An International Survey of Awareness and Uptake of Open Research Practices
Creators: name: Skubera, Magda
name: Pennington, Charlotte Rebecca
name: Clark, Kait
name: Norris, Emma
Publisher: name: Open Science Framework
Year: 2023
Subjects: subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences
subject: research integrity
subject: research reform
subject: open scholarship
subject: responsible research practices
subject: metaresearch
subject: open research
subject: open science
subject: scientific reform

description: Open-Ended Registration (based on the standard Open Science Framework preregistration template) Norris et al. (2022) developed and validated a Brief Open Research Survey (BORS) to assess awareness and uptake of open research behaviours across UK institutions. The questionnaire was purposefully designed to be completed within 5 minutes and was developed through six steps: (1) a scoping exercise collated previous open research questionnaires; (2) a brief questionnaire was then developed based on core open research behaviours; (3) peer-reviewed by stakeholders; (4) piloted in one institution; (5) revised based on feedback; and (6) distributed across UK Reproducibility Networks. The final questionnaire assesses researcher’s awareness and engagement with 11 open research practices, specifically: open research, study preregistration, registered reports, open materials, open data, open code, preprints, open peer review, open access publication, replication studies, and research co-production. Informed by the COM-B model of behaviour change (see Michie et al., 2011), the questionnaire also asks respondents what support would help them to use more open research practices with statements categorised into psychological capability, physical opportunity, social opportunity, and reflective motivation. Data was collected from a total of 1,274 researchers in the UK who reported that they were most aware of open access publications (94.1%) and used them most (76.5%), but were least aware of Registered Reports (38.1%) and used them least (8.3%). Respondents reported that incentives from funders, institutions and other regulators (51%; social opportunity), dedicated funding (46.2%; physical opportunity), and recognition in promotion and recruitment criteria (39.6%; social opportunity) would support them most in embedding open research practices. The aim of the current project is to extend the BORs to assess awareness and uptake of open research practices internationally across different countries who are affiliated with the UK Reproducibility Network (see https://www.ukrn.org/international-networks/). Indeed, structural, procedural, and community initiatives exist internationally to increase the uptake of open research practices (e.g., EUA Open Science Agenda, 2025; Transparency and Openness Promotion [TOP] guidelines; Open Science Framework; see Korbmacher et al., 2023 for an overview). However, access to open research training, resources, and funding is likely to differ by country, region, and even institution, therefore influencing awareness and uptake. This research will therefore inform future educational and training initiatives on open research whilst also considering the opportunity of equal access to the resources, funding, and supportive infrastructure to support open research reform and drive long-term, sustained behaviour change. Aims This study aims to assess researcher’s awareness and uptake of open research practices internationally. It is exploratory in nature, with no specific hypotheses, and analyses focusing on descriptive statistics and content analysis.