Open Methods
What are Open Methods?
Open methods refer to a transparent, open description and documentation of methods that form the basis for research results. This includes activities that enable the reproducibility and quality assurance of the research results produced, such as the description of materials used and work processes carried out, standardised protocols, source code or laboratory notes. In addition, open methods also summarise activities that generally enable open and fast access to research results, such as pre-registration or the publication of source code.
What are the benefits for you?
- Increasing the visibility of your research output
- Ensuring reproducibility and enable others to reuse functioning research processes, e.g. in the lab
- Minimising effort through comprehensible and open documentation of functioning research processes
- Ensuring validation of research findings
Requirements
Get familiar with:
- Documentation standards in your scientific discipline (protocols, templates, metadata etc.)
- Suitable publication formats and platforms
- Open licences
- legal obligations
Resources
- Reproducibility4Everyone (Network, courses, resources)
- Open Research Methods (University of Westminster)
- Protocols.io (A platform to share reproducible methods)
- Open Science Knowledge Base – Reproducibility
- Open Science Knowledge Base – How can I preregister a study?
- Centre for Open Science – The what, why and how of preregistration (Video)