Awareness and use of open research practices: an international survey of researchers across disciplines
Charlotte Rebecca Pennington, Emma Norris, Magda Skubera, Yalige Ba, Ryssa Moffat, Olavo B. Amaral, Matúš Adamkovič, Arca Adıgüzel, Rafaela A. Almeida, Jessie R. Baldwin, Nick Ballou, Luiza Marques Prates Behrens, Michael G. Bertram, Ingvild E. Bjerke, Simon E. Blackwell, Agata Bochynska, Michiel R. De Boer, Ivan Buljan, Cristian B. Canales-Aguirre, Harry Carey, Vladimira Čavojová, William P. Cawthorn, Simon Christ, Krzysztof Cipora, Alden Conner, Federica P. Conte, Davide Crepaldi, David A. Ellis, Timothy M. Errington, Emily K. Farran, Gordon B. Feld, Raquel Freitag, Paulina Gebauer, Sarah Gunn, Helena Hartmann, Victoria C. Hellon, Gabriela Hofer, Malika Ihle, Ayumi Ikeda, Andrew Jones, Vanessa A. Jorge, Yusuph A. Kafula, Tamara Kalandadze, Veli-Matti Karhulahti, Halil E. Kocalar, Malgorzata Lagisz, Margherita Lanz, Félix P. Leiva, Marco Tullio Liuzza, Marcel Martončik, Hiroshi Matsui, Maria Montefinese, David Moreau, David P. Morgan, Shinichi Nakagawa, Helen Niemeyer, Gustav Nilsonne, Carmen Penido, Sofia Persson, Elena Serena Piccardi, Rima-Maria Rahal, Jakub Rajčáni, Ben Ridley, Michele Scandola, Felix D. Schönbrodt, Sandy Schumann, Mojtaba Soltanlou, James Steele, Suzanne L. K. Stewart, Eli S. J. Thoré, Luka Ursić, Michelangelo Vianello, Vootele Voikar, Nicholas C. Wu, Yuki Yamada, Cemre Yilmaz, Naoto Yoshimura, Mircea Zloteanu, Marija F. Žuljević, Marcus R. Munafo, Kait ClarkAbstract
This mixed methods study investigates international researchers' awareness and use of open research practices and explores variations across regions, disciplines, methodologies and career stages. A total of 3017 researchers across 45 countries and 24 disciplines completed the Brief Open Research Survey, reporting their awareness and use of 11 common open research practices and factors that would support their adoption. Across the sample, respondents reported high awareness of open access publications, preprints and open data, and awareness only fell below 50% for research co-production and registered reports. Use was high for open access publications, but fell below 50% for preprints, open data, open research, open materials, open peer review, open code, preregistration, research co-production, replication and registered reports. Awareness and use varied across the sampled regions (e.g. Europe versus Asia), disciplines (e.g. psychology versus physical sciences), methodologies (e.g. quantitative versus qualitative) and career stages (e.g. PhD students versus professors). Respondents reported that the top five supportive strategies were incentives from funders, institutions and regulators; dedicated funding; recognition in promotion and recruitment criteria; more training; and more information. Qualitative responses provide insight into challenges and opportunities. Estimates of awareness can guide training initiatives, while estimates of use can inform policy development and longitudinal evaluations of behaviour change. Variations between regions, disciplines, methodologies and career stages should be acknowledged.