Open research comprises openness throughout the research cycle, through collaborative working and sharing and making research methodology, software, code, and equipment freely available online, along with instructions for using it. Open research includes making publications freely available online (open access), in addition to the underlying research data (open data).
Open access to research publications and data means that these are freely available to be viewed and downloaded by anybody with an internet connection, anywhere in the world, without having to log in or pay. Open access benefits individuals not affiliated with institutions that buy access to journal content, this can include researchers in developing countries, practitioners such as health workers, governments, and members of the public (whose taxes helped to fund the research).
Licenses such as Creative Commons applied to open access publications and data allow maximum reuse, subject to proper attribution to the author of the work. The data and publications can be interrogated, reused, built upon, and adapted, leading to new research findings, development, and innovation.
Studies have found that open access outputs have higher usage and are more cited. Open access can help to build your research profile and encourage interdisciplinary collaboration, in addition to increasing the visibility and impact of University of Exeter research.
Open research benefits you as an individual as well as the institution and society as a whole.
Open research is concerned with making scientific research more transparent, more collaborative, and more efficient. A central aspect of it is to provide open access to scientific information, especially to the research published in scholarly journals and to the underlying data, much of which traditional science tends to hideaway. Other aspects are more open forms of collaboration and engagement with a wider audience, including citizen scientists and the public at large.