Open science

Open science has urged the whole research community to think about how to increase the transparency of research and how to change the ways in which:

• researchers are evaluated and rewarded (see the section below on Hanken's guidelines on responsible research evaluation);                            

• research is carried out and non-professional/amateur scientists can be involved in research not as the subjects but authors of it (see the section below on Citizen science);

                                                                  Picture: Rutgers.edu

• research results are disseminated (see the section below on Improve the visibility and impact of your research).

                                                 Picture: boneandjoint.org.uk.

Hanken adheres to good scientific practices and code of conduct for research integrity specified by the Finnish National Board on Research Integrity (TENK) for handling suspected deviations and avoiding any misconduct including fabrication, falsification, cheating, plagiarism, and misuse. TENK’s code of conduct is complemented by a national recommendation – Good practice in research evaluation. Recommendation for the responsible evaluation of a researcher in Finland.

Hanken follows the national and international initiatives and development in responsible research assessment, and has signed San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) and Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) agreement. In the implementation of its CoARA Action Plan 2024, Hanken recognizes and merits diverse outputs, practices, and activities to enhance research quality and impact. Research assessment is based primarily on qualitative judgement through peer review, supplemented by responsible use of quantitative indicators. Hanken has allocated resources to reforming research assessment criteria, tools, and processes to incorporate national and international guidelines and standards into the existing assessment practices.

According to the national recommendation and CoARA, open science is taken into account and valued in funding and employment decisions. A variety of activities such as peer review, training, mentoring and supervision of doctoral researchers, leadership roles, science communication and interaction with society, entrepreneurship, knowledge valorisation, and industry-academia cooperation are considered as academic merits and part of research evaluation. The full range of research outputs in different languages and formats such as scientific publications, data, methods, software, algorithms, protocols, workflows, theoretical frameworks, exhibitions, strategies, policy contributions, as well as research behaviour underpinning open science practices including early sharing, publishing open access to scholarly publications, research data and methods, and open collaboration within science and with societal actors, are all recognized in research assessment of both individual researchers and research performing organisations. Non-discriminatory incentives for research and open access to scholarly publications are connected to Hanken’s Publication awards system.

Hanken recommends researchers to use TENK’s Template for researcher’s curriculum vitae which includes open science and research activities and aims to present a researcher’s research and impact merits as comprehensively and comparably as possible. Furthermore, Hanken uses qualitative information in research evaluation such as narratives and case descriptions of research quality and impact.

Altmetrics (alternative metrics) services including Altmetric and PlumX have been integrated into Haris public portal as a complement to traditional, citation-based metrics to measure the impact of research and display how much and what a wider range of types of attention a research output has received in the society. Hanken encourages researchers to actively inform the academic community about their research, make the general public aware of it, take part in societal discussion, and support citizen science, in order to facilitate innovation and cooperation within the academic community, between research and industry, and between science and society at large.

                       Picture: European Commission.

Citizen science is listed as one of the notable open science practices by the EU's open science policy. The term citizen science can be described as the voluntary participation of non-professional scientists in scientific research process and activities in different possible ways: as observers, as funders, from shaping research agendas and policies, to gathering, processing and analysing data, and assessing the outcomes of research. The term also refers to the public’s better understanding of science through open publications, research data and process. Citizen science allows for the democratisation of science and reinforces societal trust in science.

In responsible citizen science, it is important that the people are not the subjects of the research but the authors of it. Citizen science requires that:

• Amateur scientists are involved at least at one stage of the research.
• Amateur scientists are not the subjects of the research but the authors of it.
• Research must usually be led by a trained researcher.

The researcher need to ensure that the amateur scientists are offered material in a sufficiently general language during and after the research.

See example projects in the Zooniverse – People-powered research.

Video: Citizen Science: Opening up science to society, EU Science & Innovation.

Communicating research outputs can improve your visibility and impact as a researcher. It is important to formulate your own communication strategy and employ different ways to increase the visibility and impact of your research. It is always beneficial to publish your article in a journal which is indexed in the most popular databases such as Scopus and Web of Science. This improves the visibility of the article in the research community. There are, however, many other ways to increase the visibility and impact of your research, for example:

• Open accessibility of your research outputs: 

When publications and research data are published freely accessible, they are more used and cited. Open access and open data increase the visibility and impact of your research, speed up the adoption of your research findings, and facilitate disciplinary and interdisciplinary collaboration. 

It is recommended to provide open access to research outputs beyond publications and data (e.g., research methods, software tools, models, apps) and share them as widely as possible.

• Registering your publications and research data in Haris: 

Haris public portal pulls data from Haris database, and is also integrated with researchers’ personal Hanken webpages. These three together publicly display Hanken researchers' publications, data, activities, and projects, and improves the visibility of Hanken’s research achievements on both institutional level and researchers’ individual level.  

• Early sharing of research:

It is also recommended to share your research as early as possible. Horizon Europe, for example, recommends early open sharing of research which supports research reproducibility and helps researchers secure precedence over their findings and conclusions. Examples of early-sharing practices include preregistration, registered reports, and preprints:

• Preregistration separates hypothesis-generating with existing observations (exploratory) from hypothesis-testing with new observations (confirmatory). Progress in science relies on both. But the same data cannot be used to generate and test a hypothesis. Ordinary biases in human reasoning such as hindsight bias can happen and reduce the credibility of the research results. Preregistration of the research plan in a public repository such as OSF makes available the research hypothesis, study design and planned analysis before data is collected. Preregistration increases the transparency, credibility and reproducibility of the results and helps addressing publication bias toward positive findings. More information, see Future-proof your research. Preregister your next study by the Centre for open science.

• Registered reports are research articles that are peer-reviewed and published in two stages. The study design and analysis plan including hypothesis and methodology undergo peer-review of the quality and suitability of the research question and protocol. If accepted, research protocols are preregistered and the final research article is provisionally accepted for publication. After the research is conducted, an article containing the results and discussion as well as any changes is submitted and undergoes a second round of peer-reviewing. The image below by the Centre for open science illustrates this process:

Registered reports get expert reviewer feedback when it is most useful and can have higher acceptance rate. They are accepted before you start data collection and analysis and will be published based on the quality of the research, regardless of the eventual results. 

Registered reports offer a remedy for a range of reporting and publication biases, promotes research reproducibility, transparency and self-correction, and can help reshape how society evaluates research and researchers (See Chambers, Christopher D. and Loukia Tzavella. 2022. The past, present and future of Registered Reports. Nature Human Behaviour 6, 29–42. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01193-7). 

A majority of registered reports were submitted by early career researchers, and there are a number of rewards for junior researchers who choose to submit registered reports. You can find the FAQs, the list of Participating journals and their guidelines on the page Registered Reports: Peer review before results are known to align scientific values and practices of the Centre for open science. A number of the journals are within economics and business administration fields.

• Preprints are scientific manuscripts that are publicly shared prior to peer-review and journal publication via preprint platforms such as Zenodo, Preprints, SocArXiv and arXiv.

• Networks in social media: 

Social media offer opportunities for researchers to network with their colleagues and make their research visible to both their peers and the general public, for example, ResearchGate, Academia.edu, Mendeley, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Note that it is recommended to share the information about your research via the above-mentioned social media to increase the visibility and impact of your research. Researchers are, however, responsible for any content they upload or share via social media, which is protected by copyright. Check in advance each publisher’s self-archiving policy if you have the necessary right to share a version of your publications through these forums.

• Researcher profiles: You can create your researcher profiles in different citation databases. 
  • Profile in Scopus, Scopus Author Identifier, and Scopus Affiliation Identifier: Scopus automatically creates researcher profiles with author identifiers. Researchers can request for corrections, if needed.
  • Web of Science Researcher Profiles: After registration in the ResearcherID service, researchers can create a researcher profile and through it maintain their list of publications. They can also supplement their profiles with affiliation information and monitor both the citation data and h-index from the Web of Science.
  • Google Scholar profile: Google Scholar does not automatically create profiles for researchers. However, you can create a Google account and collect all your articles found in Google Scholar to your My Citations page. The profile can be made public or kept private.

• Researcher IDs:
  • ORCID: ORCID provides a persistent and unique digital identifier for researchers. The identifier automatically links researchers and all their publications and other research products. See Create and connect your ORCID ID in Haris. 
  • Web of Science: ResearcherID.

  • Scopus: Scopus Author Identifier, Scopus Affiliation Identifier.

• Use Altmetrics: 

Altmetrics (alternative metrics), often called the next-generation metrics, serve as a complement to traditional, citation-based metrics to showcase how much and what a wider range of types of attention a research output has received in society. Altmetrics services including Altmetric and PlumX have been integrated into Haris public portal. More information, see Altmetrics in the LibGuide on Bibliometrics. 

• Be involved in Citizen science. 

• Policy for open scholarship, Open Science Coordination in Finland, Federation of Finnish Learned Societies (TSV) (2022).
• Good practice in researcher evaluation. Recommendation for the responsible evaluation of a researcher in Finland, Working group for responsible evaluation of a researcher, the Committee for Public Information in Finland (TJNK) and Federation of Finnish Learned Societies (TSV) (2020).
• Responsible metrics in Hanken's LibGuide on Bibliometrics.