What is Open Research? – Year of Open

"Being open in your research can refer to any, or all, stages of the research process, and is possible in any discipline. It can also refer to research conducted informally/outside of an institution, for example by using openly licensed materials such as open data. This is sometimes described as ‘guerilla research’, see: http://blog.edtechie.net/research/art-of-guerrilla-research-workshop/. Open research includes practices such as open access publishing of your research findings or regularly sharing (perhaps via a blog) the development of your ideas, research, preliminary findings and methods. It can also include activities such as making available your research tools on an open license and releasing your data on an open license so that others can reuse it. Open research is about making the research process more transparent so that the greatest number of people can access and potentially benefit. Because open research refers to a series of activities, you have a choice about at which point in the process or research cycle you want to be open. In some instances it may not be appropriate to be “open” (for example with sensitive data, even when anonymized) or you might only be able to share information later on in a project’s lifecycle. In other instances, such as with funding bid applications, there may be other reasons why you are not able, or it’s not appropriate, to share information. It is also critical to remember that, as Maha Bali observes, open practices are often possible because of privilege and that others may not be able to, or feel comfortable, sharing openly. Open research is no exception to this."