1. Open Research in the New
Zealand Context
The workshop will attempt to explore the
meaning of ‘Open Research’ in the New Zealand
context. It will explore the views of those
attending the workshop on the value and
feasability of Open Research in New Zealand.
New Zealand eResearch Symposium,
Wellington, July 4 2012
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 3.0 New Zealand License.

2. Overall Questions
• What is Open Research and if we want it how do we get
there?
• How do we move from the list of principles to a list of
actionable tasks?
• What are the main themes that should be included in a
document to be presented to relevant stakeholders (i.e.
institutions, funding agencies, etc.) to promote/incentivise
adoption?
• Who should write that document? Who should endorse it?
• What should the purpose of the document be how does
understanding this shape the format of the document?

3. Stage 1
Go into groups and come back with
3 opportunities which would enable
NZ research to be more….

4. Opportunities
• Single data space (computational ready data and infrastructure to store data and a
single integrated virtual collaboration research space built into that infrastructure)
-> Reference to Earthcube (http://earthcube.ning.com/)
• Human space – researchers linkage: at the levels of researcher-researcher
(identify/discover expertise) and researcher-public
• More research by more people and accessible to the world
• Shift in culture – sharing as default
• NZ as model for weightless economy – defeat the tyranny of distance.
• Share NZ research data across agencies
• Make NZ data more accessible and exciting to the world
• Galvanise more support for nz data and opportunities
• Tell better science stories
• Open framework for knowledge – opening stuff up is half the process
• Collective intelligence building eureka – move away from the lonely dude in the
bathtub
• Communities – build them don’t discourage them
• Knowledge not just data

6. Stage 2
Identify the 3 more critical barriers to changing
and improving on the assigned topic.
Topics to discuss:
– Infrastructure
– Communities
– Collaboration
– Culture

8. Opportunity 1: Infrastructure
Identify the 3 main challenges or hurdles associated
with your opportunity
Challenges
• University support of infrastructure – do we know what we have, and
what we need to build for what we need to do or are we just adding stuff
• Governance over infrastructure – Who makes the decision, who has
ownership (or feels ownership)
• Institutional infrastructure – does it meet the needs of the people. Or
after investing do we need to buy more to fit individual needs
• Research is built around great ideas – but need the wheels to keep it
moving
• Competition and siloed ownership of data – hard to build infrastructure as
a one size fits all. How do we manage shared and unshared environments?
-> culture comes in here too
• Trained professionals to support. People don’t know what they don’t
know. Need to provide a HR element to infrastructure to bridge the
software and hardware and make it meaningful to researchers

9. Opportunity 2: Communities
Identify the 3 main challenges or hurdles associated
with your opportunity
Challenges
• Bureaucracy and all of its levels and embedded inertia
• Context of NZ being a small country and too much duplication
creating more bureaucracy
• Lack of enablers: (e.g., elitism, money, space, vision, etc)
• Rules for doing science: Conservative ideals and culture and
policies and settings do not facilitate collaboration.
• Lack of diversity
• Value placed on how to build and sustain communities
• *Recommended reading: The art of Community

10. Opportunity 3 : Collaboration
Identify the 3 main challenges or hurdles associated
with your opportunity
Challenges:
• Collaboration in terms of who is collaborating with whom – it is an
opportunity but might not be followed through
• $ not identified as a challenge
• Knowledge gap: Need to introduce the right hand to the left hand
• Gap in NZ between businesses and research organisations: Failure to
identify opportunities due to lack of knowledge
• Commercialisation: When it is the goal of everything you do then you
loose the opportunity to make something that will enable something else
but that might not be a goal in itself
• Personalities: You can have the $, the policy, the ethics and all the
cake, but you can still come across human interaction-level barriers
• Methodology alignment between collaborating groups
• Need to think of the difference between collaboration vs cooperation.

11. Opportunity 4: Culture
Identify the 3 main challenges or hurdles associated
with your opportunity
Challenges:
• Risk: Researchers are change averse/ Institutions pay the cost for
change/ Cost of Open Access/ Data security and privacy
• PBRF and other metrics of performance
• IP imperatives
• Value of open research vs. traditional research -> What is the return
and how do you measure it?
• Incentives and leadership
• Who carries the burden of cost?
• Continuity…..
• Demographics – different generations have different attitudes
• Fragmentation
• Thinking and attitudes

12. Go have coffee and moan
Harass the person who is your biggest hurdle (if
they are in the room) and get a better sense of
why they don’t do things the way you want

13. Themes that arose around ‘issues’
• Trust
• Skills/Competencies
• Incentives/Assessment/ Value
• Communication (Discovery, Connections)
• Communication top to bottom/middle out
• Understanding the small steps in the long leap
context
• Lag/Inertia/Bureaucracy
Task: Identify small step actionable tasks that can be taken in the
next 6 months by the people in the room (don’t feel you are
signing up to it)

14. Specific Actions
• eResearch infrastructure: Find out what it already
has and find out what it needs to be added.
• Develop a group with interests in Open Research
to have a sense of identity and align with groups
along the ditch.
• Have a business case to present to key stake
holders.
• How do we get to people that can promote key-
decisions.
• Need to identify the advocates.
• Need the mandates.

15. Specific Actions
• Research Office needs to be convinced to attend the next eResearch Symposium
• Open Access Week: Have a more active role as a national community
• Raise the profile of Digital History and how it benefits from #OA
• How to make each one’s community more open
• Up skilling institutional support staff to promote open research as an option –
Walk the talk
• Educate students and build these ideas into courses or develop new courses that
incorporate these ideas
• Workshop on open license contract clause that can go into institutional/science
contracts. These need to be understood by the local institutional lawyers. Think of
legal frameworks around material transfer agreements
• Working with scientists to get data out of the firewalls and from places that
prevent them from sharing.
• Identify success stories to ‘sell the idea’, Good practice stories, and share those.
• Use social media channels for promotion
• Tweet the publication as a form of promotion and incorporate to metrics

16. Specific Actions
• Identify like-minded colleagues. Talk about what we
do/where we go. Why we go what we got from it.
Incentivise participation.
• Open research conference.
• Blogs. Tweets. Identify who does it, give them material
to blog about.
• Identify projects where openness would help success
• Consistent use of language
• Summer of eResearch: Capitalise on this. Provide
projects. Connect software engineering students to
understand what eScience is about – need content for
newsletter. Need examples to talk about to the new
generation

17. Specific Actions
• Networking – what are the different
organisations doing? Lets not duplicate efforts
but rather work together.
• Think of networking those promoting
adoption at a national level. Need to be
transparent within our own community
• Need high speed access and endless storage
• Otago has a series of seminars around Open
Access that will be shared.

18. Wrapup
• Build a network that includes key people
• Build a network that provides identity
• Share resources
• Facilitate communication channels
• Try to understand more what the gaps and
needs are in the regional and national space

19. Overall Questions
• What is Open Research and if we want it how do we get
there?
• How do we move from the list of principles to a list of
actionable tasks?
• What are the main themes that should be included in a
document to be presented to relevant stakeholders (i.e.
institutions, funding agencies, etc.) to promote/incentivise
adoption?
• Who should write that document? Who should endorse it?
• What should the purpose of the document be how does
understanding this shape the format of the document?

20. Shameless Plugs (aka opportunities)
• Creative Commons ANZ – Discussion as part of NetHui. We will talk
about Open Access and OERs.
• CatalystIT Open Source Awards. Awards Gala I 7 November. There is
a category on Open Science -> Go nominate someone!
• NZ AU Open Research Conference
• National Digital Forum 20-23 November. Mix and Mash.
Humanities and Technology Camp.
• Archives Conference August in Brisbane
• Open Access Week October University of Auckland with guest
speaker Alex Holcobe
• eResearch Australia October 28 Nov 1 Sydney. It is the kickoff of
Australasia EarthCube with Cliff Jacobs
• Open Access Conference in South Africa.

21. Participants
Cameron Neylon – In between
Fabiana Kubke – UoAuckland
Alison Stringer – Open Data information Secretariat
Nicky Gardner – ESR
Jace Carson – Research Consultant U Canterbury
Matt McGregor – CCANZ
Sydney Shep – VU
Prashant Gupta – UoA PhD student
Cameron McLean – UoA PhD student
Donelle McKinley – VU MSc Student
Jingli Lu – AgResearch
Lizzy Lang – VU Library
Charlotte Clements – NIWA
Bob Allan – Info Management – UV
Stuart Charters – Lincoln Uni
Leonie Hayes – UoA Library
Ingrid Mason – Intersect Australia New Zealand eResearch
Kate Bardwell – U Otago – Library Symposium, Wellington, July 2012
Howard Amos – U Otago Library
Richard Hoskings – UoA PhD Student
Russell Butson – U Otago
This work is licensed under a Creative
Daniel Spector – CatlaystIT
Commons Attribution 3.0 New Zealand
Kate Nolan Massey University License.
Robert Gibb – Landcare Research
Yanan Zhao – UoA Library