Roadmap to Embedding Open Research Practices in Ireland (ABOARD)

Lead investigators: Dr Sally Smith, Director of Research at Trinity College Dublin Sally.Smith@tcd.ie, and Dr David O’Connell, Director of Research Support & Policy, University College Dublin d.oconnell@ucc.ie.

Lead Admin Institution: University College Cork (UCC)

Funding call:  NORF Open Research Fund 2023. Strand I: Priority Actions

Targeted priority action: A1: Incentivising Open Research Practices in Ireland

Governance: University College Cork (UCC) and Trinity College Dublin (TCD) are co-leads on the ABOARD Project. UCC is the lead organisation and will be responsible for overall financial management and the completion of project deliverables. Both co-leads will be responsible for line management of the project management resource (with day-to-day management falling to the Lead with whom the Project Manager will physically be located). The role of project affiliates is to draw on their networks and experiences to provide advice and appropriate challenge to the Project Leads, particularly with respect to consultation methods, probable particular challenge/ ‘fulcrum’ points for particular stakeholders and mechanisms to achieve systemic culture change. The role of project partners will be to monitor project delivery and collaboratively to develop project outputs. This element of the role is critical as project partners will be required to agree collectively the final project deliverables. They will also provide input and challenge from their stakeholder group to the project and advocacy from the project to their stakeholders. In addition, they will be responsible for active involvement in the consultation process. Co-leads will meet weekly with the project manager; every four weeks these meetings will be in person, alternately in Cork and Dublin. Progress and management meetings including all partners will be held every two months where progress will be reported on, task allocation handled and matters requiring advice and general discussion canvassed.

Every six months there will be a full in-person meeting with Co-Leads, Partners and Affiliates. These meetings will focus on presenting overall progress and enabling discussion largely of non-operational aspects of this culture change initiative.

Overview of the project: Notwithstanding the hurdles that exist that throughout the Open Research landscape, it is arguable that the most significant barriers to the take up of Open Research practices are researcher mindset and behaviour.

The ABOARD project will develop system-level incentivisation of Open Research; this will mean that the incentives that researchers encounter in all their major fields of activity (including recruitment, promotion, institutional research initiatives and engagement with external funders) will be aligned effectively.

The ABOARD project acknowledges that the voice of researchers themselves has been somewhat underrepresented in many of the conversations around incentivisation and reward of Open Research practices as well those concerning the use of responsible research metrics and responsible research assessment.

The ABOARD project, therefore, brings together a strong consortium of those representing not only RPOs and funders, but also key researcher groups and will engage in deep, iterative dialogue with key stakeholders across the Irish research landscape.

The project will use this dialogic and consultation-driven approach to reach agreement on core commitments and concrete steps to effectively incentivise Open Research practices, develop a statement on the use of Responsible Research Metrics (RRM), and support the development of Responsible Research Assessment (RRA).

Resources and outputs: The ultimate objective of the ABOARD project is to develop a detailed and concrete change process which will deliver coherent, system-level incentivising of Open Research, RRA and the use of RRM.

Specific outcomes of the project will include:

• A shared and broad understanding of, and agreement with, the key components of open research incentivisation, RRM and RRA within the Irish research sector.
• The development of a comprehensive consortium encompassing all relevant stakeholders. The consortium, while engaging with other projects and working groups – include those funded by NORF and CoARA – to mutual benefit and to ensure coherence, will comprise a group of partners of singular sectoral reach with a core focus on incentivising open research.
• A position paper comprising a: roadmap of concrete, prioritised, agreed actions and timelines that each stakeholder group has committed to; two sets of consolidated recommendations; and an agreed national RRM statement.

Additional project-related information: Sally and David also co-lead the CoARA National Chapter for Ireland.

The Irish National Chapter is bringing together 10 higher education institutions and three research funding organisations, encompassing all current CoARA signatories in Ireland, and seeks to deliver consensus on a commitment to broaden Ireland’s recognition of diverse research outputs, outcomes, and careers in research.

The longer-term impact of this initiative, which aligns very closely with the ABOARD Project, is culture-change, achieved through open, transparent communication, leading to trusted partnership and collaboration between different organization types, roles, and responsibilities that will deliver systemic change.

The project co-leads are also partners in the NORF-funded RURM project led by UCD, which will deliver a pilot training mechanism on the use of RRM.