Open Research Conversations: Spring 2025
Our lunchtime Open Research Conversations are free, online and open to all. Each focuses on a specific aspect of open research and features talks from 2-3 speakers followed by questions and discussion. Book your place below:
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Wednesday 12th February 2025, 12-1pm
Spotlight on Data Journals
Data journals offer researchers an opportunity to increase the impact of their openly available data by further documenting a dataset and highlighting the possibilities for its exploration and reuse.
In this Open Research Conversation, we’ll explore the phenomenon of data journals from a number of different perspectives and disciplinary contexts. Vanessa Higgins (University of Manchester) will explore her role as editorial board member for the Research Data Journal for the Humanities and Social Sciences, while University of Sheffield researchers Tecla Bonci (Mechanical Engineering) and Jacob MacDonald (Urban Studies and Planning) discuss their own experiences of publishing in data journals.
Key areas of discussion will include the significance of data journals in Humanities and Social Science as well as STEM disciplines, the aspects and use cases of a dataset that publication in a data journal allows academic authors to showcase, and the impacts that can result in terms of visibility, transparency and collaboration.
Wednesday 5th March 2025, 12-1pm
Open research across different epistemic cultures: principles, practices, dis/junctions
The conceptual framework of open research has historically been shaped around quantitative, confirmatory research informed by a positivist epistemological stance. As a result, some have raised questions about its applicability - and those of key tenets including reproducibility and open data - to a broader range of research contexts, with different methods and epistemological approaches.
Just how applicable are the accepted tenets of ‘open science’ or ‘open research’ to broader understandings of research practice? To what extent must they be modified, revised or rewritten in the context of (for example) interpretivist qualitative research, or research in Arts, Humanities and Social Science disciplines? Alternatively, in what ways might ‘best practice’ in such disciplines already embody open research values in ways that go unrecognised within dominant discourses of open science?
Our speakers for this session will be Pieter Huistra (Utrecht University) Bart Penders (Maastricht University), and Annayah Prosser (University of Bath).
Book your place here (Ticket Tailor)
Wednesday 23rd April 2025, 12-1pm
Early career researchers and open research
Open research practices are increasingly becoming the norm among an emerging generation of researchers, who have the potential to act as agents of change in embedding open practices into the workflows of a research group, subject area or lab. This said, to what extent is it fair or reasonable to expect early career colleagues to carry the burden of transforming the way we conduct research? Early career researchers experience time and career pressures that more established researchers may not, and are arguably less empowered to take ‘risks’ (such as publishing in sustainable and ethical yet ‘low impact factor’ venues) than more established colleagues.
In this Open Research Conversation, we explore the experiences and perspectives of early career colleagues with open research. Speakers include Eleanor Hyde (University of Sheffield), an ECR in the field of Cognitive Psychology; Elaine Toomey (University of Galway), who will discuss her work on the barriers and enablers to practising open research for early career colleagues, and Zuzanna Zagrodzka (University of Sheffield), a current PGR student and open research practitioner in Biosciences.
Book your place here (Ticket Tailor)
Wednesday 28th May, 12-1pm
Developing open research indicators - the UKRN Open Research Indicators Project
Recent years have seen UK research institutions commit to transforming their research practice in the direction of openness - evident in the issuing of institutional statements on open research and the commitment to change-oriented initiatives such as DORA and COARA. Yet how can institutions determine the extent to which researchers are actually employing such open practices as pre-registering studies, including a Data Availability Statement in publications, applying the CRediT taxonomy, sharing data and code and adhering to the FAIR principles?
This session explores a recent UKRN project which ran several pilot studies - each addressing a specific aspect of open research practice - in which researchers and information professionals from a number of UK universities collaborated with commercial and nonprofit organisations in the data and scholarly communications field to explore the possibility of measuring usage of these practices. The session will explore findings and insights from the project, as well as the implications of these for a broader consideration of what it means to ‘measure’ aspects of open research and what challenges such efforts must negotiate.
We’ll hear from the project leader, Neil Jacobs, Head of the UKRN’s Open Research Programme, as well as colleagues from UK institutions involved in the different pilot projects that comprised it: Mark Kelson (University of Exeter), who co-led the pilot project on pre-registration, and Laurian Williamson (University of Leicester), co-lead of the pilot on Data Availability Statements. Jenni Adams, who will chair the session, was also co-lead of the pilot project on FAIR data.
Book your place here (Ticket Tailor)
Wednesday 11th June 2025, 3-4pm
Open data, indigenous data sovereignty and the CARE principles
This session will explore the tensions that exist between the movement towards open data and Indigenous Peoples’ rights to ownership and control over data emerging from their communities.
What frameworks exist to support indigenous data sovereignty, and what tensions and challenges remain? In what ways can the co/production of knowledge relating to indigenous communities proceed ethically and ensure the CARE principles of Collective benefit, Authority to control, Responsibility and Ethics are exercised? What questions does this debate pose to the concept of open data as an inherent good, and how might this idea need to be modified?
We’ll hear from Jane Anderson (New York University), whose work addresses intellectual and cultural property law, Indigenous rights and the protection of Indigenous/traditional knowledge and cultural heritage; Paula Granados García, head of the Endangered Material Knowledge Programme at the British Museum, and Emiliano Trere (Cardiff University), one of the co-directors of the Data Justice Lab and co-founder of the ‘Big Data from the South’ Initiative.
Book your place here (Ticket Tailor)
View details of past Open Research Conversations on our events page (scroll down).