The University of Sunderland is committed to supporting its research community in adopting Open Research practices. These practices aim to make as much of the research journey or life-cycle as open as possible. 

Open Research is also supported by funders such as UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), Wellcome Trust, National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) and others. 

In practice, this means that what can be shared should be shared for public access. Thinking about what can and should be open as part of the research process should be thought about at the inception of any project. 

The range of practices that can be adopted are:

• pre-registration of your methodology
• open data
• open lab-notes
• open research journals
• publications
• software and code
• co-creation of research with members of the public or groups about whom the research is

Open research aims to make the research process more transparent, trustworthy, efficient and accessible. 

The Recommendations on Open Science published in 2021 by UNESCO offer guidelines for the research community. 

In the following pages, we have highlighted some of the practices that you can aim to adopt as a postgraduate research student to engage in Open Research. You can also find more information in our Open Research and Scholarly Communications Guide. 

Pillars of Open Science, UNESCO (2021), Understanding open science (p:6) in UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science, CC-BY-SA 4.0