| Block | Teaching | Activity | What learners keep |
|---|---|---|---|
| What is Open Research? | 6 min | 2 min | One practice matched to a project need |
| Open Access and publication | 8 min | 6 min | A publication route and checks |
| Preprints and early sharing | 5 min | 3 min | A sharing decision and status statement |
| Preregistration | 8 min | 6 min | A more specific prospective plan |
| Registered Reports | 7 min | 3 min | A corrected publication decision |
| Open methods and reporting | 7 min | 3 min | A transparent methods statement |
| Credit and attribution | 5 min | 3 min | A contribution statement to confirm |
| Responsible openness | 4 min | 6 min | Access decisions for different outputs |
| Open Research strategy | 0 min | 13 min | A justified nine-part project strategy |
| Review | 5 min | 0 min | One next action |
| Total | 55 min | 45 min | 100 min overall |
Activities include the room response and immediate debrief. Active learning occupies 45% of the lesson. Breaks are additional to these 100 minutes; agree them with the group before starting.
Begin with FAIR Research Outputs: making an output discoverable and usable does not require unrestricted access.
FAIR: can people and systems find, obtain, interpret and reuse the outputs?
Open Research: how can the process and outputs be made more transparent, accessible and useful to others?
An openly available article may still leave its methods unclear. A controlled clinical dataset can have strong FAIR metadata and a transparent access process. Combine the questions when deciding how to communicate the work.
UoN’s Open Research overview connects publications, data, protocols and software across the research process.
Open Research includes preregistration, Registered Reports, open protocols, transparent reporting, preprints, Open Access, open peer review, open data and open software. Different projects can use different combinations.
As open as possible, as restricted as necessary. Make the reason for a restriction understandable wherever it is safe to do so.
Goal: connect one practice with a research need. Input: these fictional project needs; work in pairs.
Keep: “We would use ___ so another researcher could inspect ___.” If access fails: use the two needs shown here.
Open Access makes scholarly publications available online without a reader subscription barrier. Permissions for reuse depend on the licence and rights attached to the material.
| Route | How the work becomes available | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| Green | Deposit an appropriate manuscript version in an institutional or subject repository | Version, rights retention, licence and any applicable embargo |
| Gold | The publisher makes the published article openly available | Licence, charges and whether funding or an agreement covers them |
| Diamond | The journal or platform charges neither authors nor readers | Scope, review standards, licence and suitability for the audience |
Gold can involve an article processing charge (APC); it does not always do so. Diamond describes a funding model, not a guarantee of quality. See UoN’s routes to Open Access and Science Europe’s Diamond definition.
The author’s accepted manuscript contains the agreed peer-review changes, before the publisher’s final layout. The version of record is the published version. A preprint is an earlier public manuscript; it is not automatically a substitute for a required accepted-manuscript deposit.
Check UoN’s current policy and rights retention guidance, then follow the RIS deposit guidance. Check the rules for the actual output, affiliation and funding rather than assuming every publication has identical requirements.
Before submitting, identify:
Creative Commons licences state reuse permissions. For example, CC BY 4.0 allows sharing and adaptation with attribution and its other conditions; it does not remove third-party privacy or copyright constraints. Check the licence conditions and the rights you hold.
For a UKRI-funded output, consult the current UKRI Open Access policy. Ask the UoN Open Access team about uncertain routes, rights retention or funding.
These scenarios imagine possible publication stages. The integrated Urban Shade project used in the final exercise is still being planned.
| Scenario | Information supplied |
|---|---|
| Urban Shade article | The authors have an accepted manuscript. Their chosen journal charges an APC that the project cannot cover. Deposit permissions and policy alignment need checking. |
| Market Letters article | A relevant Diamond journal has no reader or author charges. The article includes archival images with separate rights. |
| Watershed Patterns article | A fully Open Access journal offers a CC BY article for an APC. An author believes an institutional agreement will pay, but has not checked eligibility. |
Goal: identify a plausible Open Access route and its unresolved check. Input: the three fictional publication scenarios above. Work in pairs; record one sentence per scenario.
Keep: your three route/check sentences; transfer the Urban Shade decision to the strategy worksheet. If access fails: the table supplies all activity inputs; no live policy lookup is necessary.
A preprint is a public scholarly manuscript shared before journal acceptance, typically before formal journal peer review. It can provide a dated public record, invite feedback and make work available sooner. Feedback is possible, not assured.
Check disciplinary server scope and journal policy. Keep the manuscript’s version, date and review status visible; connect it to later versions and the published article. Server screening does not establish that the findings have been peer reviewed. Earlier versions may remain available.
See ASAPbio’s preprint guidance for benefits, versions and communication concerns. The examples there focus on life sciences; choose a service appropriate to your discipline.
Fictional examples: an engineering method may benefit from early technical feedback; a humanities argument may benefit from disciplinary discussion. An Urban Shade draft containing identifying recruitment details needs a permissions and disclosure review first.
Before posting, agree the decision with co-authors and check participant protections, third-party material and any commercialisation obligations. A public preprint can be copied and read beyond its intended audience.
Clear status statement: “Preprint, version 1, dated [actual date]. This manuscript has not undergone journal peer review. Findings are preliminary; see the methods and limitations.” Change the statement if review has occurred, and link the evidence of that review.
Goal: make an early-sharing decision with a reason. Input: fictional Urban Shade draft: preliminary results from the old sensor measurements, identifying worker recruitment details with a workplace location, co-author approval still pending. The new interviews have not taken place. Work in pairs.
Keep: the decision, release condition and status statement in the worksheet. If access fails: use the draft description here.
Exploration uses observations to develop questions, interpretations or candidate explanations. Confirmation tests a question using decisions made before examining the relevant outcomes.
Preregistration creates a dated record of the intended study and analysis. It helps readers see which decisions preceded outcome knowledge; it does not certify the quality of the design or prohibit useful new analyses. See the Center for Open Science introduction.
Urban Shade: the team explored old environmental measurements and noticed a possible shade effect. That observation remains exploratory. They can plan a new test using future measurements; registering now cannot turn the already observed pattern into a prospective finding.
| Plan component | A reader needs to know |
|---|---|
| Question and hypothesis | What claim will be tested, and in which direction if relevant? |
| Outcome | What will be measured, with which units and time window? |
| Eligibility and exclusions | Which sites or observations count, and when are they excluded? |
| Collection and analysis | Sampling or stopping rule, comparison, model and decision criteria |
| Contingencies | What happens if equipment fails or assumptions cannot be met? |
Use an appropriate disciplinary template. Disclose previous access to existing data when relevant. A qualitative exploration may need a transparent evolving protocol rather than a fixed hypothesis test; a prospective qualitative design can also document its planned approach.
Plans can change for good reasons. Keep the original plan identifiable and report the change, its timing, reason and whether outcomes were already known.
Fictional worked example: a sensor fails. The team reports the planned eligibility rule, the failure, the affected measurements, its replacement decision and any additional analysis. It separates the planned test from a new exploratory comparison instead of silently rewriting the plan.
Choose registration and visibility arrangements that suit the project; public registration is not the only available arrangement. Methods are not exempt from sensitivity checks. See COS’s guidance on choosing a template.
Goal: make a future test sufficiently specific to discuss with the research team. Input: fictional Urban Shade proposal: “We will compare shaded and unshaded places during hot weather, remove bad readings and see if shade helps.” No new measurements have yet been collected. Work in pairs.
Keep: the draft plan and one unresolved design question in the worksheet. If access fails: annotate the quoted proposal on paper.
A Registered Report is a publication format, rather than simply a registered plan. Stage 1 review assesses the question and methods; in-principle acceptance is conditional. Stage 2 examines adherence, quality and reporting, including deviations and additional exploration.
The approach addresses publication decisions that depend on obtaining a striking or positive result. It does not guarantee acceptance regardless of how the study is conducted. Check the COS workflow and the chosen journal’s requirements.
| Arrangement | What happens before relevant outcomes are examined? |
|---|---|
| Prospective preregistration | Researchers record their plan; journal review is not inherent |
| Registered Report | The journal reviews the design and may offer conditional in-principle acceptance |
| Ordinary article | Journal review usually evaluates a report including results |
Registered Reports require a suitable outlet, time for review and a design compatible with its requirements. Standard prospective formats do not fit a completed analysis that has already revealed the outcomes. Some outlets offer variants for existing data: check their rules rather than assuming eligibility.
Goal: explain what a Registered Report changes. Input: a fictional message imagining a later, completed Urban Shade study: “We found no shade effect. Let’s register the completed study now; the journal will have to publish it.” Work in pairs.
Keep: the corrected explanation. If access fails: use the message on screen.
Share a protocol or method description with enough context to evaluate what was done:
Market Letters: document how OCR errors were corrected and editorial additions marked. Watershed Patterns: describe the workflow, input assumptions and software versions a reader needs to interpret the result. Technical implementation belongs in specialist software teaching.
Weak fictional statement: “The data were cleaned and AI helped with analysis.”
More informative fictional statement: “We applied the stated sensor exclusion rule. A named AI tool suggested an explanation of the error messages; a researcher checked each proposed change against the documented rule. No participant material was submitted. The additional location comparison was exploratory.”
For actual work, record the tool/model and available version or date, task, permitted input boundary, checks and substantive changes. Explain limitations and follow relevant disclosure requirements. A tool name alone does not explain a method.
Continue with Responsible Use of Generative AI for deeper practice in verification and documentation.
| Feature | What becomes visible? |
|---|---|
| Open reports | Review reports and sometimes author responses |
| Open identities | Reviewer and author identities, according to the outlet’s policy |
| Open participation | Contributions from a wider community, with stated moderation or review arrangements |
These features can be combined independently; publishing reports does not necessarily reveal identities. Inspect the policy and evidence of review. Public comments do not automatically establish expert assessment or editorial endorsement.
The Ross-Hellauer review of open peer review explains these distinct features. Consider accountability benefits alongside reviewer consent, confidentiality and the effects of power differences. Open review still needs sound judgement and clear rules.
Goal: reveal a decision hidden by vague reporting. Input: fictional Urban Shade sentence: “We removed unsuitable sites and performed further tests until the pattern was clear.” Work in pairs.
Keep: the revised statement and the facts to obtain from the team. If access fails: annotate the sentence here.
Contributions include design, collection, curation, analysis, software, methods, interpretation, writing and support. An author list alone can hide who did which work.
The NISO CRediT taxonomy provides 14 roles for describing contributions. One person can hold several roles and several people can share a role. CRediT does not determine authorship or author order. Agree these separately using applicable disciplinary, institutional and journal criteria; give contributors an opportunity to confirm their statements.
Use an ORCID iD to identify a person. Use output identifiers and citations to credit the particular article, dataset, software release or protocol used. An ORCID iD does not identify the dataset itself.
Prefer the output’s recommended citation. Include its creators, title, year, repository or publisher, identifier and the specific version when relevant.
Fictional citation scaffold: “Urban Shade project team. [year]. Urban Shade sensor measurements, [version]. [repository]. [assigned persistent identifier].” The brackets show information still to supply, not a real reference.
Credit the software or dataset directly as well as an associated paper where relevant. Acknowledgements can recognise technical or community contributions, subject to agreement; they do not replace appropriate authorship or a contribution statement.
For this activity, imagine the project after collection and analysis. The table describes completed contributions at that later stage; confirm actual roles as the project progresses.
| Contributor | Work described |
|---|---|
| Maya | Formulated the question and designed the comparison |
| Joel | Collected sensor observations and checked their quality |
| Priya | Developed the analysis method and wrote the analysis script |
| Alex | Coordinated community contact, conducted interviews and curated the records |
| Sam (supervisor) | Obtained funding and supervised the project |
Goal: draft accurate roles without guessing authorship. Input: the contributor table above and the scenario pack. Work in pairs.
Keep: the draft roles and confirmation step in the worksheet. If access fails: use the descriptions here rather than a live taxonomy lookup.
These are working distinctions for the lesson; repositories may use different or overlapping terms. A restricted output may also be controlled.
An appropriate arrangement depends on the output and context: participant confidentiality, commercial or intellectual-property obligations, security or dual-use risks, vulnerable groups, cultural permissions, sensitive ecological locations and third-party agreements can all matter.
Ask who benefits from disclosure, who could be harmed and whether a useful safer output can be provided. “Remove the names” is not a complete disclosure assessment; location, quotations and combinations of attributes can still identify people.
Consider a redacted protocol, appropriately assessed aggregate data or a controlled-access process with public metadata. Restrictions do not prevent describing the research honestly, but metadata can also need protection.
Use relevant ethics, data protection, community, information security and intellectual-property advice where the decision requires it. The UKRI Open Research resource hub signposts guidance. Keep routine management detail in Essential Digital Skills RDM.
| Output | Relevant constraint |
|---|---|
| Sensor summary by broad public area | Disclosure and quality assessment still needed; potential reuse for urban planning |
| Worker interview transcripts and exact work/home coordinates | Includes potentially vulnerable participants; consent limits onward sharing |
| Protocol and blank interview questions | Can support evaluation; operational details may reveal protected sites |
| Third-party map images | The project’s agreement does not grant public redistribution |
Goal: choose defensible access arrangements with benefits and harms in view. Input: the planned Urban Shade outputs above and the scenario pack. Work in pairs.
Keep: the four decisions, safer alternative and unresolved check in the worksheet. If access fails: use this table; no real data are involved.
The project combines an exploratory observation from old sensor measurements, a proposed future shade comparison, consent-limited interviews, an article draft, an analysis script, a protocol, third-party maps and several contributors. Precise locations can identify participants. There is no requirement to maximise public disclosure.
Goal: produce a coherent project strategy with justified choices. Input: Urban Shade integrated project and your strategy worksheet. Work in pairs and reuse decisions from Tasks 2–8.
Keep: the completed strategy, one peer challenge, and a named next action. If access fails: draw nine numbered rows on paper using the decisions below; use the case summary on screen.
| Decision | What the strategy must say |
|---|---|
| Publication | Which Open Access route, manuscript version and requirements check? |
| Preprint | Yes, no or later; which release checks and status statement? |
| Study design | What remains exploratory; what will be planned prospectively; preregistration or an eligible Registered Report? |
| Methods | Which protocol, decisions, deviations and limitations will be visible? |
| Data | Access for each output, benefits/harms and any permitted safer alternative |
| Analysis/code | Whether the script can be shared; necessary input, method, dependency and rights context |
| Licence | Permissions for each eligible output; third-party exclusions; a suitable software licence for code |
| Contributions | Roles to confirm, authorship discussion, ORCID iDs and output citations |
| Metadata/PIDs | Descriptive records, links between outputs, appropriate identifiers, standards, provenance and versions |
Apply licences only where the rightsholder can grant the permissions. Creative Commons advises using software licences for software, rather than treating every output as the same kind of work.
| Claim | Correction |
|---|---|
| “Our article is Open Access, so the whole project is open.” | Open Access is one component; inspect methods and other outputs separately. |
| “Preregistration means we cannot change anything.” | Report justified changes and distinguish them from the original plan. |
| “Registered Reports guarantee publication of any completed work.” | Design review precedes relevant outcomes; acceptance remains conditional. |
| “A DOI and CC BY allow public release of interviews.” | Identifiers and licences do not establish permission to disclose participants’ information. |
The instructor reviews the plans against these distinctions and highlights one example of a well-justified restriction and one worthwhile improvement to transparency.
You have drafted an Open Research strategy covering publication, early sharing, design, methods, data, code, licences, credit and FAIR records. Good Open Research depends on deliberate, transparent and responsible decisions about communication, access and reuse.
Next-week action: take one pending decision from the worksheet, identify the colleague or support service needed, and obtain the information that turns it into an agreed action.
| Resource | Use it when |
|---|---|
| UoN Open Research | Connecting publication, protocols and other research outputs |
| UoN Open Access support | Checking a publication route, deposit, rights retention or funding |
| COS preregistration and Registered Reports | Choosing a prospective planning or publication approach |
| CRediT role definitions | Agreeing and checking contribution statements |
| Responsible Use of Generative AI | Evaluating and documenting AI-assisted research work |
| Course additional material | Continuing with worked decisions and reusable resources |
Course Overview · FAIR Research Outputs · Scenario Pack · Reference · Discussion
