Building a culture of open research

The University has several ‘research culture pillars’, each supporting a specific area of culture development. But the work connected to the pillars isn’t happening in isolation. Much of it had started before the pillars were established, and the pillars are drawing on expertise and ongoing good practice across the institution. The impacts of this work are shaped by and for our University community, and in some cases are creating impacts beyond the University, too.

This month we’re hearing from Open Research pillar lead and UoPen co-lead, Matt Miller-Dicks.

What is UoPen?

UoPen is the University of Portsmouth Open Research Network, which brings together colleagues from across the university with the aim of understanding, supporting and identifying open research practices across all subject areas. The network has connections externally with the UK Reproducibility Network (UKRN), and internally with the Open Research Pillar. Members of the network span across academic and professional service roles.

What has worked well?

Collaboration has been central to the progress of our work around Open Research. As network leads, we became aware early on that open research could look very different across different subject areas. We have relied on input from colleagues in other subject areas to understand what ‘open’ means beyond our own research areas, and now that we are deeper into the process we’re able to extend the collaborative network through open research workshops for PGRs and discussions with Units of Assessment across the University.

As well as working with colleagues across faculties, we are also influencing University practice. Work is taking place centrally to support open research identification and recording, which has been led by professional service colleagues including Gary Pike, Andrew Clark and Soozi Mead. This relies heavily on Pure, so keeping your Pure profile up-to-date can really help this work. Externally, we’ve also collaborated closely with the UK Reproducibility Network (UKRN). We first connected with UKRN when we launched UoPen in 2023, initially working with the grassroots community of local network leads across UK Universities. This work goes from strength to strength and UoP continues to be represented by UoPen co-lead, Stef Juncu, as our local network lead.

Continued collaboration with the UKRN and support from research leadership across UoP meant that we became Institutional members in 2025. We are now well-placed to work collaboratively with other member Universities across the UK and inform national initiatives that have the goal of developing open research practices. By way of example, we have been leading a project to develop a handbook for UKRN institutional leads, which will support new member Universities to develop open research initiatives within their own institution.

What are we doing that’s different?

From its inception, the aim of UoPen has been to provide a supportive platform for an open collaborative research community, acknowledging and drawing upon expertise from different disciplines. Our approach emphasises that the process of generating knowledge through research should be accessible, rigorous and transparent. Central to this aim is the recognition that different elements of open research are better defined and integrated in some research disciplines, whilst in other areas, open research is still developing. We have always taken care, therefore, not to impose definitions and practices from one research area onto others without recognising those disciplinary differences. While some research areas consistently use data availability statements and pre-registration, for example, there are other areas where these wouldn’t be as feasible or applicable – but that doesn’t mean that open research isn’t taking place. Colleagues supporting the pillar are working to develop a series of indicators of open research that are appropriate to subject areas that don’t use the more well-established indicators. We’re also developing a toolkit to be used internally, supporting colleagues across the university to enhance their open research practices.

What’s next?

We’ll potentially be taking part in a pilot of an EU-funded project exploring open research interventions. We’re continuing to work in the open research toolkit and working closely with colleagues across the university through UoPen. Once the UKRN handbook is finalised, we’ll be working to engage institutions that aren’t already UKRN members, to help support the integration of open research practices across the sector.