Topic 2: Open Research (2023/4)
A session outline for PG Cert HE participants on the Open Knowledge in Higher Education unit
PG Cert HE participants: This topic relates to the session on Wednesday 28th February 2024. You can use this page to prepare/catch up/review. The topic will be updated after the session has taken place to include any recorded content from guest speakers or tutors and any shared resources we create during the sessions.
You can find interviews with past participants of the unit here
What is Open Research?
In this topic, we encourage you to consider what open research is within Higher Education.
In the scheduled session, we were joined by guest speakers Steve Carlton and Eleanor Warren from the Research Services team.
You can view their presentation here:
Reading and thinking about openness
You may want to engage with this suggested reading and contribute your thoughts. If you don’t have time to look at this prior to the session, you may want to return to this later in the unit:
Suggested reading: Changing the gender narrative with open access | Impact of Social Sciences by Katie Wilson and Lucy Montgomery, 2022. This post looks at the use of open access to develop more diverse and equitable forms of success for all researchers.
Access Denied: Borders as a barrier to openness in higher education by Parvathy Ramesh, 2023. This submission from a past OKHE participant examines what openness means for researchers from HEIs in the Global South.
💬 Contribute
During the course, we will ask you to share ideas and experiences and hear from your peers through 💬 Contribute activities like this one. Read the following prompt then add your contribution in the box below. All comments are anonymous. Please be civil and don’t share personal identifying information.
What makes research ‘open’? And what may be the benefits and challenges of open research?
Reuse and Remix — Creative Commons Licensing
As we have seen, being able to build on the work of others is a fundamental part of higher education. This is true for both academic and professional services roles — we are constantly developing to improve student experience, further knowledge and achieve our social responsibility aims.
Creative Commons licenses work within the bounds of copyright to allow for greater sharing, reuse and adaptation of existing work. The licenses allow the creator of a piece of work to decide the parameters within which it can be distributed or developed whilst ensuring that any new works derived from it provide proper attribution.
This infographic provides an overview of Creative Commons (CC) Licenses and tools (accessible text version):
Next steps
After reading and thinking about this topic, please comment below to share an idea or response. You may find Creating a Medium account useful. Alternatively you can use the anonymous comment box on this page.
Any questions, you can contact the course leaders via Blackboard.