Open Research skills and training

Empowering researchers with the skills required to make their research more open is a key strategic driver of the Office for Open Research and is essential to meet the University's goals of creating an open and responsible research environment. We enable researchers with established Open Research skills and practices to share their knowledge and experience through our peer-to-peer skills and training model.

Increase your skills and knowledge

We have developed the Open Research Skills Framework in collaboration with researchers and research leads to strategically deliver our support under five priority themes:

Access expert training

My Research Essentials (MRE) is our programme of workshops, information sessions, and online resources designed to support researchers, at all career stages, in making their research more open, transparent and reproducible. The MRE programme is aligned with the Open Research Skills Framework to empower you to identify and access the support that fits your particular Open Research needs.

Engaging with our support is a great way for research staff to utilise their allocated professional development time and postgraduate researchers can log workshop attendance in eProg (via MyManchester).

Book a place on one of our interactive workshops and information sessions, open to all researchers.
Access our online resources, available anytime and anywhere, to suit your schedule.
Request bespoke training:
- embed a series of online resources into a VLE space;
- delivery of one-off and tailored facilitation of any of our workshops;
- development of new training based on the skills and practices within our Open Research Skills Framework.

We can provide bespoke training for research cohorts ranging from Faculty Doctoral Academies to individual research teams.
Contact us to discuss your needs.

Share your knowledge and skills

MRE is peer-led and peer-delivered. Alongside experts from The University of Manchester Library, MRE Training Partners and invited speakers share their experience to enable all researchers to make their research more open.

If you have an Open Research skill, practice or workflow that you would like to bring to a University-wide audience, get in touch and become a My Research Essentials Training Partner.

Workshops and online resources

Explore our full catalogue of workshops and online resources to access expert training designed to meet your Open Research needs.

Our comprehensive Open Research training offer is delivered under five priority themes in alignment with our Open Research Skills Framework:

Transparent methods

Transparent reporting of methods and analyses facilitates the reproducibility of research by allowing results to be shared and built upon. Gain insight into transparent research practices with our online resource: Introduction to Open Research practices for PGRs: a PhD. Engineer's perspective. We’ll be launching workshops introducing the principles underpinning Open Research, and on preregistration and registered reports later in the 2024/25 academic year.

Find out more about transparent research methods.

Responsible methods

Responsible research minimises Questionable Research Practices (QRPs) through the careful application of statistical methods and practices, such as adversarial collaboration, thereby promoting high-quality, reproducible results. The responsible use of metrics helps to promote and sustain a responsible research environment. To gain an understanding of how research is measured explore our online resource: Using citation analysis to measure impact. Further workshops on measuring research and researchers and avoiding detrimental research practices, are planned in the Summer of 2025.

Find out more about responsible research methods.

Communications and publishing

Sharing research as openly as possible is key to driving innovation and maximising its potential societal impact. Find out more about open scholarly publishing with our online resource: How to get published in academic journals and our workshops: ‘Choosing a credible journal and how to avoid 'Predatory Publishers'’, and ‘How to publish Open Access’.

Find our more about open communications and publishing.

Open data

Researchers collect, receive, and manage data in many ways. Making sure this data is well-managed, reusable and FAIR can be complex. Learn more about research data with our online resource: Research Data Explained and learn how to manage your data with our workshops: ‘Introduction to Research Data Management,' and ‘Introduction to FAIR data principles'.

Find out more about open research data.

Open software

Open software involves making the software and code, used and created during the research process, as open as possible, enabling replication, validation, and further development by other researchers. You can expect to see workshops on open scholarship using R and Python later in the 2024/25 academic year as we work with researchers and communities across the University.

Find out more about open software.

Open Research Fellowship programme

The Fellowship Programme seeks to provide a unique opportunity for Fellows to advance their careers while contributing to the Open Research community. The Office for Open Research is currently funding five Open Research Fellows, for one day a week, for a period of 12 months.

Find out more out our Open Research Fellowship Programme.
See our News and Events for updates from our Fellows and future calls for applications.