to be made on the appropriateness of open research practices. Moreover, the range of open research practices available to us is myriad. How do we measure, monitor and evaluate open research practices accurately and responsibly?

In this session, Laetitia Bracco will present the French Open Science Monitor, a national tool designed to steer French public policy regarding Open Science. She will explain the background, methodology and outcomes of this project which currently covers scientific publications, clinical trials, research data and software.

Iratxe Puebla will talk about Make Data Count an initiative that promotes the development of open data metrics to enable evaluation of data usage. Make Data Count focus on open infrastructure, outreach and evidence on the usage and impact of open data through collaboration with bibliometricians.   

Laetitia Bracco is the head of the research data and bibliometrics support services at the Université de Lorraine (France). She is the project manager of the French Open Science Monitor for datasets and software and she co-coordinates the Open Science Monitoring Initiative (OSMI).

Iratxe Puebla is Director of Make Data Count and organiser of the annual Make Data Count summit which focussed on the two questions in 2024: How does open data accelerate scientific discovery? And what is the impact of investing in open data?

At the intersection of openness, reproducibility and training

10:30-11:30 GMT/11:30-12:30 CET

In this session Dr John Shaw will introduce FORRT, a community that supports the teaching of openness, and share some of their projects, such as the Replication and Reversals Project. He will introduce their latest Project- POSTEdu, a pedagogically-informed, evidence-based, self-guided program for supporting the teaching of Open Science. 

The Framework for Open Reproducible Research Training (FORRT) provides a pedagogical infrastructure & didactic resources designed to recognize and support the teaching and mentoring of open and reproducible science.

Dr John Shaw is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Edge Hill University, with his research focusing on the impact of sleep on cognition. Alongside this he is also a Community Manager at FORRT, serving on its interim Executive Committee, having previously led their Neurodiversity Project Team. He has published on the importance of acknowledging Neurodiversity in Academia, and produced Open Educational Resources for teaching Open Science in Higher Education.

The impact of being 'open' for small charities

14:00 to 15:00 GMT/15:00 to 16:00 CET

Most of the time we talk about open research within our own communities and yet open research can have a greater impact and affect than we realise outside of academia.  In this session we will be hearing from two colleagues:  Dr Andi Skilton, who  helped set up and is Chair of Trustees for the small charity Stargardt's Connected, will talk about being open from his charity's perspective and Professor Pooja Saini, who carries out research with small charities, will talk about the issues she has faced balancing her research aims, her collaborators' aims and being as open as possible.

Dr Andi Skilton is currently Research Impact Lead for Heath Faculties and interim Manager for Participatory Research at King's College London. Andi is Chair of Trustees for Stargardt’s Connected, a charity supporting people and research and raising awareness of Stargardt disease. Andi has extensive experience in health research, communications, patient and public engagement and involvement.

Professor Pooja Saini is Professor of Suicide and Self-Harm Prevention at Liverpool John Moores University and her research is focused at an individual-level, community-level and whole systems approach on risk management and decision-making processes for individuals, professionals, and service providers within forensic, clinical and non-clinical settings. Her main research interests are in suicide and self-harm prevention particularly in young people, cancer prevention in Black and Asian Ethnic Minority Groups, reduction of health inequalities and coproduction. She collaborates with key mental health charities (e.g., JWSMF, PAPYRUS, YASP, Samaritans, YPAS), and Public Health Departments.