Journal Hosting Service | The University of Edinburgh
Not a member yet
5244 research outputs found
Sort by
Two Decades of Conservation in Ladakh: Accessing the Achi Association (AA) and Achi Association India (AAI) Archives
Get PDFLadakh’s climatic conditions have preserved some of the most impressive monuments in the Himalaya. These temples trace the spread of Buddhism in the Western Himalaya and the development of artistic and architectural styles. However, they are increasingly under threat due to the introduction of modern construction materials and methods, as well as the intensification of climate change induced events. In 1999, Achi Association was formed to conserve temples belonging to the Drikung Kagyu sect of Tibetan Buddhism, one of the oldest orders in Ladakh, and one under which many of the earliest temples in the region were built. In 2010, the establishment of Achi Association India (AAI) expanded this to any Buddhist heritage in precarity throughout Ladakh, regardless of sect. With a quarter of a century of experience in the region, the two organizations collectively produced an impressive fountain of documents that chart and record all aspects of conservation work done across nine sites that date from the late 13th century to the 19th century. In this paper I scaffold an interdisciplinary approach to access these archives, which range from architectural surveys to community engagement reports, accentuating that conservation is a dialectic between stakeholders, where decisions made by conservators — shaped by their training and available technology — are interpreted by other stakeholders, namely locals and the clergy, through their own epistemic frameworks. Mapping the entirety of conservation and restoration, this paper covers multiple aspects of the process, including documentation, community engagement, technical procedures, and the ritual ramifications of decisions
An Examination of the Application of FAIR Data Principles to Institutional Research Management Data
Get PDFDefined by Wilkinson, M D, et al. 2016 in “The FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data mmanagement and stewardship” the FAIR data principles propose a framework to enable the findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability of scholarly data. But are there lessons which could be learned from this and applied to data arising from institutional research administrative processes?
Institutional data suffers from the same sorts of problems the FAIR principles were designed to overcome. In a large institution it can be difficult to know what data exists and how to locate it, difficult to access it and have it in a form which means it caninteract with other data without needing a great deal of manual intervention, which leads to barriers when wanting to reuse it.
This lightning talk examines some of the issues we might experience when applying FAIR data principles to institutional data, with an emphasis on research management data, who’s currently applying these principles and what we may need to do to adopt them within the University of Edinburgh
Is Knowledge Exchange the Silver Bullet for Fostering Open and Responsible Research and Innovation? A Case Study on Bulgaria
Get PDFBulgaria is one of the European countries with a very uneven Open and Responsible Research and Innovation (ORRI) landscape. On one hand, in terms of legal framework, the latest national law on scientific research from May 2024[1] places open research at the core of the scientific enquiry. It is supported by the Implementation Plan for the National Strategy for the Development of Scientific Research 2017–2030.
However, the national and institutional ORRI infrastructures in the country are not fully developed. There are only 11 institutional repositories from Bulgaria listed in the Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR). With 52 Universities and 42 academic institutes only within the Academy of Sciences, this evidence shows that the majority of institutions do not have visible digital repositories. Paradoxically, the major national repository BPOS (Bulgarian Portal for Open Science) is not listed in ROAR. In January 2025, 73,759 open-access (OA) publications were deposited in BPOS. There are 4292 registered users of this platform, while there are some 14,000 researchers in Bulgaria.[2] There is no information on any repositories in Bulgaria that support the deposit of research data, methodologies, or reuse tools, such as Jupyter Notebooks. These data demonstrate that the majority of Bulgarian researchers are not users of the national OA infrastructure, and the datasets deposit is still underdeveloped.
Furthermore, a recent study among researchers in Bulgaria found that only about one-third of recently surveyed academics are familiar with the EU\u27s OA goals.[3] The authors’ primary is to offer more OA training to researchers. In line with this recommendation, we present an ongoing project which contributes to capacity building with a particular focus on early-stage and experienced researchers.
This paper analyses the quadruple helix of ORRI in Bulgaria, exploring the role of government, academia, businesses and citizens. It draws from the experiences of the ORBIT[4] (Open Research Bulgarian Incubator) project funded by a cascading grant of the REINFORCING (https://openresearch.bg/). The University of Strathclyde in Glasgow contributed to the design and delivery of the knowledge exchange (KE) programme implemented by ORBIT.
This effort started with a co-creation phase involving local stakeholders (academics, citizens & businesses, and research managers & policy makers). This informed the design of workshops for experienced researchers and a Knowledge Exchange (KE) programme for PhD students. While stand-alone training programmes have a positive role in raising awareness, it is common that participants often lack sufficient support to implement what they have learned in real life. To provide additional support to the participants, ORBIT designed its own pedagogical approach which combines a stage of active knowledge acquisition (an intensive winter school), a stage for experimenting with a specific ORRI instrument with the support of a mentor (a mentorship programme), and an opportunity to present this experience to the wider community (dissemination during a final conference).
To measure the progress of participants, ORBIT also developed a self-assessment tool that captures researchers’ ORRI knowledge and skills. While various institutional self-assessment tools exist, the individual one is an innovative outcome and will help to measure the impact of ORRI KE.
Collaboration in designing training programmes helps to offer new programmes addressing specific needs. There are two major takeaways from the work of ORBIT. First, aligning knowledge exchange activities to specific local challenges and addressing the capabilities of the local researchers is a necessary preparatory step to offer a programme fine-tuned to the local needs. However, it is not always trivial, as for many countries, there is insufficient information on the local attitudes and needs in the domain of open research. To fill this gap, ORBIT organised a series of focus groups with different stakeholders. Second, for countries where researchers are not incentivised to contribute to open research through the existing research assessment processes, it remains vital to offer training that reinforces the skills and the usefulness of their efforts. This is why ORBIT opted for a mentoring programme. The future will show if this was a productive way forward.
I would like to conclude with a personal note of thanks to the organisers of the Edinburgh Open Research Conference. When I attended the conference in 2024, I was impressed by the diversity of institutional approaches to open research. This was a great personal inspiration for me in contributing to the design of the ORBIT activities. Seeing how many institutions offer different flavours and combinations of activities was really helpful and I think we will arrive at a deeper analysis on the usefulness of the various intervention as a community in the future. Beyond the number of attendees onsite and online and those who would check the digital presence, the Edinburgh Open Research series of conferences leads to a wider international impact in improving the open research practices. In this particular case it led to activities which directly impacted over 150 researchers and other stakeholders in Bulgaria, the first case studies of best practices from the country, and inspired the first national award.
[1] Law on the promotion of scientific research and innovation. Published in the State Gazette, No. 39, May 1, 2024 (in Bulgarian). https://lex.bg/bg/laws/ldoc/2137242579
[2] Deloitte (2013) Researchers’ Report 2013. Country Profile: Bulgaria. https://www.euraxess.lt/sites/default/files/policy_library/bulgaria_country_profile_rr2013_final.pdf
[3] Boock, M. et al. (2020), "Bulgarian authors’ open access awareness and preferences", Library Management, Vol. 41 No. 2/3, pp. 91-102. https://doi.org/10.1108/LM-08-2019-0059.
[4] ORBIT: “Open Research Bulgarian IncubaTor” is financed by REINFORCING Project funded by the EU (REINFORCING-I1_4)
Situated Design: Participatory exercises for an appropriate architecture within Wichi Indigenous communities in Argentina
Get PDFThe transfer of typologies, technologies and materials promoted by development programmes does not usually take into account the solutions of form and function with which the indigenous communities of Central Chaco give meaning to their architecture. The contents and designs promoted from a centralized management of decisions are implemented by agencies with the capacity to influence policies that are unaware of the local conditions and the trajectories of the peoples on which they have an impact. On the other hand, it will be shown how design education in Argentina focuses on other issues. From different theoretical guidelines of Latin American critical thought, the need to decolonize the principles of modernity towards alternatives where the point of origin is to be found in subaltern knowledge will be raised. Within this framework, the work explores the logics of the social construction of habitat through participatory design processes that allow the communities to be elevated as actors with their own voice and capacity to design programmes with local identity, through action research projects in the indigenous territory of Lhaka Honhat in the province of Salta, Argentina
Living Networks: re-imagining regional communities and their heritage
Get PDFWorking from the periphery on Djaara Country, Castlemaine Regional Victoria,140km out of Melbourne, our proposal starts from the centre of this old gold mining town and seeks to document and capture our more-than-architectural endeavour. For this narrative, the architect’s business is as much about observing and taking note, revealing and paying heed to the invisible and often intangible systems of just what’s there now. Drawing from a Kraussian expanded architectural field, we have evolved a design process of building site knowledge and context that uncovers the histories, peripheral stories, forgotten memories and patterns of occupation. In seeking solutions to accommodate a growing community, to house those now homeless and to give more agency to our Indigenous people, we reflect on currently accepted design strategies and propose an alternative model that rethinks property boundaries and ownership, occupancy and vacancy regulations. Our work has been resisting the additions of new buildings and instead foregrounds what already exists, to recast the accumulations of built fabric and of its interstitial landscapes as inherently value filled. In doing this we reveal an eclectic town fabric, a mix of industrial, Victorian and 20th century material that holds traces of past occupation but also reflects a kind of vibrant eclecticism that speaks more to a possible future than carbon-hungry developer-led solutions. Our essay will build an alternative spatial narrative that makes visible a process that tracks and traces the voices of those invisible and marginalized protagonists as well as the value of existing built fabric. What we aim to construct is not more built stuff, but a more robust future that accepts what is already there; the ordinary, the unremarkable as well as remarkable. Our conclusions and contributions are as much in spatialising and making active – sensible – those forgotten and intangible voices and peripheral built heritages
Parameterized Post-Friedmann Formalism for the Dark Scattering Model
Get PDFRecent results from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument find a preference for dynamical dark energy. This motivates improving the accuracy of predictions for dynamical dark energy models, including those which can resolve current tensions in the data, such as the dark scattering model. We improve the parameterized post-Friedmann approach for this model, reducing the error from approximately 1.3% to only 0.1%. Additionally, we show that the commonly used scale-independent approximation may not be completely accurate and, when applying the best-fit values from DESI on the dark scattering model, we predict an enhancement of the power spectrum at late times, worsening the S8 tension
Tibet through a Native Lens: Charles Alfred Bell’s Image-Archive and the Roles of his Photographic Interlocutors
Get PDFThis essay attempts to foreground the question of native agency in the making of the photographic archive of Charles Alfred Bell, British Political Officer for Sikkim, Bhutan and Tibet. It seeks to approach a new hermeneutics of British imperial archive-making vis-á-vis Tibet by assessing not only how native agency variously informed the sacerdotal, epistemic and technical content of most of Bell’s photographic archive, but also how such agency was central to its very process of visual production. By examining the roles of Rabden Lepcha, Sonam Wangyal or Palhese and Kartick Chandra Pyne, apropos their contribution to Bell’s visual archive, the essay shows how British imperial knowledge-construction on Tibet deployed native agency, thereafter relegating them (mostly) to archival silence. In the process, the essay demonstrates how these silences were not merely accidental, but fundamental to the process of knowledge-production on Tibet
Characteristics of Professionals Involved in Open Science in Ecology and Evolution
Get PDFUnderstanding how different demographics and professional groups support or engage with open science, as well as identifying those less involved, can help institutions, organisations, and policymakers create tailored recommendations, training resources, and support to increase engagement across these groups in open science practices. This can also help to normalise the collaborative and open process of knowledge mobilisation.
In this study, we surveyed ecological and evolutionary professionals to evaluate the influence of familiarity, attitudes, and factors such as experience and gender on engagement with open science. To achieve this, we conducted an online survey targeting a diverse group of stakeholders, including knowledge creators (working within research institutions), knowledge mobilisers within academia (e.g., journals, repositories, learned societies), and those outside academia (e.g., governments, industry, and charity organisations).
Our study revealed that familiarity with open science increases with years of experience but remains consistently high across professional groups. Participants identified positive aspects of open science, such as increased visibility, trust, collaboration, satisfaction, and efficiency. However, they also highlighted concerns, including financial and time costs, as well as a lack of personal or organisational rewards. Notably, while familiarity with open science grows with experience, researchers (knowledge creators) tend to perceive open science less positively as their experience increase
Open Source AI and Automated Science
Get PDFOur university has launched the first academic, large-scale automated science facility in the US. This facility will include shared data, compute, protocols, AI/ML, etc. that will empower open research. By emphasizing open data, open source software, and open source AI, this automated science facility represents a major opportunity for developing and sharing open research practices. This talk describes our university\u27s approach and platform, along with potential opportunities and challenges related to reproducibility, defining openness for AI, and examining changes in research practice.
Early examples include the benefits of audit trails or provenance with automated tools, balanced out by challenges associated with the opaqueness of AI. Additionally, there is early evidence that training of students might change as automated tools are used for tasks previously implemented by people. One of our university professors has developed an AI "co-scientist" to manage laboratory tasks. We are partnering with a researcher at another university, who is conducting an ethnographic study of how research and education practices are changing.
Regarding AI, our university is leading a multi-institution program focused on defining openness in AI, and outlining the various benefits and possible risks. This work builds upon the early work and initial version of the Open Source AI Definition, which was designed through a community process led by the Open Source Initiative. This concept of openness in AI has been noted in various AI forums, including the Paris AI Action Summit.
This talk relates to the conference topic of how technology, including AI, is helping or hindering open research good practice, particularly as it relates to automated science, across a range of scientific disciplines and lab practices for both research and education