Are researchers missing out on the benefits that open research publishing can offer? We talked to over 250 and got their thoughts.

Elisha Morris, Editorial Assistant, Wiley
Elizabeth Moylan, Publisher, Wiley
Chris Graf, former Director of Research Integrity, Open Research, Wiley

In our pursuit of new approaches that make research as reliable and trustworthy as it can be, we recently partnered with UKRN to host a series of open research workshops, over 6 months, across 9 UK universities, and involving over 250 researchers.

Workshops were bespoke depending on the university and researchers' needs. Latterly they were delivered virtually, and overall, the audience response and participation exceeded all expectations. Topics on offer included: preprints, authorship, registered reports, data sharing, and open access. 

What did we learn?

The main thing we learned from the researchers was that, although the ‘newer’ open research publishing practices are fairly well-understood, there’s a constant requirement for up-to-date information, explanation, and discussion. That’s why workshops like these are so important.  

We talked about the transformation that preprints are leading in the current COVID-19 situation, enabling research to break from the science press and into general media:

• The Economist reported that COVID-19 preprints matched journal articles 1-to-1 from January to April 2020.
• The New York Times gives column inches to discussions about sharing research in preprints before it’s been peer-reviewed.

But, whilst there is a rapid (and continued) growth in researchers who choose to preprint their work, the reality is that the majority still have a lot of questions and learning before it becomes their reality. A primer on preprints from the UKRN is available here.

Similarly, we might assume that the fantastic innovation that is Registered Reports is widely and well-understood. The model has certainly been the focus of prominent and frequently inspiring discussions. What researchers actually told us was that many of them were unfamiliar with this approach but keen to learn more about pre-registration and Registered Reports. 

Across the workshops, we had frank discussions about different experiences of authorship and talked about how CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) can help.

We exchanged ideas around the growing importance of open access, and how it opens up collaboration and future study, as well as data sharing (‘expecting’ or mandating data sharing) with some participants expressing their enthusiasm to adopt more open practices such as the FAIR data principles.

Talking directly with researchers gave us a real insight into how we (and other publishers) need to approach and present open research publishing practices, to drive forward and futureproof uptake. 

Finally, it was a huge privilege to have met so many interested researchers and to work with UKRN local networks; with library, research integrity, and open research leaders; and with senior leadership from universities to deliver these #OpenPublishDay workshops.

The present mini-course brings together the four main topics covered during the workshops.

• Feedback. How you can gather expert feedback at two times when it really matters: Registered Reports and Preprints.
• Data. Why FAIRsharing.org might become your “go-to” when you plan to manage your data and prepare to share it. And how to connect your research data with your articles, with help from publishers and journals.  
• Authorship. How an open standard of contributor roles increases transparency on research outputs: CRediT. And how you can correctly identify all your research and scholarly contributions across disciplines, borders, and time (and enable others to identify you and your work, too) by getting and using your ORCiD unique identifier.
• Profile. What you need to know about amplifying your work and profile and achieving more by adopting open practices and publishing open.