Open Research (also refered to as Open Scholarship or Open Science) aims to make research as open as possible as early as possible.

It encompasses practices such as Open Access publishing, sharing of Open Data, Open Peer-Review, using Open Licenses (such as Creative Commons), use of pre-prints.

In 2022, UNESCO stated that in its Recommendations on Open Science 'Open Science has the potential to make the scientific process more transparent, inclusive and democratic.”

Throughout this guide, you will find some guidance on how to make your research as open as possible and as closed as necessary in line with the University statement on Open Research and the University IP policy.

The University has recently released an Open Research Statement.

The aim is to clarify the University of Sunderland support for Open Research practices and to clarify how researchers can develop Open Research practices while respecting potential legal, ethical, commercial or other requirements.

The Open Research statement can be read on the RKE Sharepoint page.

The different elements of this guide will help you consider how you can practice Open Research in your discipline.

If you need any support get in touch with the team at sure@sunderland.ac.uk

To familiarise yourself with Open Research, you can try the Open Research: A research journey game. This was developed by one of our Research interns in the summer 2024, Lisa Meek and is available with a CC-BY license.

It is a choose your own adventure game in which you can try out scenarios and find information about Open Research.

While this is addressing mostly early career researchers and their specific challenges, it is worth listening to this podcast provided by JISC if you are starting your Open Research journey.