Guide to Supporting Open Scholarship for University Presidents and Provosts

"Open scholarship entails a culture shift in how research is conducted in universities. It requires action on the part of university administration, working in concert with faculty, sponsors and disciplinary communities.  Universities should consider steps in three areas: •  Policies:  Language and guidance should be reviewed for alignment with open scholarship, in particular: (1) academic hiring, review, tenure and promotion (valuing diverse types of research products; metrics that  incentivize the open dissemination of articles, data, and other research outputs; and valuing collaborative research); (2) intellectual property (ownership, licensing and distribution of data, software, materials and publications); (3) research data protection (for data to be stored and shared through repositories); (4) attribution (recognizing full range of contributions);  and (5) privacy (insuring that privacy obligations are met).  •  Services and Training:  Researchers need support to assure that data and other research objects are managed according to FAIR Principles: findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable.  While the specific solution must be tailored to the discipline and research, common standards, including Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs), must be followed. •  Infrastructure:  Archival storage is required for data, materials, specimens and publications to permit reuse.  Searchable portals are needed to register research products where they can be located and accessed. Universities can recognize efficiencies by utilizing external resources (including existing disciplinary repositories) and by developing shared resources that span the institution when external resources do not exist...."