Additional Material
Choose One Useful Demonstration
These additions support the course’s decisions; they are optional and outside the two 100-minute lesson plans. Choose an example relevant to the room. Prepare a screenshot or printed record so internet access does not determine participation.
| Demonstration | What to show | Question and feedback |
|---|---|---|
| Inspect a repository record | A public record’s title, creators, version, identifier, licence, related outputs and retrieval conditions | “Which information lets you distinguish and reuse this output?” Point to evidence in the record; do not equate repository presence with complete FAIRness. |
| Follow an output relationship | A real article’s links to data, a protocol or software, using only public material | “Can we trace this claim to the right output and version?” Show a broken or ambiguous relationship if available, then a clear one. |
| Compare access statements | The fictional Urban Shade download and Steps and Sleep application process | “Which access mechanism is clearer, and why?” Separate public retrieval from documented controlled retrieval; do not equate FAIR with public release. |
| Locate a manuscript version | A rights-cleared submitted draft, accepted manuscript and publisher page | “Which file is the proposed deposit?” Explain the version difference and the need to check current terms; visual polish does not identify permitted reuse. |
| Read a prospective plan | A non-sensitive public preregistration and its linked report, or the fictional Urban Shade planning example | “What was specified before outcomes, and what changed?” Identify the timing, decisions and transparent deviations without judging all exploration negatively. |
For a Nottingham publication example, use the current deposit guidance. Publication deposits follow RIS arrangements; do not route every output to the dataset repository. Verify access and rights before class.
Adapt the Cases Without Changing Their Purpose
| Cohort emphasis | Useful emphasis in the existing cases | Boundary to retain |
|---|---|---|
| Humanities and qualitative research | Market Letters’ archive item links, editorial intervention, language and material-specific rights; Urban Shade interviews | Transparency can explain interpretive decisions and adaptations. Do not require every design to become a hypothesis-testing experiment. |
| Clinical and social research | Steps and Sleep’s safe metadata, eligibility, governance and use conditions | Do not imply that removing names permits public release or that all applicants must receive access. |
| Environmental research | Urban Shade’s units, timing, location and sensor provenance | Accurate metadata can improve reuse while precise ecological or participant-related locations need protection. |
| Engineering and computational research | Watershed Patterns’ output identity, schemas, dependencies, licence and methods | Explain what a reuser needs to judge the workflow; detailed Git, testing and software deployment are outside this course. |
Invite examples from researchers without asking for confidential content. Keep the same four assessment questions and require evidence for each proposed improvement.
Prepare Examples With Immediate Feedback
Use a weak record and an improved record side by side. Ask pairs to predict what a new researcher could determine from each, then reveal a short worked explanation. Avoid deliberately weak records that can be solved only by guessing a hidden fact.
A useful prepared pair is the Urban Shade description “Data from the shade project” and a draft description with marked questions for location, period, units and method. Ask learners which facts must be confirmed before publication. This demonstrates an improvement process without fabricating missing metadata.
For contribution discussion, use the five people in the final project. Show candidate CRediT roles and ask how to confirm them with the people involved. Keep role descriptions and authorship decisions separate.
Reading for Preparation
| Primary guidance | Teaching use |
|---|---|
| GO FAIR principles | Check the distinction between retrieval conditions, persistent metadata and unrestricted access |
| DataCite metadata schema | Prepare a realistic output-record example with relationships and versions |
| Nottingham Open Research | Locate current local support and institutional context |
| Nottingham OA policy guidance | Confirm applicable requirements at delivery rather than teaching one universal embargo or charge rule |
| COS preregistration | Prepare examples distinguishing planned decisions, exploration and reported changes |
| COS Registered Reports | Check the review sequence, conditional acceptance and outlet/design differences |
| NISO CRediT | Use the official contribution-role descriptions |
| Creative Commons FAQ | Discuss appropriate rightsholders, material boundaries and reuse permissions |
| Open peer review systematic review | Distinguish open identities, reports and participation without promising the same model everywhere |
Extend the Course Deliberately
Use Extra Exercises when additional time is explicitly available. Follow up routine management in Essential Digital Skills, AI methods in Responsible Use of Generative AI, and computational implementation in Applied R or Applied Python. The planned Best Practice in Software Engineering for Research course will develop Git, version control, collaboration and testing in detail.