Open Research Across Disciplines

Examples of open research practices

Examples of open research practices

Open Methods Open workflow. For example, “ESCAPE (European Science Cluster of Astronomy and Particle physics ESFRI research infrastructures) brings together the astronomy, astroparticle and particle physics communities. With this, ESCAPE puts together … projects with aligned challenges of data-driven research, with demonstrated capabilities in addressing various stages of data workflow and concerned with fundamental research through complementary approaches.” ( https://projectescape.eu/about-us)

Open Data The Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA) is a “project to exploit the latest generation of ground-based and space-borne survey facilities to study cosmology and galaxy formation and evolution… Using public data, its own campaigns and data sharing with independent survey imaging survey teams, “GAMA is creating an extraordinary multi-wavelength photometric and spectroscopic dataset with outstanding values to both the large-scale structure and galaxy evolution communities.” Details of data releases are provided on the GAMA website.( GAMA | Galaxy And Mass Assembly (gama-survey.org))

Examples of open research practices

Open Data Using and contributing to open data. Examples are reported in Table 1 of Feng et al. (2019), such as: “Species distribution records were collected from the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS;  http://iobis.org, accessed February 2016), from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF;  http://gbif.org, accessed January 2016), the Reef Life Survey (RLS;  http://reeflifesurvey.com, accessed February 2016) and for a few species via personal communications (Bosch et al., 2018).” (From Feng et al (2019). A checklist for maximizing reproducibility of ecological niche models. Nat Ecol Evol 3, 1382–1395. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-019-0972-5)

Open Data Working alongside ‘Open Microscopy’, Glencoe Software have developed and adopted Open Microscopy Environment – Next-Generation File Formats (OME-NGFF). This is a new “Cloud-friendly data format for multi-D bioimaging data using… It has been designed from its inception to work with scalable, cloud-based data resources and for public or shared data repositories used for AI training and data publication. There are examples of using OME-NGFF for  whole slide imaging (as in digital pathology),  high content screening and  3D imaging of large tissue samples.”. ( OME-NGFF in action; Glencoe Software, Inc.)

Examples of open research practices

Open Methods Jan Kokko and colleagues have been exploring the likelihood-free inference method, a methodological branch of statistics which is commonly used within simulation-based models in disciplines such as population genetics and astronomy. In their recent work (2019), they introduce an open-access Python adaptation of the Likelihood-Free Inference by Ratio Estimation (LFIRE), abbreviated as PYLFIRE. Based on penalised logistic regression, PYLFIRE can be accessed via the open-source inference software ELFI.

( https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/4-197/v1)

Examples of open research practices

Examples of open research practices

Open Methods The “Unseating Big Pharma" case study involves collaboration from 15 countries with the aim to end the legacy of big pharma. Scientists are working together in an effort to show how an open-science model can end dependency on manufacturers and benefit vaccine equity. ( Unseating big pharma: the radical plan for vaccine equity (nature.com))

Open Data “Carsten Brink works with sensitive personal data in the field of radiotherapy for cancer patients. Having FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data is essential to the researchers in his field, because they need interoperable data from a large number of patients to predict outcomes. The researchers in his field used to gather data from many different institutes and pool them in one physical location to run models. But, because they need to preserve the patients’ confidentiality, physically moving the data is a legally complicated task. Instead, they now work with distributed learning, which allows them to analyse data at other institutes without having to physically move them.”

( https://howtofair.dk/how-to-fair/#health-science)

Examples of open research practices

Open Methods Hoch, O’Grady and Adolph (2019) studied locomotion exploration in infants and found their movement to be instigated by the journey of exploration instead of a particular destination ( https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/desc.12740). Their data were obtained from Datavyu ( http://datavyu.org/), an open-source video coding and data visualization software which incorporates machine learning algorithms that can be used to annotate videos. It also generates paths taken by individuals as well as identifying people in videos which allows behaviour coding inputs to be conducted in real time. Datavyu has the aim of making behavioural data accessible to increase transparency in research and to instigate the use of videos as raw data. By using openly shared videos for data and documentation, the preserved data create an opportunity to ask new research questions and accelerate progress in the field.

Open Methods The Many Babies project ( https://manybabies.github.io/) aims to use an open approach to research into early development. The project works collaboratively with labs around the world to make all key project decisions (e.g., the research question, data collection, and the analysis). Their first project explored infants’ preferences for infant-directed speech, compared to adult-directed speech ( https://manybabies.github.io/MB1/). The study involved 69 laboratories, from 16 countries, with a total of 2,329 infants studied, with each lab using one of three methods to measure the infants’ discrimination: the head-turn preference, central fixation, or eye-tracking. Through collaboration, this project was able to replicate a well-known finding from developmental research, in infants around the world. The materials used in this study and the data collected are all openly accessible on GitHub ( https://github.com/manybabies/mb1-analysis-public) and the Open Science Framework ( https://osf.io/re95x/). The collaborative projects undertaken by the Many Babies Project allow standardized replication of developmental research around the world whilst being as open and transparent as possible.

Open Methods and Open Data PLAY (Play & Learning Across a Year) is a project that aims to explore infants and their mother’s natural behaviours in their homes, across 50 universities in the United States. All materials, home visit protocols and the video and questionnaire data collected are all openly available on their website ( https://www.play-project.org/index.html).

Open Data Anne Urai focuses on the neural basis of decision-making across mammalian species, the interaction between learning and perception, and the neural basis of cognitive aging. The International Brain Laboratory (IBL, https://www.internationalbrainlab.com/) is a collaboration of ~20 laboratories worldwide. Its researchers are dedicated to standardizing mouse decision-making behavior, coordinating measurements of neural activity across the brain, and using theoretical approaches to formalize the neural computations that support decision-making. In contrast to traditional neuroscientific practice, in which individual laboratories each probe different behaviors and record from a few select brain areas, IBL aims to deliver a standardized, high-density approach to behavioral and neural assays. This approach relies on a highly distributed, collaborative network of ~50 researchers – postdocs, graduate students, and scientific staff – who coordinate the intellectual, administrative, and sociological aspects of the project. IBL has a data portal that provides tools and solutions they adopted and developed at IBL which are open-sourced and accessible on GitHub.

Examples of open research practices

University of Hull case study: https://libguides.hull.ac.uk/openresearch/hull#s-lib-ctab-15971210-1

University of Newcastle case study: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/mediav8/library/file-downloads/research-services/open-research/orange-case-study.pdf

Example replication studies

Hutchinson, J. C., Murphy, J., de Lucia, B., O’Neill, E., Curtis, D., Mellano, K. T., Pelton, L., & Coker, N. (2024). Effects of Preferred versus Nonpreferred Music on Bench Press Performance. Communications in Kinesiology, 1(6). https://doi.org/10.51224/cik.2024.60

Examples of preregistration

Investigating the teaching of quantitative data analysis in undergraduate sport and exercise science-related degree programmes in UK universities: https://osf.io/6a5xj/analytics

The efficacy of a novel Apple Watch app for measuring moderate-intensity physical activity: https://osf.io/j39fa

Examining the functional mechanisms of Quiet Eye using virtual reality: https://osf.io/35fgp/

Examples of open research practices

Open Methods https://www.surrey.ac.uk/news/training-scientists-use-genomics-programs

Dr Arnoud van Vliet has been addressing issues scientists encounter when completing genomics data analyses. Without a doubt, anyone who works with materials from other laboratories (ranging from cell lines, reagents, and computer data) will have been frustrated by missing information, errors and things that just don’t work at another location. Many software programs ‘penalise’ a mistake with a cryptic and unhelpful error message and call on other software packages that aren’t installed by default. The outputs can also be incompatible with downstream software. To remedy this, Arnoud designed an online course using short video tutorials to teach scientists how to use these software programs at their own speed.

The user has access to:

A virtual Linux computer that they can install on their own Windows or Mac laptops, with relatively modest hardware requirements. It comes with installation and usage instructions and contains all the required software and practice data. It’s also suitable for the users’ own applications later.

Instruction videos (recorded on Zoom) for the nine different steps.

Two additional videos explaining how to work with Linux.

A wash-up session at the end.

Examples of open research practices

Examples of open research practices

Examples of open research practices

Examples of open research practices

“There are now thousands of examples of companies having used open government data as a key business asset that have been documented by the Open Data 500, the Open Data Impact Map, the ExploraLatam, and other studies. These projects have illustrated that companies use open government data for business optimisation, for developing new products and services, or for a combination of the two…Data collaboratives represent an emerging model of public–private partnership within which various actors across sectors exchange data and pool analytical expertise…Research partnerships [are an example of date collaboratives], in which corporations share data with universities and other research organisations to map weather patterns and natural resources, for example.”

(From https://www.stateofopendata.od4d.net/chapters/stakeholders/private-sector.html)

Examples of open research practices

Examples of open research practices

Examples of open research practices

Examples of open research practices

Open Methods MethodsX is an open-access journal where methods used in research studies can be regularly updated by authors and viewed by readers in order to gain precise insight into the methods used and how they could be replicated. An example of its usage is Jillian Student and colleagues’ recent paper which explored the factors affecting coastal tourism using an agent-based modelling approach featuring human-environmental interactions. Specifics of the model can be accessed and viewed on MethodsX.

(Student, J., Kramer, M. R., and Steinmann, P. (2020). Simulating emerging coastal tourism vulnerabilities: an agent-based modelling approach. Annals of Tourism Research, 85. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016073832030178X

Examples of open research practices

Open Data The following are examples of things that could be listed as open data: lists, tables or matrices containing organised, numerical, categorical, and ordinal information (e.g. the population of French medieval cities, a list of participants in the Society of Independent Artists exhibition in 1917, the GDP of European countries before and after Brexit, etc.).

(Based on information in: https://repository.dri.ie/catalog/tq582c863)

Open Data Objects can also be research data. These include historical artefacts, digital (incl. digitised) documents, images, sound and video recordings (e.g. archaeological finds, medieval manuscripts, poetry texts, social media posts, paintings, recording of a theatre performance).

(Based on information in: https://repository.dri.ie/catalog/tq582c863)

Open Methods Make the workflow open of how you arrived at your open data from your source. Share or at least indicate, to the greatest extent that you can, the contextual components and contributors to your understanding of the material and realization of your conclusions etc.

(Based on information in: https://zenodo.org/record/2657248#.Xvxm1yhKhaS)

Open Methods and Open Outputs Establish your sharing rights while you are at the archive, or otherwise accessing sources. Have the documents I need been digitised? If so, how can I obtain digital copies? If not, may I photograph documents myself or order photographs? May I share any photographs I take away? Under what conditions? Under what license(s) (such as the Creative Commons CC-BY)?

(Based on information in: https://zenodo.org/record/2657248#.Xvxm1yhKhaS)

Examples of open research practices

Open Methods The Institute of Historical Research (IHR) has continuously played a vital role in ensuring open access of history publications with three of their book series having recently gained open access. Meanwhile, they raise awareness on open research by educating current historians via workshops, thus creating discussion opportunities.

( https://www.history.ac.uk/publications/open-access)

Examples of open research practices

Open Methods “One of the most promising vector-based information to be made available on the web is an eXtensible Markup Language (XML)-based solution called Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). SVG was defined by a working group of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and has subsequently become their official recommendation for representing vector graphics on the Web in XML (Eisenberg 2002, 6; Watt 2002, xviii). Because SVG is an XML application, it is freely available, not dependent on a particular browser or platform, and interoperable with other XML applications. Large-scale plan and section drawings originally created on Permatrace were digitised by Guy Hopkinson for use in the Internet Archaeology publication Excavations at Cricklade, Wiltshire, 1975, by Jeremy Haslam, designed as an exercise in ‘retrospective publication’, to illustrate how traditional forms of visual recording might be digitised for online publications.”

( https://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue20/wright_index.html)

Examples of open research practices

Examples of open research practices

Open Methods Language and Cognition field manuals and stimulus materials from the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics ( http://fieldmanuals.mpi.nl/) provide an example of open resources and historical data for the fields of elicitation of semantics and collection of verbal behaviour. Due to the open nature of the tasks, they have been refined over many uses, which makes them a “joint product of  many scholars working in over 50 languages and cultures.” The use of these materials can be coupled with open data from earlier uses, for comparison.

Open Data The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) requires the production of a technical plan for any project it funds in which digital technologies play a significant part. Asa case study of this, Francesca Benatti worked on a project creating a searchable database, curated mostly from existing resources. She was required to produce a technical plan for the project, outlining the methodology, any technical support needed, the planned outputs, and a plan for the preservation, sustainability and future use of the project.

(See https://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/developing-rdm-services/dmps-arts-and-humanities)

Examples of open research practices

Open Outputs The National Gallery of Art (NGA) is a key example of a gallery that is gradually opening its resources for the public to use freely. This is in the format of an online repository named ‘NGA Images’ with the following terms: “NGA Images is a repository of digital images of the collections of the National Gallery of Art. On this website you can search, browse, share, and download images. A standards-based reproduction guide and a help section provide advice for both novices and experts. More than 45,000 open access digital images up to 4000 pixels each are available free of charge for download and use. NGA Images is designed to facilitate learning, enrichment, enjoyment, and exploration.” As well as providing staff and external users with simplified access to research material, the move to open access has resulted in an increased awareness of the gallery’s collections, thus highlighting the advantages of open research.

( https://images.nga.gov/en/page/show_home_page.html)

Open Data The Concordat on Open Research Data defines research data as “evidence that underpins the answer to the research question” which “can be used to validate findings” ( UKRI, 2016). In 2021, the Practice Research Advisory Group (PRAG) recommended that practice-based research datasets could include items such as notebooks, work in progress sound recordings, score drafts, storyboards, and interview transcripts ( Bulley & Sahin, 2021).

Leeds Arts University supports its researchers to make their research data as open as possible and as closed as necessary ( Leeds Arts University, 2024). An example of one such researcher is Garry Barker, who has deposited sketchbooks relating to his practice-based arts research outputs as open research data on Zenodo under CC BY ( Barker, 2024a; Barker, 2024b; Barker, 2024c). These sketchbook datasets are open online archives of Barker’s preliminary work, allowing users free access to underpinning information instrumental to his methodologies and thinking.

Examples of open research practices

Open Data “MusicLab is an innovation project by RITMO ( http://www.uio.no/ritmo) and the University Library ( http://ub.uio.no/). The aim is to explore new methods for conducting research, research communication and education. The project is organized around events: a concert in a public venue, which is also the object of study. The events also contain an edutainment element through panel discussions with world-leading researchers and artists, as well ‘data jockeying’ in the form of live data analysis of recorded data.” This up-and-coming project namely merges the study of music with physiology using various types of technologies measuring bodily responses. All resources (including data findings) are fully free and available to everyone due to the project’s aims of exploring Open Science within research and research-based education.

( https://www.uio.no/ritmo/english/news-and-events/events/musiclab/)

Examples of open research practices

Open Data The Database of Places, Language, Culture and Environment (D-PLACE) is an expandable and open-access resource which combines data from over 1400 human societies in terms of their language, culture and environment. Drawing upon the current barrier to fully comprehending cultural diversity due to inaccessible repositories, D-PLACE helps to combat this by providing: “i) location of relevant cultural data, (ii) linking data from distinct sources using diverse ethnonyms, (iii) variable time and place foci for data, and (iv) spatial and historical dependencies among cultural groups that present challenges for analysis.” Data is available in an easily downloadable format (e.g., tables, maps and linguistic trees). With the possibility for researchers to utilise large-scale phylogenetic analyses, one key field that can benefit from this is the study of cultural evolution.

( https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0158391)

Examples of open research practices

Open Data “Nikola Vasiljević works with unique measurement data of the wind field behind wind turbines, or wake. Having FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data is essential to his field, because this kind of data has a high potential to be reused for many decades, from the very first day they are created.”

(From https://howtofair.dk/how-to-fair/#engineering)

Examples of open research practices

Open Methods “The OS (OpenStructures) project ( http://www.openstructures.net/) explores the possibility of a modular construction model where everyone designs for everyone on the basis of one shared geometrical grid. It initiates a kind of collaborative MECCANO© to which everyone can contribute parts, components and structures.” Described as a “three-dimensional open-source code from our built environment”, this ecosystem explores the idea of designing hardware in the way we design software by having different individuals contribute to one main model as opposed to working on separate entities. This concept has been applied to developing societies within Katanga, Congo in the form of humanitarian architecture by recycling, upcycling and reusing goods as a way of strengthening the local economy.

( http://studies.bc-as.org/case-study-1-katanga-congo)

Examples of open research practices

Open Methods The Open Science Grid (OSG) is a large-scale computational infrastructure based in the United States and partly funded by the Department of Energy. Having been applied to highly reputable experiments such as the Large Hadron Collider, the OSG holds an invaluable role in supporting a variety of scientific applications by providing service and support to resource providers and research institutions. This is achieved by allowing contributors to grant access to their computing, storage and software resources which promotes usage of shared data and resources. With aims to expand further globally, the OSG plays a key role in ensuring a collaborative environment for scientists and researchers working on computing issues and solutions development as well as guiding new, less experienced users in the computing community. ( https://opensciencegrid.org)

Open Methods Good computing workflow practices. Summarised in Box 1 of Wilson et al. (2017). For example:

“Software

Place a brief explanatory comment at the start of every program.

Decompose programs into functions.

Be ruthless about eliminating duplication.

Always search for well-maintained software libraries that do what you need.

Test libraries before relying on them.

Give functions and variables meaningful names.

Make dependencies and requirements explicit.

Do not comment and uncomment sections of code to control a program’s behaviour.

Provide a simple example or test data set.

Submit code to a reputable DOI-issuing repository.”

Open Data and Open Education Tim Coughlan from The Open University provides his case study of postgraduate computer science in using open data as a material for describing the process of producing assignments, and learner responses to them. He views open data as a powerful material for designing learning activities because of its qualities of ease of access and authenticity. As assignments, students used e-book text files which required them to build an e-reader application. They were then given a set of requirements that progressed from the basic creation of the application, towards challenging them to make use of the data that is available that suits them in complex ways. Feedback from the assignments shows that students responded well to the assignments and reported a high degree of satisfaction.

( http://education.okfn.org/handbooks/open-data-as-open-educational-resources/)

Open Outputs and Open Data CHI ( https://chi2026.acm.org/authors/papers/#acm-open) and SOUPS ( https://soups.page/cfp.html) introduced full open access starting in 2026, with the options for authors to publish preprints. SOUPS introduced the Research Transparency Guidelines ( https://transparency-guide.teamusec.de/) in 2026, suggesting authors to publish data as FAIR as possible.

Open Methods Tang et al. (2025) found that 65% of papers published in SOUPS from 2004-2024 are affected by statistical validity issues. They provide recommendations for test selection, reporting, and interpretation.

Open Methods Martius et al. (2025) found that researchers across Human Computer Interaction have difficulties adhering to Data Management Plans (DMPs), which are required to handle user data. They give concrete recommendations for researchers to follow when doing research with sensitive information.

Examples of open research practices

Examples of open research practices

Examples of open research practices

Open Data “The Qualitative Data Repository (QDR) is a dedicated archive for storing and sharing digital data (and accompanying documentation) generated or collected through qualitative and multi-method research in the social sciences.” ( https://qdr.syr.edu)

Open Data Interview transcript data, meeting transcript data. For example, “The Language Technology Group [from the University of Copenhagen] work with transcript data from the Danish Parliament. They publish their data, the  Danish Parliament Corpus (2009-2017), in a FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) way in  CLARIN-DK. Having FAIR data is essential to their field, because without freely accessible data they could not perform their research”. ( https://howtofair.dk/how-to-fair/#humanities)

Examples of open research practices