Open Research

 Open Research and the Research Lifecycle

Open research extends the principles of open access publishing to the whole research lifecycle, including research protocols, data, code, software, and much more. It is about being as open as possible, as often as possible, and only being as closed as necessary.Through planning, many elements of the research lifecycle can be made open, transparent, and reproducible.

Sometimes referred to as open science, open research encompasses all disciplines and types of research.

Open research practices also align with the University of Melbourne’s Principles for Open Access to Research Outputs at Melbourne. 

What is Open Research?

Benefits of Open Research

By engaging with Open Research you are enabling greater transparency and reproducibility to be applied to your work and research outputs. This, in turn, may lead to​;

• Improving research integrity by limiting the possibility of closed research practices. This in turn increases trust in research​
• Creating opportunities for collaboration, both in and outside of your discipline​
• Increasing access to research by individuals and organisations outside of academia, thus impacting and progressing real-world problems, impact, and lives faster​
• Higher citation rates, as well as more outputs that can be cited. With data, software, and code being made available and being assigned persistent identifiers, a research project can have a larger impact within and beyond academia
•  Greater efficiencies in research more broadly as less repetition is needed​
• Compliance with funder mandates and institutional requirements

Using this guide

This guide has been designed to introduce you to the practical steps you can take to open the research lifecycle. For more information on each of these topics and where they sit in the research ecosystem, visit the University of Melbourne's Open Scholarship information hub.

Broadly, this resource has been organised from steps to take from planning your research, through to the publication of results.