What is Open Research?

Open research is a movement to make the research process more transparent, by advocating for the adoption of a broad range of research practices.

Open Research practices vary across disciplines and include:

• Pre-registration of methodological plans
• Full reporting of all analyses
• Transparency and open methodology
• Sharing Open Data adhering to the FAIR principles
• Publishing Open source research software

Aims of Open Research

The goal is to make research more robust, addressing concerns around reproducibility and research integrity. Open research is increasingly expected by research funders, and is supported by organisations including UKRI, the Wellcome Trust and the European Commission. It is also of relevance to the public, who are able to freely read a greater proportion of the scientific literature thanks to the open access publishing movement.

Open Research also aims to improve scientific efficiency. Advocating for the free flow of information allows researchers to freely build on the work of others. Reforms to scientific publishing such as registered reports help to address the 'file draw problem', where negative research findings often aren’t published.

Finally, central to the open research movement is working to create a responsible research environment valuing equality, diversity and inclusion.

The Office for Open Research is a co-ordinated response to the Open Research agenda.

Research metrics are measures by which the quality or impact of research is compared and evaluated.