LibGuides: Open Research Toolkit: Pathways and Processes

Pathways and Processes

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.

Open up Your Research
University of Melbourne
The University of Melbourne provides a guided pathway to making research open throughout the research lifecycle. The pathway links users to more in-depth ‘how-to’ instructions and steps within their comprehensive Open Research Library Guide.
Make Research Open
Griffith University
Griffith University articulates researcher responsibilities and workflows for making research open before, during, and at the conclusion of a research project. The guide includes the Nine Reproducible Research Things checklist and lessons designed to “help researchers adopt a number of reproducible research habits” and to support making their research more open.
Open Research
RMIT
In addition to standard processes around open access publishing in journals and repositories, this guide for RMIT includes information on: publishing open data, code and software; developing an open research culture; registering and publishing reprints.
Open Access
University of Queensland
This guide steps researchers through a seven step pathway. It includes: a ‘grant to deposit’ infographic; an open access publishing workflow; a checklist to use before paying APCs; instructions for assigning a CC licence; information on complying with funder mandates.
12 Things You Can Do to Be Open
University of Reading
The University of Reading’s ‘12 things you can do to be open’ is a comprehensive resource with topics ranging from preregistering research plans to sharing methods and materials to teaching open research. Reading also publishes an Open Research Handbook that includes a set of open research cases studies designed to increase open research literacy and practice.
For Authors and Researchers
University of California
The Office of Scholarly Communication at the University of California has produced a comprehensive open access pathway that includes guides to transitioning your journal to open access, managing copyright and negotiating publishing agreements, and data sharing policies and tools.
Open Research: a Practical Guide
University of York
In addition to its dedicated open access guide, the University of York has an open research guide covering open processes from preregistration and protocols through to publishing open data, code, and software.
Open Research
University of Exeter
Covers routes to open access, meeting funder and research assessment requirements and preservation of open data in data repositories.
Sharing Data
University College London
Provides guidance on preserving and sharing data via various pathways including assessing and choosing a data repository, licencing data, templates for data access statements and instructions for deposit in the institutional repository.
Data Management Guide
University of Cambridge
A comprehensive guide to data management, depositing in the institutional or external data repository, using electronic research notebooks, and data preservation.

An Introduction to Open Access
Jisc
A comprehensive guide to data management, depositing in the institutional or external data repository, using electronic research notebooks, and data preservation.
Open Science Training Handbook
FOSTER
This book provides information and resources to support people involved in open science training.
Explore Guidelines
Open Access Australasia
A curated list of open access guidelines from across Australia and New Zealand.

Next: Incentives

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.

Open Research Toolkit

Pathways and Processes

Featured Examples

Other Useful Resources