The Development of an Open Access Open Research Course and Interactive Decision Tree for Researchers Across Disciplines

Abstract

The development of an open access Open Research course and interactive decision tree for researchers across disciplines. Open Research encourages interdisciplinary collaboration, enabling researchers from diverse fields to interact with and build upon each other’s work, providing opportunities for underrepresented groups in academia to contribute and gain recognition, and accelerating innovation and advancements in various scientific fields. As such, it is essential for addressing global challenges such as climate change, health crises, and technological advancements.

However, the shift to Open Research faces challenges, including concerns about intellectual property, funding models, and the infrastructure required for data sharing. We have sought to mitigate some of the challenges of Open Research and promote its use in academia with the creation of an open access online course “Open Research for Researchers” and accompanying decision tree interactive that were developed with critical input from cross-disciplinary academics and open research advisors from the university library. The course introduces researchers from across disciplines and methodologies to three principles of open research (transparency, integrity, and accessibility) and why these are important. It also provides practical steps they can take to make their own research open, and to identify transparency, integrity, and accessibility in the research of others. The interactive decision tree allows researchers to apply open research practices to their own research, at any stage of a project.