Library Subject Guides
This guide introduces open research and the principles and practices that can be applied to projects of different types.
It is is intended for researchers of all levels, and across all departments and schools at the University of York.
The core idea behind open research is that all aspects of the research cycle should be shared and accessible where possible. Research across all of our academic disciplines at York should be open as possible, as closed as necessary
Open research strives to embed the following principles in the research process:
Accessibility |
Reusability |
Reproducibility |
Collaboration |
Transparency |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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Anyone, whether from the academic community or general public, can access our research freely. This can mean greater visibility, real-world impact and a more diverse range of citations for research outputs of all types. |
Our research outputs are licensed to enable reuse with acknowledgement and minimal restrictions in place. This enables others to build upon and adapt our work, creating new use-cases and opportunities for credit and collaboration. |
Study methods and data are made available and fully documented for other researchers to independently replicate and verify. This helps ensure the reliability, robustness and integrity of our work, and is an essential principle underpinning the scientific method across many fields. |
New opportunities can emerge to collaborate beyond our institutions and across global and disciplinary boundaries. Involving members of the public as active participants helps produce more equitable and representative research. |
Research transparency means sharing our methods, materials and findings (both positive and negative results) where it is possible to do so. This can help strengthen public trust and demonstrate responsibility, accountability and the overall quality of our work |
Consider the following in relation to your own research:
Open methodologies describes the practice of creating a public record of your research plans, rationale and/or hypotheses before you conduct your study.
This helps to improve research transparency, accountability and credibility and can eliminate poor practices such as HARKing and p-hacking. The pre-results of your research can be shared in preregistration format through an open repository, such as OSF (Open Science Framework), where you can invite feedback from the community to help improve your study design. You should also consider how sharing your methodologies may need to be addressed as part of your data management plan (see Research data management: a practical guide).
Registered Reports emphasise the importance of research questions and the quality of methods by conducting peer review prior to data collection. This helps tackle questionable practices such as selective reporting of results and publication biases. Researchers submit their study design for review and upon acceptance receive a commitment from a journal to publish their final results (see list of participating journals at OSF). Other innovative approaches include PCI (Peer Community In) Registered Reports, a non-profit and researcher-led community dedicated to reviewing and evaluating study proposals across many disciplines.
Study protocols are similar to preregistration and registered reports, and the terms are sometimes used interchangeably. In health related research study protocols are typically mandated for randomised clinical trials, for example MRC require protocols to be made publicly available prior to the start of any funded studies. Study protocols help to inform the wider scientific community about recent or ongoing research, thereby reducing the likelihood of duplicate studies being undertaken
Registered Reports and the future of peer review (Open Research at York wiki)
Recording and slides from a 2025 discussion event on the PCI Registered Reports initiative and experiences from researchers in the departments of Education and Psychology. The session was organised in collaboration with the Department of Psychology Open Science Interest Group.
Materials from a 2024 presentation of Octopus, a platform built in partnership with the UK Reproducibility Network (UKRN) enabling researchers to publish the constituent parts of a project, from problems, rationale/hypotheses and methods through to results.
Take a look at the following case studies on the Open Research at York wiki:
Participatory research (aka Citizen Science) encourages the generation and sharing of knowledge between researchers and participants, providing opportunities to engage members of the general public and communities beyond academia.
Participatory approaches to open research rely on establishing trust and equity between researchers and participants, who are actively involved and engaged in the research process. Projects can take place at a local or global scale, with the crowdsourcing of activities enabled through popular sites such as Zooniverse. Participatory action can be an important vehicle for the wider democratisation of research, scientific knowledge and social justice.
Public engagement and the ability to communicate research with clarity to different audiences is a key aspect of open research, involving a broader set of skills and considerations. Researchers must also consider potential ethical and legal issues before embarking on a participatory research project or public engagement activities, especially if collecting personal data from participants. Specialist support for public engagement activities may be available within departments and schools, with overarching guidance provided by different teams across the University (see Public Engagement with Research at York).
Stockholm Environment Institute-York has a long history of engaging people in citizen science research at a range of scales, geographic locations, and involving a variety of research topics and methods. The Inclusive Citizen Science group researches, uses and improves best practice in citizen science and inclusive engagement for environmental sustainability.
The Centre for Future Health has promoted public engagement in the area of health across all departments of the University, empowering researchers with the understanding, skills and contacts to maximise the quality, reach and impact of the activities they plan and undertake.
Slides and recording from a 2024 event hosted by the Interdisciplinary Global Development Centre exploring how our research practices can serve the public good and enhance social justice for local, indigenous and underrepresented communities.
Slides and recording from a 2021 ESRC Festival of Social Science event showcasing opportunities for public involvement and co-production in social science research at York.
Take a look at the following case studies on the Open Research at York wiki:
You can enable others to reuse and reproduce your work by sharing your data and code openly in accordance with the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable).
Good practice in Research Data Management (RDM) is essential to open research. You should consider and plan for how and when your research data can be shared (if it can be shared), what might limit or prohibit data sharing, and what can be done to enable others to make correct use of it. A researcher’s ability to make data openly available for reuse by others may also be limited by legal, ethical or commercial considerations, and funder requirements. Comprehensive support for RDM is provided by the Library (see Managing and sharing your research data).
Open data repositories help ensure that datasets are correctly preserved and retain usability and value in the long term, with open data sets enabling reuse and replication of existing studies. You can search for relevant open data repositories at re3data.org, or deposit with the University's Research Data York service (via Pure) in order to make your data openly accessible in the York Research Database.
If you are producing your own research software then sharing versions of your code alongside documentation as your project progresses allows other researchers to access, reuse, modify and redistribute your work. If you have created code or software to visualise or interrogate your research data then you can also preserve this in a data repository where possible.
You can also share your whole project workflow through an open research notebook (aka lab notebooks, electronic notebooks). The primary research record, including code, notes, data, and 'null results' from failed or otherwise insignificant experiments, can be shared openly and transparently as your project proceeds. There are various free and open source applications available for you to create an open notebook, or you can apply the same principles when documenting your project in a GitHub repository.
A practical guide to help you manage your research data well, covering best practice for the successful storage, organisation, documentation, archiving and sharing of research data and code. The guide includes resources, such as a briefing on RDM for supervisors of postgraduate researchers, and information on where further help can be sought.
Data: a Practical Guide
In this guide we pull together a range of data resources. We also take a look at how to find data, and what to do with it when you've got it.
Creative Commons licences facilitate reuse of a wide range of outputs generated throughout the research lifecycle, including datasets and assets that are not otherwise suitable for Open Source Software licensing (see RDM: a practical guide - software and computer code for further guidance).
Materials from a 2022 workshop hosted by EROS (Education Researchers for Open Science)
Materials from a 2024 discussion event aimed at postgraduate researchers which addressed considerations around FAIR data management in archaeological research, the role of the Archaeology Data Service (ADS) and contributing to Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata.
Take a look at the following case studies on the Open Research at York wiki:
Open access is about making written research outputs (articles, chapters and books) freely available with minimal restrictions, thereby challenging 'traditional' forms of academic publication.
Open access benefits researchers by helping them maximise the dissemination of their own research to wider audiences, and exercise greater sharing and reuse rights over their own research. There are various routes towards achieving open access, with funder requirements and expectations to be taken into consideration. Comprehensive support for open access is provided by the Library (see Open access and publishing your research).
Open peer review describes how aspects of the peer review process can be made openly available, either before or after publication. Author and reviewer identities are made visible, with participation sometimes opened up to the wider community (not just invited experts). This provides opportunity for a more open and transparent dialogue between researcher and reviewer. An increasing number of publishers and platforms support open peer review by displaying prepublication histories and review reports alongside papers.
Preprints are early versions of scholarly publications, shared openly with the research community. Preprints enable faster dissemination of results, increase the attention given to a study, and allow researchers to establish the primacy of their findings. They are usually shared before a paper is submitted to a journal; many publishers accept this as standard practice and encourage authors to engage with the process, but it's important for researchers to understand publisher preprint policies when considering submitting a paper.
Preprints are hosted by discipline-specific servers, the most well-established of which is arXiv (primarily for physics, mathematics and computer science). New preprint servers are now appearing in a wide range of disciplines - see ASAPbio List of preprint servers and/or Directory of Open Access Preprint Repositories. Platforms are also emerging which facilitate open peer review of preprints, for example PCI (Peer Community In), a non-profit, non-commercial and researcher-led evaluation and recommendation service for preprints across many disciplines (see the Open methodologies tab for further information on PCI and other innovative platforms).
These guides cover the basics of open access, including routes towards publication for journal articles, books and chapters, and policies set out by research funders and the University.
Creative Commons licences facilitate reuse of a wide range of outputs generated throughout the research lifecycle, including publications
Jointly run by the White Rose Universities of York, Leeds and Sheffield, White Rose University Press (WRUP) is the University of York’s in-house, fully open access university press.
Slides and recording from a 2025 discussion session which provided an insightful and critical discussion of the realities and challenges facing open access, with perspectives from authors, publishers and libraries
Take a look at the following case studies on the Open Research at York wiki:
This LibGuide is licensed for reuse under a Creative Commons NonCommercial ShareAlike International 4.0 licence.
Illustrations by Manfred Steger, licensed for reuse under a Pixabay Content licence.
