The culture of research often appears timeless and self-evident. Despite the current system of research being critiqued for its lack of openness, diversity and at times quality, it has remained largely unchanged for at least a generation. In this post, Liz Allen, highlights how contrary to this view, a growing number of developments are currently taking place across different countries […]
Category: open science
Open Access Week 2019 – What are we talking about and where are we going?
The theme of this year’s Open Access Week is “Open for Whom? Equity in Open Knowledge”. Open Access and the opportunity it presents to enhance the dissemination and understanding of social science and indeed all knowledge, has been, and is, a consistent focus of the LSE Impact Blog. In this post I have brought together a number of recent blogposts […]
Why social scientists should engage early in the research life cycle
Research in the social sciences can be a linear process of data collection, analysis, publication that ends with dissemination. However, in practice it can also be a non-linear cyclical process, especially as new forms of digital communication allow ideas and findings to be shared and receive feedback at different stages throughout a research project. In this post Michelle Kuepper, Katie Metzler and Daniela Duca highlight […]
An Analysis of Open Science Policies in Europe – New report from DCC and SPARC Europe
SPARC Europe and the DCC have collaborated since 2017 on reviewing Open Science Policies in Europe. Our report has to date been downloaded over 5000 times and we have had feedback from users who find this a useful resource to draw on in t…
An Analysis of Open Science Policies in Europe – New report from DCC and SPARC Europe
SPARC Europe and the DCC have collaborated since 2017 on reviewing Open Science Policies in Europe. Our report has to date been downloaded over 5000 times and we have had feedback from users who find this a useful resource to draw on in t…
Is openness in AI research always the answer?
As research into AI has become more developed, so too has the understanding that AI research might be misused. Discussing OpenAI’s recent decision to withhold the source code for an algorithm designed to replicate handwriting, citing concerns for the public good, Gabrielle Samuel argues that blanket commitments to openness are insufficient to protect against the potential ‘dual-use’ of AI research […]
Significant economic benefits? Enhancing the impact of open science for knowledge users
A key political driver of open access and open science policies has been the potential economic benefits that they could deliver to public and private knowledge users. However, the empirical evidence for these claims is rarely substantiated. In this post Michael Fell, discusses how open research can lead to economic benefits and suggests that if these benefits are to be […]
#ScientistsWhoSelfie – How sharing selfies can build trust in science
Academic research is most often represented in abstract depersonalised formats, such as written articles and books, tables of evidence, infographics etc. Whereas these media have developed to convey information, they are less well suited to developing trust in readers outside of academic circles. In this post, Becky Carmichael explores the effects personalising research, by showing the faces of researchers, has […]
How will the emerging generation of scholars transform scholarly communication?
Presenting evidence from the Harbingers Study, a three-year longitudinal study of Early Career Researchers (ECRs), David Nicholas assesses the extent to which the new wave of researchers are driving changes in scholarly practices. Finding that innovative practices are often constrained by institutional structures and precarious employment, he suggests that the pace of change in these areas is always going to […]
What the history of copyright in academic publishing tells us about Open Research
It has become a fact of academic life, that when researchers publish papers in academic journals, they sign away the copyright to their research, or licence it for distribution. However, from a historical perspective this practice is a relatively recent phenomenon. In this post Aileen Fyfe, explores how copyright has become intertwined with scholarly publishing and presents three insights from […]