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Open Research Toolkit

Created by the Open Research Working Group, comprising representatives of the Australian Research Management Society (ARMS) and the Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL), the Toolkit supports Australasian institutions to implement or further

Open Research Toolkit

 

 

Institutions document pathways and processes to support researchers to be open practitioners across the research lifecycle. These take the form of guides, workflows or even dedicated websites that provide general information about open research, discuss options for being open, and document local processes.

Most Australian research institutions have documented pathways and processes for green open access deposit of research outputs in their institutional repositories. Many also have processes for the management and publishing of open data, with open data often a subset of publishing data more generally. Processes for open software and code are emerging but are currently less visible.

Open research pathways and processes outline the benefits of open research and clearly document the steps required to practice open research within the institutional context and across the research lifecycle. Useful guides aim to help researchers put the principles of open research into practice. At a minimum, guides should address how to publish open access outputs via the various pathways (green, gold, diamond etc.).

Suggested content to be included in a pathway or process guide includes instructions, guidelines or information on the following:

  • Depositing manuscripts and other research outputs in an institutional repository

  • Identifying and publishing in an OA journal, including guidance on article processing charges (APCs) and accessing transformative ‘read and publish’ agreements

  • Complying with funder open research policies and mandates, including information about funder policies

  • Retaining author rights and related issues including copyright, author addendums, and use of Creative Commons licenses

  • Creating data management plans or data availability statements

  • Sharing FAIR data and code using open repositories, including the process for minting DOIs 

  • Publishing preprints, including choosing a preprint server

  • Engaging with emerging and/or discipline-specific open research practices such as open peer review, publishing protocols and research plans, and sharing methods and materials to support reproducibility.

Featured Examples

Other Useful Resources


Except where otherwise noted, all content on the Open Research Toolkit is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) licence. Under the licence conditions, please attribute Open Research Toolkit.