What is happening in open research

To find out more about open research, visit our Open research hub.

Open research as a movement is quickly gaining momentum and funders are playing a key role in driving it forward.

Initiatives

Plan S is an initiative for open access publishing that was launched in September 2018 by cOAlition S, an international consortium of research organisations that includes Wellcome and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Plan S requires that, from 2021, scientific publications from research funded by public grants must be published in compliant open access journals or platforms.

Some research funders are partners of Europe PubMed Central (PMC), which is an open access repository for biomedical research outputs. Europe PMC funders expect that research outputs arising from research they fund are made freely and readily available, that electronic copies of any papers published in a peer-reviewed journal are deposited in PubMed Central and Europe PMC as soon as possible, and that outputs may be freely copied and re-used.

Open research is closely linked with research assessment, as one of the primary ways that researchers are evaluated for grant applications and career progression is on their publication record. The Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) is a worldwide initiative to improve how researchers and the outputs of research are evaluated. It was established in 2012 to stop the practice of judging scientific output by its journal impact factor, improve research culture and shift the focus of research assessment towards the intrinsic value of the research rather than where the results are published. Funders who sign this initiative commit to its principles of transparency in how applications and grants are assessed, responsible use of bibliometrics, and an appreciation of the value of all research outputs.

Another initiative called Ensuring Value in Research (EViR) is an international community of shared practice, facilitated learning and agreed standards to increase the value of research. The principles that funders sign up to include ensuring that complete information on methods and findings are accessible and usable, and that findings are appropriately and effectively disseminated. Currently several AMRC members are part of EViR.

Updated open access policies

Several major research funders in the UK updated and strengthened their open access policies in 2021, aligning with the implementation of Plan S. The overarching aim of Wellcome’s new open access policy is to make sure that knowledge and discoveries resulting from their funding are shared and used in a way that maximises their benefit to health. UKRI’s new open access policy aims to ensure that findings from research funded by the public through UKRI can be freely accessed, used and built on. The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR)’s updated policy includes four principles: articles must be immediately, freely and openly accessible to all; there should be no barriers to the re-use and dissemination of NIHR funded articles; articles must be freely discoverable; NIHR will pay reasonable fees to enable immediate open access.

In the United States, the government recently announced a federal mandate to ensure free, immediate and equitable access to publications and supporting data resulting from federally funded research.

New publication concepts

Moving beyond traditional journals, several new platforms and ways of recording and disseminating research are emerging. These novel methods shift the emphasis of scientific publishing towards the content and intrinsic value of the research and away from the perceived prestige and ‘impact factor’ of the publication venue. They are also moving away from the concept of a final, finished story in the form of a traditional research article, and more towards separate outputs from each stage of the research process.

One example is the F1000 publishing model, which uses a unique post-publication peer review process and offers a diversity of article types. The author decides what to publish and when, and after a series of in-house checks the publication is made publicly available quickly. It is then peer reviewed in an open and transparent manner with reviewer names, affiliations and review reports all made available alongside the article. Responses to review comments and revised versions of the publication are linked together and available to read. Publishing ahead of peer review speeds up the whole process and avoids unnecessary delays in sharing research results. F1000 has created different platforms for many funders, including Health Open Research, Wellcome Open Research, Open Research Europe, Gates Open Research, and HRB Open Research.

There are other novel initiatives continually emerging as well, including Octopus, Research Directions, registered reports (e.g. Cancer Research UK’s pilot project), among others.

Concordat on Open Research Data

The Concordat on Open Research Data was developed in 2016 to encourage research data gathered and generated by the research community to be made more openly available for others to use. It includes a series of clear and practical principles to guide the research community in making more research data accessible.