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

Norris, Emma; Clark, Kait; Munafò, Marcus; Jay, Caroline; Baldwin, Jessie; Lautarescu, Alexandra; Pedder, Hugo; Page, Mike; Rinke, Eike Mark; Burn, Charlotte; Cawthorn, William; Ballou, Nick; Glover, Scott; Evans, Samuel; Rossit, Stephanie; Soltanlou, Mojtaba; Wise, Emma; Kelson, Mark; Soliman, Nadia; Jones, Andrew J; Costello, Rianne; Smailes, David; Wilkinson, Laura; Piccardi, Elena Serena; Partridge, Adam; Hulme, Charlotte; Schultze, Anna; Pennington, Charlotte

Abstract

Objectives: Whilst the need for Open Research practices is well documented, there remains a lack of validated questionnaires to assess their prevalence. This study validated the Brief Open Research Survey (BORS) to measure Open Research awareness and uptake.
Methods: The survey was developed in six steps: 1) a scoping exercise collated previous questionnaires on Open Research, 2) a brief (<5 minutes) questionnaire was developed, 3) peer-reviewed, 4) piloted, 5) revised, and 6) the final questionnaire 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 prevalence of Open Research practices and track uptake of these over time.

Citation

Norris, E., Clark, K., Munafò, M., Jay, C., Baldwin, J., Lautarescu, A., Pedder, H., Page, M., Rinke, E. M., Burn, C., Cawthorn, W., Ballou, N., Glover, S., Evans, S., Rossit, S., Soltanlou, M., Wise, E., Kelson, M., Soliman, N., Jones, A. J., …Pennington, C. Development of the Brief Open Research Survey (BORS) to measure awareness and uptake of Open Research practices

• Working Paper Type: Preprint
• Online Publication Date: Jun 8, 2022
• Deposit Date: Jan 16, 2025
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 16, 2025
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.31222/osf.io/w48yh
• Keywords: Open Research, Open Science, meta research, transparency, UK Reproducibility Network, responsible research practices