Open Research as an Ally to Teaching and Scholarship-Track Academics | Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice

‘Open research’ broadly aims to enhance the openness, transparency, and robustness of research across disciplines. While existing efforts have largely focused on improving the quality of research outputs, we argue that certain open research tools can also offer strategic benefits for Teaching and Scholarship (T&S) academics who engage primarily in educational or pedagogical research. Given the challenges in conducting high-quality pedagogical research, the adoption of open research tools may support T&S academics, by increasing research visibility, informing and refining methodological decision-making, and enhancing the efficacy and impact of pedagogical research. In this paper, we outline three key open research tools that may strategically benefit T&S academics: (1) preprints, (2) registered reports, and (3) sharing open educational resources. For each tool, we provide an overview, discuss how T&S academics can integrate them to improve their practice, and offer illustrative case studies. This discussion draws on the conceptualisation of high-quality pedagogical research outlined by Evans et al. (2021). We end with a call to researchers to align open research efforts with pedagogical scholarship, which will, in turn, improve pedagogical practice.