Development of the Brief Open Research Survey (BORS) to measure awareness and uptake of Open Research practices

Emma Norris · Kait Clark · Marcus Robert Munafo · Caroline Jay · Jessie R. Baldwin · Alexandra Lautarescu +20 more

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Academic Publishing and Open Access Research Data Management Practices scientometrics and bibliometrics research

Abstract

Objectives: Whilst the need for Open Research practices is well documented, there remains a lack of validated measures to assess their prevalence. We therefore developed the Brief Open Research Survey (BORS) – a brief self-report measure of awareness and use of and support required for Open Research practices. This article outlines the development of the BORS and provides some initial data from researchers across disciplines in the United Kingdom. Methods: The BORS was developed in six steps: 1) a scoping exercise collated previous surveys on Open Research; 2) a brief (<5 minutes) survey was then developed, 3) peer-reviewed; 4) piloted; 5) revised; and 6) the final survey that probed awareness and use of 11 Open Research practices was distributed to researchers across universities in the UK Reproducibility Network. Results: Respondents (n = 1,274) reported being most aware of Open Access Publications (94.1%), Preprints (85.3%), and Open Data (83.4%) and least aware of Registered Reports (38.1%), Study Preregistration (50.8%) and Research Co-production (53.7%). They reported having mostly used Open Access Publications (77.8%), Preprints (56.5%) and Open Data (52.5%) and having least used Registered Reports (8.7%), Replication Studies (16.3%), and Study Preregistration (25.3%). The most commonly reported areas of support required to enable Open Research were incentives (51%), dedicated funding (46.2%), and recognition in promotion and recruitment criteria (39.6%). Conclusion: We developed the Brief Open Research Survey that can be used to assess awareness and use of Open Research practices to inform education and training initiatives in this area.