Chat is offline
Home › Public sites▻Library▻Open Scholarship▻Open Scholarship Forum

Open Scholarship Forum

Reshaping the Academic Self
How Open Scholarship Impacts My Research 

Open Scholarship is considered a new paradigm to make research outputs and educational material accessible, accountable, and effective. It will alter our approach to academic life in many ways. 

This Open Scholarship Forum on 7th February 2023 brought together institutional leaders, researchers at all stages of their careers, and the Library to look at how Open Scholarship impacts the research we conduct at our university and if we are ready to embrace the opportunities and challenges that Open Scholarship provides. 

 

You can watch the recording of the lightning talks here.

We are planning the next Open Scholarship Forum to be in autumn 2023. 

 

Agenda

  • Jim Livesey, Open Scholarship at the University of Galway
  • Louise Hannon, Open Science - What Research Funders Require
  • Ciara Egan, How Open Scholarship improves my research
  • Siobhán Gaughan, Research Data Management in our lab: Expectations and reality
  • Dan Carey, The NORF Action Plan: Implications for the Humanities
  • Hardy Schwamm, Open Access publishing agreements – success and challenges   
  • Panel Discussion and Q&A 
  • Lunch

Lightning Talk Abstracts

Louise Hannon, Head of Research, Post Award  

Open Science - What Research Funders Require 

The requirements of some of the main National and International Research Funding Agencies with respect to Open Science will be discussed. In principle, the aims of research funding agencies are aligned towards the creation of an Open Research environment, however there are differences in the language and scope of the requirements, and these will be presented. 

Dr Ciara Egan, Lecturer, School of Psychology 

How Open Scholarship improves my research 

Open Scholarship has become a major focus in research and funding policy both nationally and internationally. Proponents often focus on the (very legitimate) benefits of open practices for research integrity and quality, education, and general societal good. Less focus however is given to how individual researchers may benefit from embracing open practices. This can lead to some feeling open practices are something they “should” do, but not necessarily want to do. Here I will briefly highlight some of the many ways in which embracing Open Scholarship has benefitted my research career, focusing on research quality, collaborations, and an improved research environment. 

Dr Siobhán Gaughan, Programme Manager, Molecular Parasitology Laboratory 

Research Data Management in our lab: Expectations and reality 

As a Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) funded project publishing in open access journals, allowing reuse of the research data produced and adhering to good research data management practice is a key part of our research scientist’s role.  However, not every research scientist or principal investigator has the necessary knowledge or understanding of the supports available for data collection, storage and management, which can result in many important datasets left inaccessible on laboratory shelves. This results in other laboratories being unaware of previously obtained data and indeed repetition of experiments.  The expectation is that at the end of a project, or when a paper is published in the public domain, that research samples, protocols and datasets are made available in an open access format to allow other research scientists to reproduce or re-analyse the work and build upon it.  The reality is, there are a number of obstacles to achieving true open access research, as follows;  

  • access to resourcing and supports,
  • willingness of the research scientist to share results, reagents, samples and protocols, 
  • protection of Intellectual Property (IP) and know-how
  • development and implementation of a good research data management plan. 

Clearly, further education and training in good research data management is required together with resourcing and practical tools to break down the current obstacles.  To be successful, data management must be integrated and  managed as an intrinsic part of the daily workflows in the laboratory. 

Professor Daniel Carey, Director Moore Institute 

The NORF Action Plan: Implications for the Humanities 

The NORF Action Plan is an important development and represents a broad consensus at EU, international and national level about how to achieve wider access to research via open access publications.  

There are still significant unanswered questions for the Humanities that need to be addressed in developing a roadmap, relating to early career researchers, learned societies, funding provisions, and academic freedom. 

Hardy Schwamm, Open Scholarship Librarian, Library 

Open Access publishing agreements – success and challenges  

University of Galway researchers can benefit from more than 20 Open Access agreements where the Article Processing Charge (APC) of our authors are covered by a deal with the publisher. Some of these agreements have been in place for two years or more, so we can start to look at the impact they are having. 

This lightning talk will summarise the available data on who the authors are who benefit from the agreements and look at some issues that arise from the agreements. Hopefully this will lead to a wider discussion on how we can increase the number of Open Access publications of University of Galway authors in line with the National Action Plan for Open Research.