The Open Research Toolkit

Abstract

I have been the Data Curation Librarian at University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Libraries since 2013. During this time, I have helped hundreds of researchers meet the requirements of research funders and publishers to make their research data openly accessible. I have taught countless webinars and workshops on data management best practices, FAIR data principles, and open data. While open data is a major pillar of open research, it is only one component of the broad landscape of open research. I felt it would be a disservice to the research community I served if I did not situate my work within the larger context of open research and embrace the principles and practices in my own work. This began my quest to learn more about the open research landscape. To have the focused time to learn and to develop a resource for others, I applied and was approved for faculty development leave to devote one full semester to developing a series of training modules on various topics within open research. They were partly for my own benefit to learn the landscape and partly for the benefit of others who I was sure would be interested in learning more about the topic. The resulting product is the Open Research Toolkit (ORT).