Journal Hosting Service | The University of Edinburgh
Not a member yet
5244 research outputs found
Sort by
Driving culture change through Open Science: The Role of Research Funders
Get PDFOpen science initiatives share many similarities with movements dedicated to cultivating healthier and more inclusive research environments. UNESCO lists four values of Open Science that are also foundational to healthy and inclusive research cultures:
1. Quality and integrity,
2. Collective benefit,
3. Equity and fairness,
4. Diversity and inclusiveness.
In line with these values and in order to “change academia for the better” and to foster an “environment of active collaboration and participation”, the Netherlands has made a strategic commitment to Open Science. To realise this strategic ambition, the Dutch government has allocated significant funding (€20 million annually for 10 years) to facilitate the transition to open science. Open Science NL, which is part of the Dutch Research Council (NWO), has been established in 2023 to oversee the allocation of these funds.
Implementing open science is a complex endeavour that necessitates coordinated efforts from various stakeholders. Research funders in particular can have significant influence in driving change toward open science and healthier research cultures, as they can impact all five essential elements of culture change: 1. Policy (make it required); 2. Incentives (make it rewarding); 3. Communities (make it normative); 4. User Interface/Experience (make it easy) and 5. Infrastructure (make it possible).
This talk presented the strategy adopted by the Dutch Research Council and Open Science NL to drive the implementation of open science and to foster healthier research cultures, with concrete examples of implementation, across all five essential elements of culture change.
How do we measure success for Open Research?
Get PDFTo deliver the benefits of Open Research, increasing adoption of Open Research practices is a prerequisite. There is a growing need for reliable data on the extent to which Open Research (or Open Science) practices are being adopted: to better understand researchers’, support institutional planning, and to understand the effectiveness of interventions that are intended to change research culture and practice. The 2021 UNESCO recommendation on Open Science has necessitated the establishment of a global Open Science monitoring framework, and progress has in parallel been made at the national level in France, with the French Open Science Monitor. Further, research institutions in the UK will begin piloting, in 2024, new ways to monitor indicators of open research (science). Scholarly publishers and funding agencies with progressive policies on open science, beyond open access to publications, are also establishing monitoring approaches. The non-profit open access publisher PLOS for example launched ‘Open Science Indicators’, (OSI) an initiative that tracks adoption of Open Science practices – such as sharing data, code, protocols and preprints – over time in the scholarly literature supported by artificial intelligence. These OSIs were reused in the UK Committee on Research Integrity’s (UKCORI) 2023 report on research integrity in the UK, as a way to benchmark aspects of the transparency of UK research. PLOS, DataSeer and other solution providers are collaborating with the UK Reproducibility Network (UKRN) as part of their Open Research Indicators pilots. This poster demonstrates growing activity in the creation of new measures of research integrity and transparency from different stakeholders – meta-researchers, policy makers, research institutions, technology providers and publishers – and showcase examples. This poster also foregrounds the importance of establishing common principles for use and development of these new metrics / indicators. Such as pragmatism; transparency; reproducibility; efficiency; interoperability; aligning with community standards; responsible use; and acknowledging the limitations of quantitative metrics
Building the Data Steward Profession at UCL
No full textThis poster defines the data stewardship model adopted by Advanced Research Computing (ARC) at University College London (UCL), focusing on the formalisation and professionalisation of the research data steward role/job family. UCL’s Research Data group is actively engaged in supporting research services and collaborating within UCL and with other institutions on various research projects. ARC is both a research centre and a professional services provider, collaborating on numerous projects across various UCL departments, taking a holistic approach and providing tailored solutions. We showcase examples of these projects and the services we offer, including the Research Data Storage Service, Research Data Repository, and Electronic Research Notebook. Some flagship collaborative projects include Third-Party Datasets, where we assist in organising and streamlining datasets collected by UCL researchers, and E-Child, where our data stewards contribute to integrating health, education, and social care information for all children in England
Metadata Accelerator: Improving scientific data descriptions with Natural Language Processing methods (NLP) and Instant Feedback
No full textPromoting data availability and accessibility is a foundational principle of FAIR data guidance. However, better metadata is needed to ensure knowledge dissemination, highlighting the vital role of documenting research studies.
Aim: Develop an AI metadata enrichment tool focusing on named entities within unstructured textual data. Using text mining, Machine Learning, and NLP models like GPT and BERT, my strategic goal is to offer feedback on free text descriptions to improve metadata quality and dataset reusability
Beyond Open Research: Understanding What Matters for Quality and Reliability
Get PDFWhat really matters in research? What practices and behaviours lead to the highest quality? How can we recognise and incentivise those practices?
These are some of the questions we hope to answer at Imperial College London in a pioneering research culture project entitled ‘Beyond Open Research: Understanding What Matters for Quality and Reliability.’
Our vision is a research culture that:
recognises the public interest in high-quality, reliable research, and
incentivises the behaviours that lead to it.
Activities to support a positive research culture are distributed across many functional areas of the university, some exhibiting best practice, some unaware and most unrecognised. Moreover, it’s not clear what practices engender quality/reliability. In this phase, we unpick these challenges in data science, research data management and research software engineering.
There are two ways the project goes Beyond Open Research. Firstly, recognising that openness doesn’t by itself imbue research with quality, we address gaps in scrutiny of data, software and AI. Secondly, we examine the inputs, practices and outputs that matter – to researchers, staff and the public – to refocus recognition towards quality and reliability.
Through a participatory approach engaging research, academic, clinical and professional staff and the public, we’re:
identifying the status of Open Research within Imperial
exploring the challenges, questions and concerns of researchers and staff in engaging with responsible research practices around research data, software and AI
co-creating practical, stakeholder-led recommendations to embed transparency, reliability and trustworthiness.
Semi-structured interviews with experts will enrich the workshop findings, and a network of postgraduate Research Software Champions is raising the profile of software and development best practice among researchers.
To the best of our knowledge, this ambitious approach has never been attempted before at a British university. We have a rare opportunity to try to break free from the culture of publish-or-perish, in the interests of researchers and society.
We present the context and ambition of our vision, explore the value of meaningful engagement and share interim findings
Where Privacy Ends and Politics Begin: Case Comment on Association for Democratic Reforms v. Union of India
Get PDFIn February 2024, the Supreme Court of India unanimously struck down the Electoral Bond Scheme, which created a mechanism for unlimited funding to political parties by individuals or corporations, details of which were barred from being revealed to the public and excluded from the scope of right to information legislation. While striking down the Scheme as unconstitutional, the Court considers the right to privacy of political affiliation and assesses whether the Scheme balances the right to information of the voter with the right to privacy of the donors. This case comment places specific focus on this issue. I argue that while protecting the privacy of political affiliation is desirable in the age of algorithmic political surveillance, the majority opinion should have created stronger safeguards when extending such privacy to political contributions, to protect only genuine contributions by individuals and exclude corporations. With respect to the comparison of the rights to information and to privacy, I argue that the majority opinion rests on reasoning which may not be effective to protect the right to information in cases of public interest since it is focused on the degree of the bar on disclosure of information on political funding and whether the measure is the least restrictive method of balancing these rights. Restricted to the issue of this comparison, I argue that the concurring opinion of the Court provides the more effective precedent for the protection of the right to information in cases of public interest
Book review: Vulnerability and Data Protection Law
Get PDFThe author reviews Gianclaudio Malgieri\u27s book entitled "Vulnerability and Data Protection Law" (Oxford University Press 2023; 304 pages; ISBN 9780192870339; £90)
Is ‘Say-on-Pay’ the Most Reasoned Approach to Executive Remuneration Accountability?: An Assessment of the Meaningfulness of UK and US ‘Say-on-Pay’ Frameworks
Get PDFThis essay aims to contribute to the ongoing debate on the meaningfulness of ‘say-on-pay’ on the remuneration report as a corporate governance mechanism that aims to limit excessive executive remuneration and the harmfulness manifested by it in the UK and US. This will be achieved by contending that while this development in corporate governance has the potential to reduce the level of overly-exaggerated compensation packages, a greater emphasis needs to be placed on striking a balance between income fairness and aligning the interests of managers with shareholders to reduce overall agency costs. This argument will be made on the grounds that the current say-on-pay frameworks in the UK and the US are not only ineffectively designed, but also ineffectively utilised, given the observed low levels of voting dissent on remuneration policy
Reforming Rescue Mechanisms: A Close Examination of Part 26a in the Companies Act 2006
Get PDFA primary focus for governments globally is to strengthen their insolvency framework by introducing a flexible and versatile mechanism to provide maximum aid to financially distressed businesses with limited disruptions to their operations. Such measures would serve as a pillar for economic and financial stability by fortifying efficiency, maximizing creditors’ return, preserving the value of the business, and promoting employment.
The UK has been considered the centre for insolvency and restructuring avenues in the world providing effective insolvency law, an esteemed judiciary, and a hub for business-friendly investment. To strengthen its position amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, the UK introduced reforms under the Corporate Insolvency and Governance Act, 2020 (CIGA). A key reform introduced is the restructuring plan.
The article will examine the effectiveness of the new scheme against the backdrop of existing rescue mechanisms available in the UK. This article will primarily examine the current rescue mechanism and identify the gaps prevalent in the system. Subsequently, the article will identify the measures introduced under CIGA. This will be followed by the need to introduce a new super scheme and its overall effectiveness to achieve the intended purpose of its enactment.
To conclude, this article upholds the notion that a restructuring plan is an efficient instrument in the corporate rescue landscape and provides essential fundamental recommendations to strengthen the plan
