Unlock your research potential with our guide tailored for Biological and Environmental Sciences at Liverpool John Moores University.
Explore open access publishing, data sharing, reproducible workflows and public engagement. Enhance transparency, collaboration and impact.
Start your journey towards more open and impactful science today!
Made in collaboration with Dr Susanne Zajitschek, Maria Follett, Phebie Watson and Amie Longthorne
The open research best practices guide is designed to serve as a comprehensive resource for researchers at all stages of their careers at Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU). Whether you are a PhD student just beginning your journey, a postdoctoral researcher navigating new challenges, or a lecturer guiding the next generation of scientists, this guide aims to demystify the principles and practices of open research. It is designed to make the adoption of open research practices less daunting and more applicable to the specific contexts of Biological and Environmental Sciences (BES).
This guide provides the tools, resources and guidance you need to implement open research effectively. By embedding these practices you can demonstrate the transparency and robustness of your findings, enabling others to validate results, reproduce your work and build on your contributions. This not only strengthens research integrity but also mitigates duplication of effort and safeguards against issues such as plagiarism and fraud. Open research includes open access to publications, preprints, open peer review, open educational resources, and open research data. By embracing these practices, you contribute to a culture of collaboration and inclusivity. Open research empowers researchers to share their methods, ideas and outputs freely, ensuring that knowledge is accessible to all, driving innovation and addressing global challenges collectively.
By adopting open practices you contribute to a research culture that is transparent, robust and widely accessible. This enables you to drive meaningful impact both locally and globally, ensuring a foundation for innovation, collaboration and positive change.
Researchers are encouraged to make all research outputs as open as possible, as closed as necessary. There is already widespread engagement with open access at LJMU through the deposit of accepted manuscripts in the University’s repository, but the same is not yet true for other types of output such as data and protocols. Making a broader set of outputs open may require you to change some of the ways you work, we will support you to make those changes.
The principles of open research guide the practice of making research processes, outputs and data as transparent, accessible and reproducible as possible. Transparency ensures that methods, data and processes are openly available, enabling others to understand, validate and reproduce findings. Accessibility removes barriers to research outputs, such as publications, data and software, ensuring they are available to all. Reproducibility strengthens credibility by allowing results to be verified and built upon, while collaboration fosters cooperation across disciplines and institutions, driving collective innovation.
Equity and inclusivity are central tenets of open research, ensuring equal access to research knowledge and amplifying diverse voices, particularly those from underrepresented groups. Open research also promotes integrity and accountability , encouraging ethical practices and responsible data sharing. By advocating for long-term, maintainable systems for preserving research outputs, open research promotes sustainability, while interoperability ensures data and resources are easily shared and integrated across platforms.
Enables other researchers to reproduce your results and build on your work.
Demonstrates that your research is robust and transparent. Prevents unnecessary duplication by ensuring your research is widely accessible.
Ensures you retain access to your own work in the long term.
Enables faster dissemination and increases the impact of your findings, raising your research profile.
Extends the reach and influence of your research beyond academia, driving real-world impact.
Creates opportunities for collaboration across disciplines, institutions and sectors.
Increases the visibility of your work and boosts the likelihood of citations.
Enhances the profile of LJMU by showcasing the breadth and quality of our institutional research.
Ensures compliance with funder requirements, including the Research Excellence Framework (REF) and Plan S.
and create a fair, inclusive, and knowledge, enhance research quality, Together, these principles advance
innovative research culture.
Open Access (OA) is a publishing model that contrasts with traditional subscription-based approaches where readers or their institutions must pay to access content. Open access democratises knowledge allowing research outputs, such as journal articles, data, source code and other academic content to be made freely available to anyone with internet access, removing financial barriers, enabling wider dissemination and use of research findings.
The landscape of academic publishing and research dissemination has evolved significantly, offering researchers diverse pathways to share their findings with the global community. Understanding the roles of journals, repositories and preprints is essential for navigating this complex ecosystem effectively.
This type of open access applies to both articles and long-form publications. Make your work open access by uploading the accepted manuscript to an institutional or subject repository. Many publishers allow you to share your accepted manuscript in a repository, although they may impose an "embargo" on access and restrict how much you can share, for example only one chapter of a monograph. The author accepted manuscript is the version of your work that has been peer reviewed and accepted, but before the
publisher has applied their typesetting and branding. LJMU Research Online, the institutional publications repository, is a platform for managing and sharing research outputs produced by the University's academic community. It is primarily used to house research outputs created by LJMU researchers. It is designed for public access, showcasing LJMU's published research outputs. It supports open access principles by making research widely available, increasing the visibility and impact of the University's work globally.
Open access via a publisher site
(Gold/Diamond/Platinum OA)
Publishing open access on the publisher website means your final full text will be open access upon online release with a creative commons licence or equivalent.
Routes to Gold/Diamond/Platinum OA:
Via a payment to the publisher of an open access publishing fee, Article Processing Charge (APC) or Book Processing Charge (BPC).
This is referred to as gold open access. LJMU researchers can benefit from discounts or publish open access at no extra cost through our institutional open access agreements.
Under the Diamond/Platinum open access model no open access publishing fees charged to authors or readers. These types of publishing models are funding in a different way to APC or BPCs. These models can be funded by the host institution like our LJMU Open Journals Service or via a membership model, where institutions pay a small fee to support the initiative. Publishing under these models is not predicated on your institution paying a fee.
In the competitive fields of BES, preprints offer a fast-track solution for sharing research. As an alternative to the traditional peer review process, preprints ensure your findings are quickly disseminated, establishing priority and increasing visibility. They invite feedback from the global scientific community, enhance collaboration and improve the quality of your work. If you plan to submit your article to a journal, check the publisher policy before posting your preprint, to make sure they allow submission of work that has already been shared as a preprint.
Journals, repositories and preprints together support the research lifecycle. Journals validate and disseminate finalised research, repositories ensure accessibility and preprints facilitate early sharing and dialogue. Navigating these pathways strategically can amplify the impact and reach of your research, while also contributing to a more open and collaborative scientific environment.
At LJMU, the Library has negotiated several institutional agreements with publishers to reduce or cover the cost of APCs for academic staff and PhD researchers. These agreements enable researchers to publish open access without bearing the full financial burden themselves. However, it is important to note that these agreements vary from publisher to publisher and terms such as inclusion/exclusion criteria and agreement dates are subject to change. Before submitting your article check the specific details of the agreement by consulting our webpages or get in touch with the Researcher Engagement Team, for confirmation of a journal’s eligibility.
In some cases journals may levy additional fees, such as page and colour charges, which are separate from APCs. Unfortunately LJMU cannot cover these additional costs through institutional agreements and there isn’t a fund to pay for such charges. Therefore, it is essential to review your journal’s policies thoroughly before submission to determine whether these extra charges apply.
For more on open access publishing go to: https://www.ljmu.ac.uk/library/researchers/open-accesspublishing Scan QR for more on Institutional open access agreements
LJMU Library Researcher Engagement Team offer extensive resources and services to support open access publishing and all aspects of the open research agenda. The team provide tailored expertise and dynamic support to help research students and staff succeed and develop their skills.
Symplectic enables staff and postgraduate research students at LJMU to capture their publications and professional activities. These are then visible on your staff profile. New members of staff are added to the system automatically. Login is not required on campus. Off campus you can log on to Symplectic using your LJMU username and password.
Scan QR for guidance, support and answers to the most common enquiries.
ORCID provides you with a unique identifier that can be kept throughout your career. It can be used in publications and grant applications, and you can link it to Symplectic. ORCID distinguishes between researchers with similar names and helps ensure that publications are attributed and recorded correctly.
For our ORCID guide go to:
https://www.ljmu.ac.uk/-/media/ljmu/library/files/pdfs/orcidguide.pdf
Wondering how to sign up to ORCID?
Have you come from another institution and want to link previous work?
Please visit our guide
Open Journals Service (OJS) is a publication and hosting service for LJMU online academic journals operating under a Diamond open access model. The service, supported and managed by LJMU Library, provides hosting and support for LJMU staff and students setting up and/or running open journals. The journal board must have at least one member of LJMU staff, but can include members from other institutions/organisations. We have a number of journals with international editorial boards. The service hosts a number of journals and conference proceedings in a variety of subject disciplines. Our portfolio includes research journals, conference proceedings as well undergraduate and postgraduate abstracts.
Open data refers to the practice of making research data freely accessible to everyone with minimal restrictions. This approach is fundamental to enhancing the transparency, reproducibility and impact of scientific research.
In BES, where data is often complex and interdisciplinary, open data practices can significantly accelerate scientific progress and innovation. By sharing data openly, you allow others to validate and build upon your findings, fostering a collaborative and efficient research environment.
A Data Management Plan (DMP) is a comprehensive document outlining how research data will be handled throughout its lifecycle.
Compliance: Increasingly research funders and institutions require a Data Management Plan (DMP) as part of the research proposal process to ensure responsible and ethical data handling.
Organisation: Planning how data will be stored, accessed and allocated from the outset ensures systematic and rigorous collection, management and storage throughout the research lifecycle.
Security and Integrity: A well-designed DMP safeguards data by building in mitigations to protect against loss, corruption or unauthorised access, maintaining its confidentiality and integrity.
Reproducibility: Providing detailed documentation and metadata ensures that others can validate findings, reproduce results and build on the research, enhancing transparency and reliability.
Efficiency: By considering how data will be stored and accessed, a DMP streamlines processes, reduces inefficiencies and saves time and resources throughout the project’s duration and at its conclusion.
Preservation: Facilitating long-term storage and preservation ensures future access and reuse of data, adding value to the research beyond the initial study and creating opportunities for further impact.
DMPonline is a free tool to help you prepare your DMP. It offers guidance on all major UK research funder requirements. DMPonline allows you to develop your plan collaboratively and to share it with Library Services for review. DMPonline also offers access to publicly available data plans created by other users. We hold training sessions on using DMPonline throughout the year.
To sign up to DMPonline go to: https://dmponline.dcc.ac.uk/
Boost Your Staff Profile: Add your research data to Symplectic!
If you have open datasets or code hosted on external repositories such as Figshare, Zenodo, Dryad or GitHub, you can now enhance your LJMU staff profile by adding them to Symplectic.
Scan QR to access Symplectic by logging in with your LJMU credentials
Open research data repositories are not just tools for sharing your research, they are invaluable resources for discovering datasets to complement your own work, nurturing new ideas and driving collaboration across disciplines.
LJMU provides a dedicated data repository for researchers to store, share and showcase their research outputs in line with open research practices. The LJMU data repository is an ideal platform to ensure your data is FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable), providing persistent DOIs for citation and enabling greater visibility and impact for your work.
As an alternative to using the LJMU data repository to upload and share your data, you may wish to explore other specialist open repositories. These repositories are also an excellent place to access and locate datasets relevant to your research.
LJMU has a data repository?
Scan QR for more go to:
https://opendata.ljmu.ac.uk/
Find more relevant databases and best practice standards on: FAIRsharing.org or search the Registry of Research Data Repositories, re3data.org to locate a repository in your area of expertise.
Data Repositories for Biological and Environmental Sciences include:
Dryad: Specifically designed for datasets in evolutionary biology, genetics and ecology. Ideal for sharing datasets that support published articles in these disciplines.Features: Assigns DOIs for datasets, ensuring persistent identification and citation.
Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Data Centres (including CEDA Archive, Environmental Information Data Centre): Specialises in environmental and earth observation data. Excellent for researchers in environmental science who need to store and share climate, atmospheric and ecological data. Features: Assigns DOIs for datasets, provides access to curated datasets
Zenodo: General-purpose but widely used across disciplines, including BES, due to its flexibility. Suitable for researchers looking for a trusted, multidisciplinary platform. Features: Assigns DOIs for all shared research outputs, including datasets, software and publications.
Figshare: General-purpose but often used for biological and environmental research. Researchers can share datasets, figures and multimedia outputs with ease. Features: Assigns DOIs for datasets, ensuring persistent identification and citation.
UK Data Service (ReShare ESRC): Primarily for social science data, including economic and population studies. Features: Provides trusted access, training and DOIs for datasets.
European Data Portal: Broad collection of datasets from EU institutions and agencies. Features: Access to over 1.8 million datasets, does not assign DOIs.
GitHub: Platform for collaborative code development, version control and sharing. Integrating GitHub into your research workflow allows you to document changes systematically, collaborate with others in real time and manage multiple versions of code. Features: When linked to data repositories like Zenodo, GitHub can automatically archive code snapshots and assign DOIs for citation, ensuring long-term accessibility and preservation.
The Researcher Engagement Team offers support throughout your research project, from its initial stages to completion and beyond. We can provide feedback on your data management plans, help you select the most appropriate research data repository, advise how your data can be made available and conditions for open access Our goal is to ensure your research data is managed effectively and in line with best practice.
The LJMU Research Data Repository is the University's data repository. Data stored in the LJMU Research Data Repository can be freely accessed online by anyone and easily discovered through web search engines. Where research data is not suitable for sharing on an open access basis immediately, due to commercial or copyright reasons, it can be added to the repository, with an appropriate embargo period. It will then be made open access after this time period has passed.
Copyright Licences
If you have received external funding to carry out your research, check your funder guidance to ensure you are compliant with any copyright or creative commons licences requirements they may have. If you are not sure what licence to add ask the Library Researcher Engagement Team for assistance.
Scan QR for more on Creative Commons Licenses go to:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/
A README file is an essential component of your research data deposit. It ensures that others can understand, reuse, and properly attribute your data. At LJMU, we provide a README file template to streamline this process.
The readme file should be in plain text and include the following information:
Title of the dataset
Contact details
File name structure
File formats
Column headings for tabular data
A short description of the data
Any licences or restrictions
Data access statements, also referred to as data availability statements, are included in publications to specify where the data supporting the research is stored and the conditions under which it can be accessed. These statements are a requirement of many funding bodies, scientific journals and the UKRI Common Principles on Data Policy.
What should I include in a Data Access Statement?
Examples of Data Access Statements are provided below, your statement should typically include:
Where the data can be accessed - preferably a trusted data repository
A persistent identifier, such as a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) Details of any restrictions on accessing the data and a justifiable explanation. For example, ethical, legal, or commercial reasons
Scan QR for more:
Scenario: Data are openly stored in the LJMU institutional data repository
Example: ‘Data supporting this study are available in the Liverpool John Moores University Research Data Repository at DOI or URL, under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.’
Scenario: Data are openly available in a repository
Example: ‘Data supporting this study are openly available ininclude name of repository -and DOI or URL, under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.’
Scenario: Data are available in a repository, but subject to an embargo
Example: ‘Data supporting this study will be available from -include name of repository -and DOI, or URL following a 6-month embargo.’
Scenario: Data are available in a repository, but access is restricted due to legal, ethical or commercial reasons
Example: ‘Data supporting this study are available from -include name of repository and DOI or URL. Access to the data is subject to approval and a data sharing agreement -include reasons why access to the data is restricted.’
Preregistration and registered reports are practices designed to enhance the transparency and reproducibility of research. By committing to a clear methodology before data collection, these approaches help reduce bias and ensure accountability.
These concepts are designed to make scientific research more transparent and reproducible. Both aim to reduce bias and promote accountability, preventing the alteration of hypotheses or analysis strategies after data have been collected. These methods also facilitate reproducibility by providing a clear roadmap for others to replicate the study. Furthermore, they facilitate the publication of both positive and negative findings, mitigating publication bias.
For both, a plan of the methodology is submitted before data collection begins. The main difference is that preregistration is a self-declaring reporting tool, which aims to enhance transparency in research plans, scientific quality, and integrity. Preregistration involves creating a detailed, time-stamped plan for a study's design, hypotheses, data collection, and analysis before data collection begins. The main aim is to prevent practices like selective reporting, p-hacking, or HARKing (hypothesising after results are known), but submitting a preregistration per se does not ensure publication of the finished study.
Registered reporting, however, guarantees publication, as long as the published protocol is followed. In registered reports, the study's research question, hypotheses, and methods are peer reviewed both before and after data collection and accepted by a journal before data is collected.
This rigorous commitment to methodology ensures that publication is based on the quality of the research question and methodology rather than the results.
Registered reports have been adopted by over 300 journals so far (for a list see the information provided by Centre for Open Science: Centre for Open Science go to: www.cos.io or scan QR code for more
If you are looking for a scientific community based, non-journal specific way for registering your report, go to:
PeerCommunityIn.org Registered Reports. For more information on preregistration, please go to OSF (Open Science Framework: www.osf.io a global repository that enables transparent research or scan QR code for more
The OSF offers a wide range of services, including preregistration of studies, provides a platform for collaboration, including workflow and timestamping of projects (which can be private and shared among collaborators only while the project is ongoing), data sharing and publication of preprints.
Preprints are early versions of research articles that are shared publicly before undergoing peer review and formal publication in a journal. They offer a faster way to disseminate research findings. However, while preprints may assist with open access to manuscripts, they should not replace formal publication, which involves scientific scrutiny and critical evaluation via peer reviewing. Some publishers do not allow citations of preprints as a source for credible information for this reason.
Preprints are hosted on preprint servers, which are online repositories where researchers can upload their preprints. These servers provide a platform for open access to research, making it freely available to anyone with an internet connection.
There are many preprint servers for biological research, for example:
ArXiv bioRxiv
EcoEvoRxiv
OSF Preprints
PaleorXiv
Preprints.org
Zenodo
A reproducible workflow refers to a systematic and transparent process for conducting analysis that can be easily replicated by others. This involves organising openly accessible data, methods (see also 4.1), and results in such a way that anyone can repeat the workflow and arrive at the same conclusions.
Many workflows rely on code (R is most commonly used in Biological Sciences, but there are others, e.g. Python, MATLAB) to perform data analysis.
Sharing the code (with comments and documentation), data, and software used in the analysis allows others to understand what has been done and reproduce the steps. Metadata management (see also readme files, 3.2), which involves the documentation of data sources, experimental parameters, and analysis decisions, plays an important part in this.
Upon formal publication, a link the publishers page usually links the preprint with the publication.
Reproducibility of workflow can depend on software versions and dependencies, especially in rapidly evolving open-source software tools and their associated regularly updated packages. It is necessary to meticulously report details of software and package versions used. Version control can be achieved by tools like Git, a widely used version control system. GitHub is its most used platform, which allows tracking of changes over time, the possibility to revert to earlier versions, and remote collaboration on coding projects. Version control enables the tracking and tracing of code but does not necessarily ensure the successful running of the analysis on later versions of the software.
For this, environment management tools, such as virtual environments or Docker, are necessary. These ensure the workflow runs in a consistent computational environment (i.e. the software environment with specific library versions, operating system configurations etc is identical).
Open research extends to peer review, ethics and consent, anonymity and IP. By considering the benefits and challenges of these key strands of research we can help make our research practices as open as possible.
Transparent peer review shows the complete peer review process from initial review to final decision. This means that alongside the published article, readers can see a full peer review history, including reviewer reports, editor decision letters and the authors’ responses. This approach differs from open peer review in that the anonymity of reviewers is maintained. Many publishers apply anonymous review during the peer review process before publication and transparent review post-publication. Together these two processes complement each other, allowing for maximum objectivity during the review process and maximum transparency after publication.
Disclosing the peer review process to the community increases accountability and allows reviewers to be recognised more for their hard work. Royal Society provides reviewer recognition through a published list of reviewers, BMJ offers reviewers ORCID accreditation and APC discounts, other publishers offer a certificate of recognition. Web of Science Reviewer Recognition Services (formerly Publons) allows reviewers and editors to maintain a verified record of their contributions.
Open research practices have potential for significant benefits in terms of transparency, collaboration and public access to research findings. Whether you are engaging with citizen science, embarking on open peer review, exploring open methodology or sharing your research data openly, it is important that anonymity is ensured, sensitive data is protected, ethical guidelines are followed and participant and collaborator rights are protected.
Sharing of research outputs must conform to all relevant ethical and legal obligations and align with the principle of being as open as possible and as closed as necessary. If you are conducting qualitative research with human participants, it is good practice to be clear from the start that the research data may be anonymised and shared as an open data set for future research through publications or other outputs. Participant Information Sheets can be structured appropriately to include relevant information for participants.
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), Anonymisation: managing data protection risk code of practice provides a framework for openly sharing anonymised research data. This code of practice provides useful information on sensitive data, re-identification testing and risk management. ICO guide: https://ico.org.uk/media/1061/anonymisation-code.pdf
In open research data may be used for purposes beyond the original study, such as secondary analysis or repurposing by other researchers. Participants need to be informed about how research data might be used in the future.
Where ownership of research data or software resides with the University, researchers are authorised under the Research Data Management Policy to make data and source code openly available, provided no commercial, legal or ethical restrictions apply.
The University places importance on appropriate protection of Intellectual Property Rights. Research should only be made open once any necessary protections have been secured. Open licences applied to data and source code cannot be revoked once they have been applied.
For assistance with research contracts that affect IPR, queries relating to commercial exploitation of IP and any related restrictions on data sharing, contact the Knowledge Exchange and Commercialisation Team by emailing:
KECTops@ljmu.ac.uk
Public Engagement (PE) describes a range of methods of involving members of the public in your research. There are lots of different ways you can do PE research, but the overall goal will always be to create mutual benefit. Examples of PE can include; participatory/collaborative research, patient involvement, citizen science, participatory arts, community engagement, oral histories and decolonised approaches.
Public engagement with research and open research share a common ethos of accessibility, transparency, and collaboration. Both aim to bridge the gap between the research community and the wider public by making approaches and findings more inclusive and participatory. Together, these approaches democratise knowledge, foster trust, and encourage diverse contributions, enhancing the societal impact and relevance of research.
To learn more about PE at LJMU go to: https://www.ljmu.ac.uk/ris/research-excellence/publicengagement
Public engagement with research and open research intersects through transparent communication. Open research enables public access to data, findings, and methodologies, fostering trust and understanding. Effective communication ensures that complex research is accessible, enhancing public interest and informed dialogue.
We encourage researchers to plan in PE from the beginning of the research activity. Our approach to embedding PE in research here at LJMU uses the “Why, Who, How, Evaluate” method, based on the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement’s (NCCPE) approach to excellence in PE.
Why are you engaging the public? What benefit will you and the public gain from this?
Who is your target audience (be more specific than the ‘general public’). How will you achieve this? Plan your activity and reach out for support. Consider how you will evaluate impact.
Outreach programs, such as public talks or festivals, bridge the gap between researchers and society. When aligned with open research, these initiatives empower the public to explore findings directly, promoting a culture of learning and collaboration. Open access ensures outreach isn’t confined to specific events but extends to ongoing, global participation.
For more information on the outreach and engagement opportunities, as well as support in these activities within BES please contact the Strategic Co-leads for Public Engagement and Outreach, Monica McCard or Jon Bielby.
For more information on national standards in public engagement please go to the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement website: www.publicengagement.ac.uk
Open research practices are gaining increasing priority from funders, reflecting a global shift toward transparency, collaboration, and broader societal impact. Integrating open research practices into your funding applications can enhance your chances of success while fostering a more inclusive and innovative research environment. Many funders now require outputs to be published in open access journals or repositories. This ensures your research is accessible to a wider audience, maximising its impact and supporting global knowledge-sharing efforts.
This enhances knowledge sharing and societal impact, particularly in BES. Researchers should ensure compliance by depositing final versions in an open repository and checking funding eligibility for publishing costs.
UKRI's Open Access policy requires monographs, book chapters, and edited collections to be openly accessible within 12 months of publication. If this applies to you, get in touch with the Library team
Check funders' policies on open access and ensure publication costs are included in your budget.
Biological and environmental research often generates large datasets.
Funders expect researchers to have robust data management plans (DMPs) that detail how data will be stored, shared, and preserved in compliance with FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable).
Major funders supporting open research in BES are:
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI): UKRI mandates open access for funded research outputs and supports data sharing through its Research Councils.
Horizon Europe: The EU's flagship funding program emphasises open science practices, including data sharing and citizen science.
Natural Environment Research Council (NERC): NERC supports open access and data sharing for research addressing environmental challenges.
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC): BBSRC promotes open research to accelerate innovation and discovery in the biosciences.
There are many different bibliometrics and alternative metrics (known as altmetrics) that can be used to measure the reach and impact of your academic outputs. These include but are not limited to, measurements such as: number of publication citations, downloads, book holdings, policy citations, social media engagement, press mentions.
There is some evidence that making your research open (via some of the routes outlined within this document) can increase readership, downloads, and citations. Although bibliometrics and altmetrics do not equate impact, they can be evidence of the scope of the reach of your work and complement the narrative you might be creating around your research. It is important to understand what different metrics mean.
To read our statement go to: https://www.ljmu.ac.uk/library/researchers/responsiblemetrics
The Research Evaluation Working Group of INORMS (The International Network of Research Management Societies) has created a process of evaluation called SCOPE:
S: Start with what you value
C: Context
O: Options
P: Probe
E: Evaluate
LJMU is a signatory of the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) and has recently created a responsible metrics statement. It is important that you define what you want to measure and then choose the appropriate methods to do so. Not all metrics can be used for all research areas or individuals, and it is important to consider this when using metrics for hiring, promotion or reporting activities.
For more about DORA and to read the declaration please go to: https://sfdora.org/read/
Within BES, it is important to consider the subject specific outputs and metrics that might be required as a part of different processes of measurement. It is also important to acknowledge colleagues that are in different stages of their career - from PhD to Professor - and which metrics
are appropriate for those stages.
LJMU Library subscribes to many databases that might be useful for measuring your research metrics and impact. For example, databases like Scopus, SciVal, Overton and Web of Science all have options to interrogate a variety of individual and group metrics. Other tools such as Dimensions, WorldCat and publisher and repository statistics can also be used.
The Researcher Engagement Team can assist with identifying what you are trying to measure and help you to use appropriate and responsible metrics to support your work and reach. They provide group training, one-to-one support, and guidance on what metrics to use and when it is responsible to do so. Assistance can also be given to research groups (either formal or informal) to track a variety of metrics as well as evidence of collaboration (current or planned.)
Making your research open and accessible is key to advancing knowledge and fostering collaboration. This guide highlights simple steps to share your publications and data openly, engage with the open research community and champion open practices within your field.
Make your research publications open access
Publish in a fully open access journal, using one of our open access publishing agreements, or deposit your work in the LJMU publications repository. To go a step further, consider sharing your research on a preprint server to make it publicly available before formal publication, or engage with open peer review to increase the visibility and credibility of your work.
Make your research data open using the FAIR principles
The FAIR principles—Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable—offer simple guidelines to ensure your data is accessible to the wider research community. To make your data findable, deposit it in a trusted repository with an open license, ensuring that others can easily locate it. For accessibility, use open formats and ensure your data is easy to retrieve. To promote interoperability , include clear documentation and metadata so others can integrate your data into their work. Lastly, to ensure your data is re-usable, assign a DOI or unique identifier and cite it in your publications. Following the FAIR principles not only makes your data more impactful but also helps foster collaboration, transparency and continued research in your field.
Introduce your students to the practices of open research, explain open access, data and code sharing. Engage with networks such as UK Reproducibility Network (UKRN) to support open research. These networks offer valuable resources, training and communities of practice aimed at promoting transparency and reproducibility.
While embracing open research, you may encounter a few challenges.
Here are some common obstacles and how to address them:
Not all publishers fully support open research practices, which can sometimes create obstacles. Some may be hesitant to accept articles previously posted on preprint servers or resist open peer review. Others may fail to support rights retention language. To navigate these challenges, it is important to research publishers' policies in advance and choose those with progressive stances on open access and research transparency.
Ensuring your research complies with funders' open access and data-sharing requirements is crucial, as non-compliance could affect future funding. Always review your funder's specific open access policies and cross-check them with LJMU's guidelines. This helps ensure your publications and data align with the necessary requirements for compliance.
When selecting a license for your research publication or data, refer to your funder's guidelines to meet their open access and data-sharing requirements. If you're unsure, you can consult resources like the Creative Commons licence selector go to: www.chooser-beta.creativecommons.org/
Some publishers require a Data Availability Statement (sometimes called a "Data Access Statement") in publications. This statement details where your research data can be accessed, the conditions under which it can be shared and includes links or DOIs to the dataset.
There are an increasing number of open access journals across various disciplines. The Directory of Open Access Journals is a great resource to explore journals, many of which are free to publish in.
To check the Directory of Open Access Journals go to: www.doaj.org/ To check the Directory of Open Access Books go to: www.doabooks.org /
The Bibliomagician offers advice, guidance, and resources to help explain a variety of metrics and in practice examples, to explore go to: https://thebibliomagician.wordpress.com/
If you are unsure about any aspect of open research or need guidance, the Researcher Engagement Team is here to help.
For training, resources or to check Researcher Engagement Events, go to: https://unical.ljmu.ac.uk/
Or contact the team at: lst_research_support@ljmu.ac.uk
Data Management Plan (DMP): A formal document that outlines how research data will be collected, stored, shared and made accessible. Commonly required for research funding.
Data Repository: A centralised database where research data is stored and made accessible, often with an emphasis on open data practices.
Data Sharing: The practice of making research data accessible to other researchers and the public, typically through open repositories or publications.
Data Transparency: Making raw research data publicly available and understandable to ensure research findings can be verified or reproduced.
DOI: Digital Object Identifier, a unique alphanumeric identifier applied to a specific piece of intellectual property, presented in an online environment.
FAIR Principles: A set of guidelines (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) aimed at making research data more open and usable for future studies.
Green Open Access: A model of open access where research publications are made freely available by depositing them in institutional repositories or subject specific repositories, often after an embargo period.
Hybrid: A publishing model where authors can make individual articles openly accessible within a subscription-based journal, usually by paying an article processing charge (APC).
Metadata: Data that describes other data, such as the methods, conditions and context in which research data was collected, crucial for ensuring data is accessible and reusable.
Open Data: Data that is made publicly available and accessible for others to use, share and build upon, often through data repositories.
Open Research: A practice of making all aspects of research (data, methods, publications, etc.) open and available to the public, promoting transparency and collaboration.
Open Science: A broader movement that advocates for the open sharing of scientific research outputs, including data, publications and methodologies.
ORCID: is a unique, persistent identifier (PID) for individuals to use as they engage in research, scholarship and innovation activities.
Preprint: A version of a research paper shared publicly before it has been peer-reviewed, enabling rapid dissemination of findings.
Research Data Management (RDM): The practice of organising, storing and sharing research data to ensure its availability, security and compliance with regulations.
Research Integrity: Adherence to ethical standards and honesty in research practices, including transparency in data handling and publication.
Rights Retention: A policy that allows authors to retain copyright of their work, enabling them to share and reuse their publications.
Journals (Open Access) : Academic journals that provide unrestricted access to research articles without subscription fees, playing a key role in making scientific research accessible.
Systematic Review: A rigorous, methodical review of the existing literature on a particular topic, often used to synthesise findings across studies.