Last week, Eilish headed to the UKSG annual conference in Glasgow (more on that later!). The keynote speaker for day one happened to be a UWL open research team favourite; Ivan Oransky, one of the creators of the Retraction Watch blog. Oransky is a distinguished journalist who has written on science and medicine for consumer and trade press for many years. When explaining his precis for starting the blog with his colleague, Adam Marcus, he cited a 2008 paper in the Journal of Medical Ethics:

Although retractions are on average occurring sooner after publication than in the past, citation analysis shows that they are not being recognised by subsequent users of the work. Findings suggest that editors and institutional officials are taking more responsibility for correcting the scientific record but that reasons published in the retraction notice are not always reliable. More aggressive means of notification to the scientific community appear to be necessary.

Retraction watch posts both daily and weekly newsletters and they’re well worth having in your inbox to keep tabs on the latest. You can subscribe and check out the website here.

Happy reading!

Last week, the Open Research team held their first of a new series of PGR sessions on Open Research Skills. Among more general Open Access talk, the first installment looked using the institutional repository. It was a really enjoyable session and there was some great discussion and troubleshooting going on. If you weren’t able to attend however, here’s a quick post to give a bit of an overview to searching and depositing.

What is the Repository?

UWL Repository was launched in June 2012 as a digital archive showcasing the research, scholarly and enterprise output of University of West London staff and research students. All staff members and doctoral students can deposit material, subject to editorial process and anyone can search and access the materials that are uploaded onto the repository.

Searching the Repository

As you can see from the screenshot above, there are multiple options for searching. The homepage has a handy quick search bar and the webpage banner also has a site search for easy and continual access. This is best for if you have a particular repository item in mind and want to search via the author’s name or the title of the work.

The tabs on the right can allow for a more exploratory search, clicking browse items will allow you to narrow a search down by year, subject area, school, authors, or type of item.

Depositing Works onto the Repository

For depositing works onto the repository, you need to login with your regular network login details to access the repository. After you have logged in, you will be taken to your ‘Manage Deposits’ user area, which will display any items you have already deposited, and will allow you to add new material. Click on ‘New Item’ to create a new repository record.

Depositing is simple. You will be asked to provide bibliographic details about the item being deposited, provide the full-text of the item where permitted, and agree to the deposit license. After depositing, your item record will go live immediately and the Open Research Librarian will check for any errors or add any extra detail that may be missing. We have a useful video guide that provides more detailed overview of the process that you can view here. 

What can I deposit?

All kinds of research, scholarly and enterprise outputs can be uploaded to the repository (both published and unpublished) provided you have permission. Items submitted for publication and still under review should not be deposited – please wait until the item has been accepted for publication. The version that we require most of the time is often referred to as your author’s accepted manuscript (AAM). Text-based works (including articles, conference proceedings and book chapters) as well as visual works (images, videos), and other materials (e.g. sound recordings, compositions, slideshows) can be deposited. You can also deposit pre-prints of your works and we recently added a facility for adding Data Management Plans, which you can read more about here. 

If you’d like anymore help or guidance, as ever the Open Research team are ready willing and able to help you out! email us at open.research@uwl.ac.uk.

Also, please do join us at our next PGR session (open to all, not just PGRs!) It’ll be taking place on the ground floor of Rami Ranger at 12pm again and this one will be on:

Wed April 10th: Open Access to research: why, when, where and how? Why do we want research outputs to be open? when should outputs be made Open Access? where can open access materials be found and where and how do you make yours open? Including: Copyright (Creative Commons); Green and Gold open access; preprint servers;  Academic.edu/ResearchGate.

See you there!

EDI in Open Research

We want to cultivate an excellent research culture at UWL. Open Research is central to our vision, but beyond that, we want to ensure that everyone in our research community can produce work in an inclusive, supportive and equitable environment.

What is EDI?

EDI (equality, diversity & inclusion) interventions seek to address systematic underrepresentation. The development organisation Diversity for Impact provides some excellent summaries of the terms discussed which you can access here.

In a research context, this could look like unequal representation in leadership, grant allocations or citations. By promoting inclusion, we can help to reduce the bias and discrimination that individuals or groups might face in academia when trying to make their research open and accessible to all. UKRI (UK Research and Innovation) published an extensive report on EDI in the context of research and innovation. It provides a summary of the major issues and can be accessed here.

Like Open Research practices, EDI helps us to build a more diverse and supportive community that utilises knowledge from a range of backgrounds and experiences. This helps our knowledge output at UWL to be better representative of actual society, break down social barriers, and better address global challenges.

EDI broadly applies to those who identify as having any of the nine protected characteristics. Under the Equality Act 2010, the nine protected characteristics are: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion and belief, sex and sexual orientation. However, this list of characteristics is not definitive. For a comprehensive definition of EDI terms, the government of Canada has a well maintained guide put together by a dedicated, interdepartmental committee which you can access here.

What can be done in Open Research to promote EDI?

There’s much work to be done by institutions and research organisations to develop specific strategies and priority areas that address clear equity gaps. UWL produces annual reports on EDI to transparently and openly communicate policy and proactively share data, evidence, and findings. For more information, you can access UWL’s dedicated webpage on equality, diversity and safeguarding here.

Individuals can adopt open scholarship practices such as publishing data, pre-prints and notebooks online from the outset of their research journey to widen access and participation. It is also important that accessible resources such as open-source software, community science networks and open educational resources are well used, developed and promoted. Lastly, disseminating work as widely as possible through open access journals, repositories and academic social networking sites helps to reduce barriers to access for all.

The best research environment is one that is conducive to supporting mutual growth through inclusion, access and encouragement. Open research practices and EDI are complementary approaches to better addressing the global issues affecting us now and into the future.

In recent years, Open Research practices have become a dominant feature of the scholarly communication landscape. However, the large-scale uptake of these practices creates new challenges for researchers and publishers alike. It is the responsibility of all practitioners to maintain ethics and standards in Open Research as the movement grows.

UK Research and Innovation’s definition of research integrity summarises the ethical standards that researchers should apply to their work:

High integrity in research is the result of upholding the values of honesty, rigour, transparency and open communication, care and respect for those involved in research. It supports accountability for a positive research environment. (UKRI, 2024)

Maintaining these ethics and standards is essential, not least given declining levels of trust in scientific publishing and changing perceptions of academic integrity. Misinformation and misconduct are rife, and the problems have been exacerbated by the rise of Artificial Intelligence in academia. Increasingly sophisticated AI tools are utilised by the paper-mill industry to sell generic manuscripts and produce plagiarized content that scrapes excerpts
from legitimate pieces of research.

To ensure you are following a high standard of integrity within Open Research practice, you should:

• Never fabricate or manipulate data. Using a Data Management Plan (DMP) can help you to properly record and account for your data. (DMPs can be uploaded onto the UWL repository for more information see here)

• Properly cite and acknowledge other works. This will help you to avoid plagiarism and help highlight your sources for others to refer to.

• Make your work available and accessible as soon as possible via the UWL repository (Green Open Access Route).

Essentially, good practice in Open Research amounts to communicating findings accurately and honestly and properly acknowledging the works of others. For any more guidance, the Open Research team is always on hand to help. Get in touch if you’d like to know more.