March 14, 2022 Project deliverable Open Access

Cole, Nicki Lisa; Reichmann, Stefan; Ross-Hellauer, Tony

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{
  "publisher": "Zenodo", 
  "DOI": "10.5281/zenodo.6276753", 
  "language": "eng", 
  "title": "Global Thinking. ON-MERRIT recommendations for maximising equity in open and responsible research", 
  "issued": {
    "date-parts": [
      [
        2022, 
        3, 
        14
      ]
    ]
  }, 
  "abstract": "<p>Open and responsible research has the potential to profoundly alter the who, what,&nbsp;why, when and how of knowledge-creation. Yet it is not a destiny. The ways we&nbsp;implement change today will have long-lasting consequences for the kind of open&nbsp;and responsible research ecosystem we inhabit tomorrow. For that future to be one&nbsp;more equitable than today&rsquo;s world, critical consideration must be given to the ways in&nbsp;which agendas of openness are shaped by those in positions of power and privilege,&nbsp;and might hence reflect or even reinforce global dynamics of inequity.&nbsp;</p>\n\n<p>ON-MERRIT is an EC-funded project to investigate dynamics of cumulative&nbsp;advantage and threats to equity in the transition to Open Research and Responsible&nbsp;Research &amp; Innovation (RRI) across a range of stakeholder categories (in particular&nbsp;for those at the periphery) and multiple dimensions of Open Research, as well as its&nbsp;interfaces with industry and policy. Our results found many areas of concern, from&nbsp;which we identified four key areas of risk:</p>\n\n<ul>\n\t<li>Resource-intensity of Open Research: Putting open and responsible research into&nbsp;practice requires considerable resources (including infrastructures, services, and&nbsp;training). The structural inequalities that exist within institutions, regions and nations,&nbsp;and on a global scale, create structural advantages for well-resourced actors and&nbsp;structural disadvantages for less-resourced actors, in terms of capacity and ability to&nbsp;engage in these practices.</li>\n\t<li>Article-processing charges and the stratification of Open Access publishing: The&nbsp;article processing charge (APC)&nbsp; model within Open Access publishing seems to&nbsp;discriminate against those with limited resources (especially those from less-resourced&nbsp;regions and institutions). These facts seem to be having effects of&nbsp;stratification in terms of who publishes where.&nbsp;</li>\n\t<li>Societal inclusion in research and policy-making: Open and responsible research&nbsp;processes take place within broader social systems where inequalities continue to&nbsp;structure access and privilege certain actors while others are&nbsp;disadvantaged. Despite&nbsp;laudable aims of equity, inclusion and diversity in open and responsible research, the&nbsp;most marginalised, vulnerable, and poor remain mostly excluded.&nbsp;</li>\n\t<li>Reform of reward and recognition: Institutional processes for reward and recognition&nbsp;not only do not&nbsp;sufficiently&nbsp;support the uptake of open and responsible research, but&nbsp;often get in the way of them. This disadvantages those who wish to take up these&nbsp;practices (putting early-career researchers especially at risk).</li>\n</ul>", 
  "author": [
    {
      "family": "Cole, Nicki Lisa"
    }, 
    {
      "family": "Reichmann, Stefan"
    }, 
    {
      "family": "Ross-Hellauer, Tony"
    }
  ], 
  "version": "1.0", 
  "type": "report", 
  "id": "6276753"
}