OSCARRs Award: Open Scholarship

The OSCARRs celebrate Dartmouth researchers' pursuit of the ideals of Open Scholarship.

Open Scholarship is an ethos and practice that prioritizes accessibility, accountability, transparency, and inclusivity in the research process. This values-driven approach recognizes that the pursuit of knowledge is a shared endeavor. When scholars can more freely share their work and ideas and when the public can more easily access high-quality research that has been subject to rigorous peer-review and testing, then the benefits of this research may be maximized for the greater good.

At its core, Open Scholarship seeks to democratize access to research outputs - including publications, data, methodologies, and education resources. Yet, high-quality, ethical Open Scholarship also protects the privacy and rights of research subjects. It emphasizes the responsibility of researchers to build equitable, just, collaborative, and mutually-beneficial relations with the communities they study, live among, and work in while still protecting the independence of the research process.

Key components of Open Scholarship include:

• reproducible research - others can verify, replicate, and build on your findings
• open access - others can freely access your scholarship
• open data - others can access and use your non-confidential data
• clearly documented and reproducible methods - others can follow, adapt, or replicate your research process
• thorough documentation - others can find the answers to common questions in your detailed project documentation
• inclusive and participatory research - other stakeholders are included in the research process, ensuring that this research is responsive to the needs of various communities
• accountable and ethical research practice - research is conducted responsibly with respect for the autonomy and rights of all individuals and communities involved

Pursuit of these different aspects of Open Scholarship necessitates improved data curation practices, the focus of the OSCARRs. The best Open Scholarship scholars often practice and advocate for the FAIR principles of data management and curation. FAIR stands for data that are findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable. Scholars from other disciplines, however, argue for practices that incorporate other considerations (such as ethics, responsibility to communities, and the recognition of the complex social context in which data are created). Thus, the more expansive FAIREST Principles serve as the guiding metric for the selection of OSCARR winners.

Exemplary Open Scholarship Projects

Sciences

Hadfield, James, Colin Megill, Sidney M Bell, John Huddleston, Barney Potter, Charlton Callender, Pavel Sagulenko, Trevor Bedford, and Richard A Neher. “Nextstrain: Real-Time Tracking of Pathogen Evolution.” Edited by Janet Kelso. Bioinformatics 34, no. 23 (December 1, 2018): 4121–23. https://github.com/nextstrain

Social Sciences

Improving African Futures Using Lessons from the Past - Digital Exhibits. “About,” May 9, 2019. https://exhibits.library.uvic.ca/spotlight/iaff/about/about.

Humanities

Blevins, Cameron; Helbock, Richard W., 2021, "US Post Offices", https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/NUKCNA, Harvard Dataverse, V1.

Medicine 

All of Us. https://www.researchallofus.org/; research projects directory: https://www.researchallofus.org/research-projects-directory/