1.
Case by case:
Open research in
different disciplines
Dorka Tamás
d.tamas@leeds.ac.uk
Twitter: @dorkatamas

2.
What are
Open
Research
Case Studies?

3.
Open Research
Case Studies
by other UK universities

4.
How we did it at Leeds…
(initially) the project’s
duration was 4 months
First month was spent
on familiarising
ourselves with open
research and the
infrastructure of
University of Leeds
Connecting with
established contacts
and recruiting
participants
Stages of interviewing,
transcribing, editing,
and writing up the case
studies

5.
The areas I focused on:
• Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures
• Faculty of Biological Sciences
• Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences
• Faculty of Interdisciplinary Research
• Leeds Special Collections
• Open Education​

6.
The
challenges…

7.
The project has mainly run during the summer when most
(already overworked) academics are on annual leave, or they try
to catch up on their research
It took some time to familiarise myself with the systems and
infrastructure​ at Leeds
Waiting for potential participants to respond (or when no
response or declined participation, identify new contacts)
Different levels of interest in the case studies by people we
approached​
Time constraint (originally 4 months)​

8.
Potential participants received an
information sheet and a consent form​

9.
My experience
of making the
case study
interviews
There is a general
knowledge of OR across
disciplines (although some
bias since participants were
already interested in OR)
There is STEM/HUM divide
in terms of what is relevant,
what people do, of what they
have knowledge
Variety of approaches to
preprints, sharing data,
more awareness of OA
since pandemic, even if
people do not have the
‘correct’ terminologies, they
still practice OR
Least popular/Most difficult
question: ‘What does data
mean in your field?’
General consensus/worry
regarding the cost of open
access (UKRI policy)
Academics want more help,
clearer communication and
guideline, particularly on a
Faculty and School level

10.
Some highlights from
the Open Research
Case Studies…

11.
"At the Special Collections, we do open research all the time, we just do not call it that
way. Same with the FAIR principles: we probably call it something slightly different.”
(Jodie Double, Digital Content and Copyright Manager)
“The purpose of the research that we do is to benefit society, the economy, or the
environment and how we do that best is to ensure that there is a strong and ongoing
dialogue with the public and other stakeholders, as a way of helping to define the
problems we need to research most urgently to help improve their circumstances.”
(Mark Davis, Professor of Economic Sociology)
"In terms of open research, people are very nervous about making research data
available: there is no ethos that failure of research is alright. Researchers are worried
about funding. You have to prove the success of research all the time, so making the
research process and data available is challenging.”
(Paul Cooke, Centenary Chair in World Cinemas)
“It takes a lot of time to reach the final point of publication through peer-reviewed
journals, so preprints are a very good and easy way to see interesting and new data
and discuss with others and provide feedback.”
(Dimitris Soulias, PhD candidate in School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering)

12.
“The other problem with sharing the data, especially since our data comes from
interviews with the industry, is that you cannot be sure how they would feel about
you naming them the in the project.” (Pammi Sinha, Associate Professor of Fashion
Management)
"We have a REPRODUCIBILITY crisis in the Arts as well: we are very good at showing
final outputs, but we so rarely show process, so no one can reproduce our work
because no one knows how we got there.” (Scott Mclaughlin, Lecturer in Composition
and Music Technology)
“It is important that teachers, speech therapists, clinical psychologists, parents, and
everybody can read about it, that it’s not only published somewhere where certain
people have access.” (Hannah Nash, Lecturer in Developmental Psychology)
"I think academic papers are not the only valid research outputs, but there are data,
tools, and other artefacts others can use.”
(Greta Timaite, postdoc at LIDA)

13.
The Case Studies
• https://sway.office.com/3UtasPmN7j93kS4v
School of English with Bridget Bennett
• https://sway.office.com/r7mgeAcqGD0ghG7z
Open Education with Antonio Martínez-Arboleda
• https://sway.office.com/ZydVX278G3nhYCnF
School of Mathematics with Mauro Mobilia

14.
Conclusion Working on the case studies (so far) has
been fruitful
Open Research is a broad area and there
are more or just as many questions as
answers
Future challenges: presentation and
preservation of the case studies
Communicate the results and enhance
communication between Library Services,
Faculties, Schools, and academics