Spotlight on open research at Queen’s University Belfast | UK Reproducibility Network

"Recently Diane Hird met with the two new LNLs at Queen’s University in Belfast, Dr Joost Dessing and Bethan Iley, to learn more about their work and open research at Queen’s. This blog is the result of that conversation. Huge thanks to Joost and Bethan for their time.

Queen’s excels at public engagement and science communication and there is lots of participatory research within local communities. Open research support is delivered by the Open Research Team within the Library. Their main page provides a single point of guidance and access to a wide range of open research support services available to everyone engaged in research across the university. Their remit has recently changed to include data sharing and transparency alongside open access. The Graduate School also provides optional postgraduate training on data management plans and open access.

LNL Joost Dessing has been a lecturer in the School of Psychology since 2012. In his previous lab he saw research procedures that he felt were not ideal and he knew that if he were ever to have his own lab he would commit to doing open research. He now does, he has, and he ‘hasn’t looked back’. Joost admits that his research is not yet fully open, for example it takes time to learn open source code and integrate this into research projects.

LNL Bethan Iley is a final year PhD psychology student, researching conspiracy theories and why people believe them. She first became interested in open research during the statistics lectures delivered by fellow LNL(!) Roger Giner-Sorolla as part of her Masters course at the University of Kent. A positive reminder of the lasting impact a teacher can have on their students...."