Abstract
In this article, we provide a toolbox of recommendations and resources for those aspiring to promote the uptake of open scientific practices. Open Science encompasses a range of behaviours that aim to improve the transparency of scientific research. This paper is divided into seven sections, each devoted to different groups or institutions in the research ecosystem: colleagues, students, departments and faculties, universities, academic libraries, journals, and funders. We describe the behavioural influences and incentives for each of these stakeholders as well as changes they can make to foster Open Science. Our primary goal, however, is to suggest actions that researchers can take to promote these behaviours, inspired by simple principles of behaviour change: make it easy, social, and attractive. In isolation, a small shift in one person’s behaviour may appear to make little difference, but when combined, many shifts can radically alter shared norms and culture. We offer this toolbox to assist individuals and institutions in cultivating a more open research culture.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 30137 |
| Pages (from-to) | 1-20 |
| Number of pages | 20 |
| Journal | Collabra: Psychology |
| Volume | 7 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Early online date | 17 Dec 2021 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2022 Royal Society of Chemistry. All rights reserved.
Funding
Engage with libraries to discover a strategic approach to Open Access publishing and APCs. Prioritise the circumstances under which one will do unpaid work. Link ORCiD to all of one’s research projects. Create and use open educational resources supported by institutional libraries. Funding bodies are often responsible for deciding how and where to allocate research funds from government, industry, and philanthropic sources. These funds are limited, and the process of evaluating research proposals is competitive. Grant applications are typically written by researchers before being sent to specialists in the field for review. A committee then assesses and ranks these applications to prioritise where available funds are allocated. This review process typically favours researchers with more publications, higher citation counts, and a track record of publishing in ‘high-impact’ journals, which then places these same researchers in a better position to publish further research (i.e., the Matthew effect; Bol et al., 2018). In fact, researchers at the top 20% of universities received over 60% of the funding from the National Science Foundation (Drut-man, 2012). A model that consistently awards funds more to established, senior academics, and to conventional research, may be stifling scientific advancement and scientific reforms such as those that advocate for Open Science. This research was supported by grant No. LP170100086 from the Australian Research Council to JMT and RAS, and by a grant from the National Science Center (2015/19/B/ HS6/01253) to KJ. There are several ways to address these issues. Some funding bodies have adopted policies to promote Open Science by committing to make funded output freely accessible (e.g., Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada; National Institute of Health; cOAlition S). The European Research Council (2017) has also proposed that funded projects have open and reusable data attached to output. Policies that require open practices from funded projects would certainly increase the uptake of open practices among researchers.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| National Science Foundation | |
| National Institutes of Health | |
| Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada | |
| European Research Council | |
| Horizon 2020 | |
| Narodowe Centrum Nauki | 2015/19/B/ HS6/01253 |
| Australian Research Council | LP170100086 |
Keywords
- Behaviour change
- Culture change
- Metascience
- Open science
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