The UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee has called for evidence on the roles that different stakeholders play in reproducibility and research integrity. Of central priority are proposals for improving research integrity and quality, as well as guidance and support for researchers. In response to this, we argue that there is one important component of research integrity that is often absent from discussion: the pedagogical consequences of how we teach, mentor, and supervise students through open scholarship. We justify the need to integrate open scholarship principles into research training within higher education and argue that pedagogical communities play a key role in fostering an inclusive culture of open scholarship. We illustrate these benefits by presenting the
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The above situation is likely to remain unchanged if initiatives that seek to incorporate open scholarly practices in teaching and mentoring continue to receive no support from stakeholders and no recognition or reward from institutional policies and procedures. In a typical University, for example, the time of faculty members and researchers is spread across teaching, research, and administration, and for those on research contracts, is focused on academic outputs, grants and external engagement. This lack of support and reward works as a disincentive to teaching through open scholarship and, therefore, to promoting best practice in research integrity and culture. As a result, even though the wave of scientific reform is influencing scientific practices and norms globally, the current model of higher education is largely outdated with respect to open scholarship with many students finishing their degree without ever learning about the ‘credibility crisis’ or open scholarship practices [
We propose that pedagogical communities play a fundamental role in incorporating open scholarship in higher education with the view to improve future research practice and culture. Pedagogical communities are educationally-oriented ‘open science communities’ [
In what follows, we outline the advantages of integrating open scholarship into higher education. We discuss what pedagogical communities can bring to the open scholarship movement, and exemplify their potential benefits with one such community. We call for greater collaboration between pedagogical communities and all the stakeholders of research to minimise the demands of introducing open scholarship pedagogy and to improve—and make future-proof—research integrity.
Teaching open scholarship benefits students, researchers, and society.
First, undergraduate and postgraduate students in social and health sciences are unnecessarily disadvantaged if they wish to have a research career inside or outside academia. Open scholarship is generally not taught in higher education but is increasingly being practiced in research, and this misalignment is compounded by the fact that the standard practices being taught to students tend to not prioritise research transparency or quality (e.g., by reporting post-hoc analyses as confirmatory, discouraging replication studies, focusing on novel research). By supporting the teaching of open scholarship at the undergraduate and postgraduate level, pedagogical communities help improve the quality of research produced by future generations of career researchers.
Second, from the perspective of researchers, the integration of open and reproducible practices into teaching facilitates the alignment between research belief and research practice. We argue that open research is incomplete without open educational practices. Core values such as openness, transparency, inclusivity, accessibility, and reproducibility are not exclusive to research alone and should be embedded in teaching. Training our future researchers and consumers of science through open scholarship allows open science practices to become the norm and to be passed on to the next generation, cumulatively consolidating the foundation for a more reproducible and inclusive science.
Third, integrating open scholarship into higher education advances social justice which, whilst being the most fundamental, is arguably one of the most overlooked tenets of contemporary scholarship [
While there are few notable exceptions, e.g., [
Fostering a culture of open scholarship practices through communities (e.g., Framework for Open and Reproducible Research Training (FORRT;
Pedagogical communities also offer a low-entry point into improved research and pedagogical practices. As pedagogical communities welcome scholars from all levels, and often particularly early career researchers, they are an accessible space for educators wishing to learn and practice open scholarship. By cutting across career stages, these communities become essential to instilling the revised values and norms of open scholarship.
Further, pedagogical communities play a key role in offering a sense of community to those who would otherwise be deprived of such a learning opportunity when there are fewer top-down initiatives and infrastructure to encourage change. As such, these communities are essential to address recent concerns regarding the lack of diversity in the open scholarship movement, e.g., [
We argue the integration of open scholarship into higher-education should not be seen as an additional layer to existing reform proposals—e.g., methodological reform, research ethics and integrity, societal impact, diversity and inclusion—but rather one that can unite them. Pedagogical communities provide an alternative to the current academic reality by creating and implementing fairer norms; building the foundations for an inclusive and safe environment welcoming to all people and perspectives; working towards crediting members for their work and helping them claim it; and creating didactic resources that unburden educators and unravel the hidden curricula. Whether focusing on creating and developing new methods of education, addressing the new challenges of curricular reforms ensuing from new and improved research norms, or highlighting the importance of epistemic, cultural, and demographic diversity, pedagogical communities are central to a broad range of solutions ensuing from the credibility revolution [
Established in 2018, the Framework of Open and Reproducible Research Training (FORRT) is one such pedagogical community aiming to build, together with educators and students, a pathway to the stepwise adoption of principled, open teaching and mentoring practices, whilst also generating a conversation about the ethics and social impact of higher-education pedagogy. It responds to calls for a wider interpretation of open scholarship as inclusive scholarship, e.g., [
To achieve its aims, FORRT has accomplished 12 unique initiatives to date [
Taken together, these initiatives contribute to advance the open scholarship movement insofar as they provide scholars and educators with resources aiding the learning and subsequent integration of open principles into their research pipeline, teaching, and mentoring.
We hope to have exemplified how pedagogical communities bring important benefits to expand the reach of the open scholarship movement and create a culture of open scholarship involving scholars, educators, students, and consumers of science.
Although there is momentum behind improving research quality, longer-term and far-reaching change both in practice and in culture is only possible with initiatives that train high quality research practices within higher education. Regrettably, to date, the responsibility for incorporating open scholarship into education and training has heavily relied on the initiative of individual early adopters of the scholarship movement. Most initiatives lack support and financial incentives from academic institutions and thus governance, scholarly societies and funding agencies hold a vital role in the sustainability of such communities and subsequent impact.
The FORRT community has developed an Open Scholarship Glossary with more than 250+ defined terms, 200+ article summaries, lesson plans and + 60 activities. These are just three of twelve current FORRT initiatives, providing a rigorous and inclusive foundation for engaging with, and sharing, the open scholarship movement and yet these have been completed without funding and without substantive stakeholder investment. Science is a collaborative effort and we aim to better integrate with stakeholders in education and research to provide coherent support for these communities (e.g. in the form of recognition of open scholarship practices in hiring and promotion criteria, support for research knowledge exchange events, and facilitating cross-discipline collaboration to develop inclusive and widely applicable open scholarship teaching materials).
In conclusion, we (a) stress that it is critical to embed training in reproducibility and research integrity into higher education pedagogy to ensure long-term sustainable change; and (b) call for greater collaboration with pedagogical communities, paving the way for a much needed integration of top-down and grassroot open scholarship initiatives.
A policy-driven (and longer) version of this paper—focusing more on role stakeholders play in supporting open scholarship communities—was published (RRE0080; in html or pdf, see it also in FORRT’s Publication page) by the Science and Technology Committee of the UK Parliament as evidence for its inquiry on reproducibility and research integrity. We would like to thank David Moreau for his comments on an earlier draft, and all FORRT members who have contributed to our positive community development and projects.
Conceptualization: FA. Project administration: FA. Writing—original draft: FA, ML, CRP, MP, TRE, SP, MME, and LM. Writing—review and editing: FA, ML, CRP, MP, TRE, SP, MME, LM, and SJW. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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All resources discussed in this article are available at forrt.org.
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The authors declare no competing interests.
Framework for Open and Reproducible Research Training
Crowdsourced Replication Project, ReproducibiliTea
Reproducibility for Everyone
Open Science Communities
Principles and Practices of Open Research: Teaching, Research, Impact, And Learning
Teaching Integrity in Empirical Research
Reproducible, Interpretable, Open, Transparent Science Club
Open Scholarship Knowledge Base
Berkeley Initiative for Transparency in the Social Sciences
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