All posts in Open Research

Celebrate Love Data Week 2025 with us!

Love Data Week is here, and it's time to celebrate the power of data! Whether you're a data enthusiast, a curious student, or just looking to learn something new, the Library, Archive & Open Research Services has a great line-up of events to help you dive into the world of data. Check out the following training events.

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Open Research Seminar: Enhancing the speed and impact of science communication using BioRxiv and MedRxiv

THURSDAY MARCH 13, 2025. 13:00 – 14:00 BST

Attendance link: https://lshtm.zoom.us/j/98105867994

The widespread adoption of preprints provides opportunities to revolutionize how scientific discoveries are communicated with the wider research community. Preprints enable scientists to share the latest developments and findings in their research and obtain community feedback that can be used to support decision making on how it is be developed in the future. As a citable scientific output, they also provide authors with proof of progress and productivity, which can be used to advance their careers through grant and job applications.

This webinar, hosted by LSHTM in partnership with members of the bioRxiv and medRxiv team, will outline how the sharing of preprints can aid researchers in enhancing the impact of their scientific research and comply with established and emerging community requirements, such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s mandate on preprints.

Professor Kat Holt from LSHTM’s Department of Infection Biology will share some personal reflections from over a decade of posting preprints, and invite fellow academics to share their own experiences or concerns. Presenters from bioRxiv and medRxiv, two non-profit preprint services that host more than 200,000 preprints on topics spanning fundamental biology and clinical research and are visited by a combined figures of ~9 million readers every month, will provide an interactive demo of the platforms, and discuss potential gains for LSHTM academics and their research.

To help the presenters to tailor the session to your needs, please complete the Interest in Preprints survey form.

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VeriXiv, a new way to comply

VeriXiv (pronounced Very-Kive) is a newly launched preprint server, through a collaboration between the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and F1000 publishers.  The main drive from the BMGF to create this platform is to align with their new open access policy.  From the 1st January 2025, the Foundation…

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Does LSHTM need an institutional rights retention policy?

Photo by Andrea De Santis on Unsplash

Yes!

For too long research outputs have been restricted behind paywalls, with authors unable to reuse their own work without first getting permission from their publisher – having signed away their rights in restrictive licence to publish agreements. We argue that having an institutional…

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Large CRUK logo

Open Research seminar: Cancer Research UK’s Registered Reports Funding Partnership: lessons to improve research quality, transparency and reproducibility

THURSDAY JULY 18, 2024. 12:00–13:00 BST
Attendance Link: https://lshtm.zoom.us/j/99442400497

This online seminar will introduce Registered Reports and a new pathway being piloted at Cancer Research UK (CRUK) to submit Registered Reports to journals for peer review, alongside the grant application and review process. CRUK’s unique pilot is being performed in consortium with 12 journals and the University of Bristol.

Attendees will gain an understanding of Registered Reports, the rationale for CRUK’s pilot, how the Registered Reports Funding Partnership pathway works and the process for preparing a report for publication. The seminar will share different consortium partner perspectives and requirements – from a publisher, a funder and an academic institution – and highlight insights, feedback from researchers about opting-into to the pilot, advice on putting together a report and how to avoid common pitfalls.

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A member of the AMIS Hub research team interviewing a local resident

Open Research seminar: Qualitative Data Presentation, Secondary Analysis and Ethics

THURSDAY JUNE 20, 2024. 12:00 - 13:00 BST

Seminar recording: The seminar recording is hosted in the Panopto video platform (LSHTM users only) and Data Compass repository.

Qualitative research can provide a rich understanding of people’s lived experience that goes beyond what is possible through quantitative approaches. However, the sharing of complex qualitative outputs in a form that maintains research context and protects participant confidentiality remains a challenge for many research studies.

In this seminar, Kahryn Hughes, Professor of Sociology at the University of Leeds, will consider the key ethical challenges for the reuse and sharing of qualitative research data. She will highlight the ethical value of qualitative data preservation and archiving, as part of a broader ethical temporal sensibility towards social research data and integrity. She explores the rise of qualitative data re-use in the context of the ‘data turn’ and explores how the qualities of qualitative data present distinctive challenges for and within the global drift towards open science and open access. With particular attention to questions of how and why ethical concerns may change over time, she explores what the implications of qualitative data re-use might be for current research practice. In so doing, she explains how social and qualitative researchers can achieve good practice by attending to questions of data integrity and legacy. She will signpost to relevant resources to support good practice in the preparation and organisation of qualitative datasets for the purposes of reuse.

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Quick Guides to Open Research Activities

Open Research Services have produced a series of PDF guides to five main areas of Open Research:

Pre Registration and registered reports

Data Verification

Open Code and software

Preprints

Citizen Science

These provide an overview of each activity. The LAORS is planning a series of introductory training sessions which will…

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Open Access publication

Open Research seminar series: Open publishing and peer review with Wellcome Open Research

Thu, May 23, 2024 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM BST.

Seminar recording
The recording can be accessed by completing the registration form at https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/2890971650647376730.

This online seminar will introduce the open publishing and peer review model used by Wellcome Open Research, alongside other F1000-supported platforms, such as Gates Open Research, Open Research Europe, NIHR Open Research and F1000Research.

Attendees will gain an understanding of the publication requirements for Wellcome Open Research, and the workflows for submission, revision, and post-publication open peer review. It will provide advice for authors on how to address challenges in open access publication, and engage with the revision and peer review process that follows.

The seminar will also highlight several emerging trends in open publishing and research, including the use of pre-print servers, and the newly announced verified pre-print platform, VeriXiv – a partnership between F1000 and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

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Research Online revealed: an in-depth look at repository usage

The LSHTM research repository, ‘Research Online’, currently contains 61,867 items, which were downloaded over 55,000 times in 2022-2023. But have you ever wondered exactly who is actually using it?

Well, look no further! We’ve broken down the numbers for an in-depth look at exactly what…

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Open Access Mythbusters

OA Mythbusters is a fantastic short video series from the Open Access Books Network (OABN) community. Each video clip, lasting no more than 8 minutes, seeks to dispel common myths surrounding the publishing of open access books.

Episodes released cover false beliefs about issues with third-party material, not having…

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