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On Tuesday May 6^th, colleagues from across the University gathered for the penultimate session in the Opening up Research events programme : an interactive discussion on the use of open data research methods and the challenges and benefits of sharing and using open data. What followed was an interesting and stimulating series of talks from the expert panel and questions from the audience.

• Julian Tait (CEO, ) spoke persuasively about Open Data: Why are we doing this to ourselves? focusing on the problem of the varying degrees of quality found in published open datasets.
• Professor (University of 51¸£ÀûÉç) discussed open data sharing at CERN and in particle physics.
• Dr , (Lecturer in Management Science, AMBS) discussed Using Government Open Data for Research and her research on how open data impacts levels of government transparency, accountability, and corruption.

Below we are going to summarise the key points on the benefits and challenges to using open data in academic research today that were highlighted during the discussion, in addition to how open data sharing can be improved.

We hope it will inspire you to read more about open data research practices and the use of open data sharing in research and modern society more widely.

Open Data: benefits and challenges

• There is a considerable amount of rich and varied open data sources now available, and it is increasingly easy to access, however this means it is not always straightforward to find what you want online due to this complexity and when you do find what you’re looking for it can sometimes be poor quality and disorganised.
• Allows for increased transparency, reproducibility, and enhanced confidence in research conclusions, but in a research culture where the exposure of errors can be detrimental to academic careers, transparency can seem a risk not worth taking for many researchers.
• Open data sharing can increase research impact, collaboration opportunities, and citations via enhanced data discoverability and accessibility.
• Increasingly easy to use open data sources for teaching open research methods to students, however time and resource costs to prepare, curate, release and maintain open datasets.
• Useful for public engagement initiatives and open science activities, but with a risk of potential misuse by bad faith actors or misinterpretation without proper context.

Open Data: how can we improve it?

• Make open data more user-friendly! Organise open datasets so they are easy for people to find, navigate, and understand.
• Make open data more discoverable – be consistent with key words and persistent links (for example DOIs).
• Share open data with detailed metadata and documentation in the same location – increases usability as those that discover the data online will be more likely to reuse it if they can understand its relevance to their own research questions quickly.
• Make open data more accessible and readable to humans (and computers) – machine-readable metadata and licensing on how the data can be used are key here.
• Encourage transition to a more positive and understanding research culture. Researchers will be more likely to share data openly if they do not fear the negative repercussions of an error being identified in their data or code.

Opening up Research 2024/2025

‘Opening up Research’ is a collaborative effort involving the Office for Open Research (supported by the ), the representatives from the (UKRN), and .

The 2024/25 series concludes this year with 51¸£ÀûÉç Open Research Conference, which this year is a two-day event: 

• Day 1: Monday, 9 June 
• Day 2: Tuesday, 10 June  
• Location: Alliance 51¸£ÀûÉç Business School 

To see the full conference programme and book your place: 

Research Data Conversations

The next session will be led by , Research Associate in Health Inequalities and 2024-25. Hannah will lead a discussion on open data practices for qualitative health researchers and her Open Research Fellows project on developing a Data Note guide specifically for qualitative research datasets. .

• Date: Wednesday 28 May 2025
• Time: 12pm-1.30pm. These events are catered from 1pm, giving attendees the opportunity to continue the conversation and make connections over lunch.
• 12-1pm: Presentation and discussion.
• 1-2pm: Optional lunch and further conversations.
• Venue: Main Library, Ground Floor Seminar Room/Hybrid.