A fundamental feature of science is reproducibility and having study methods and data openly available enables researchers to replicate and verify their results. It is not just making methodologies fully open, they need to be fully documented and placed in a location that is accessible.
Open methodologies are concerned…
The LSHTM Open Research Champion Network is a new initiative designed to build expertise and promote a culture of open research across the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM).
We’re inviting staff and students with an interest in open research to volunteer a few hours of their time to help champion open practices within their communities.
What Is Open Research?
Also known as Open Science, open research is a global movement to make scientific research more transparent, accessible, and collaborative. It supports practices that make it easier to: share and reuse research outputs, verify research findings, and collaborate across disciplines and institutions
You can learn more about LSHTM’s open research activities and resources on our Open Research and Open Science guidance pages.
What Is an Open Research Champion?
An Open Research Champion is a volunteer who actively promotes open research within a specific LSHTM community, such as a department, research centre, course module, or other peer group.
Champions form a supportive network across LSHTM, working together to raise awareness and build capacity for open research.
Who Can Join?
The network is open to all LSHTM staff and students with an interest in open research. You don’t need to be an expert—just enthusiastic and willing to contribute a few hours each month.
If you’re interested, please discuss it with your team or supervisor and complete the Expression of Interest form.
Read moreOpen Alex (the name Alex comes from the ancient Library of Alexandria) is a not for profit tool used to open up research for all. It is a free to use dataset containing over 250 million scholarly works. Unlike subscription databases it contains works from all over the globe, not…
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.
Read more
THURSDAY MARCH 13, 2025. 13:00 – 14:00 BST
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.
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…
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…
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.
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.
Read moreOpen 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…
