Implementing Open Science Principles through Research Partnerships

Abstract

The paper highlights partnership initiatives underway by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) to apply the recommendations in the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s “Open Science by Design” to research and library partnerships. It presents several initiatives including (1) the partnership on research data management policy implementation with the Association of American Universities (AAU) and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU); (2) partnering with scholarly societies and research communities on a shared agenda to move towards open scholarship; and (3) strategic collaborations within institutions to advance research integrity as scholarship and information transform. Following a 2018 workshop on public access to research data—attended by 30 institutional cross-functional teams from US and Canadian universities, and sponsored by the National Science Foundation—ARL, AAU, and APLU agreed to work with the institutional teams on FAIR data implementation within and across institutions of higher education. This paper will highlight the specific areas we are focused on, progress to date, and next steps. In 2018 ARL and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) convened several scholarly societies in the social sciences, resulting in five projects among research community stakeholders to advance open scholarship. The report can be found here. In 2019 the Association will work with societies in STEM fields on developing guidance on research data appraisal and retention, and with societies in the Humanities on aligning digital stewardship guidelines with scholar-created evaluation guidelines. The paper will highlight the principles behind these efforts, and the opportunity presented by bringing together scholars, societies, research libraries, library publishers, university presses, and investors. Ultimately, the value of research is judged on its integrity, its dissemination and reuse. As collaborative partners, research libraries are integral to knowledge creation and barrier-free and enduring access to information. The paper highlights emerging roles and types of institutional partnerships as research libraries transform with the changing conditions of scholarship. The paper concludes with a reflection on where we are in partnerships for open science, and what we seek to achieve in the next 2–3 years.