Monitoring open research: findings and lessons from the UKRN indicator pilots

Between 2023 and 2025 the UK Reproducibility Network (UKRN) supported 15 institutions to lead six pilot projects to explore and, where possible, document good practice in monitoring different aspects of Open Research. The pilot projects worked with a number of third-party providers, including Elsevier, Digital Science, PLOS and OpenAIRE. The aspects of Open Research they focused on were FAIR and Open Data, data availability statements, the effects of sharing data, preregistration and the use of CRediT author contribution statements. The projects were pilots and were largely done by enthusiastic experts without dedicated resources, motivated by a desire to make practical improvements focused on what it is important to measure, rather than what is easy. Some pilots therefore got further than others, and a lot was learned learned along the way about both monitoring Open Research and about working together to improve that. In this session, Dr Neil Jacobs, head of the UKRN Open Research Programme, will outline the pilot projects, their findings, the lessons learned, and what may happen next.

https://www.ukrn.org/open-research-indicators/

This session took place online at 10am on Tuesday 25th March 2025 as part of the Universities for North East England (UNEE) Open Research Week 2025. The UNEE Group consists of the Universities of Durham, Newcastle, Northumbria, Sunderland and Teesside.

Heather McKenna organised the session, which was recorded by Jack Burns, both from Newcastle University Library.

The speaker, Dr Neil Jacobs, is head of the UKRN Open Research Programme, a six year Research England initiative to accelerate the uptake of high quality open research practices, addressing skills, incentives, sharing and monitoring. Previously he has held strategy positions at UKRI (on research integrity), cOAlition S (on Open Access), Jisc (on digital infrastructure) and the UK Government (on Open Science).

The file is a recording of the session with video and audio.