Projects

Here you can find some information about some of projects and activities undertaken by Open Research Champions. If you want to find out more, please contact Champions directly.

Open Research Survey 2021
Champions: Auvikki de Boon, Peter Bray, Marcello De Maria, Dan Brady, Kirsty Hodgson, Sophie Read, Brendan Williams
Schools: All

In Autumn 2021 the Champions distributed a University-wide Open Research Survey to map the current landscape of Open Research knowledge, practices and needs. The results of the survey will help Champions to support their peers and colleagues most effectively, and will inform University strategy and service provision. Preliminary results were reported at the December 2021 Open Research Forum and a blog post summarising the findings has been published. Findings and recommendations will be reported to the Committe on Open Research and Research Integrity in March 2022. This project has been led by Champions for the Schools of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences and Agriculture, Policy and Development, and has benefited from the input and support of all Champions.

Electronic lab notebooks pilot
Cristiana Bercea
School: Chemistry, Food and Pharmacy

From Summer 2021 Cristiana has been working with lab groups in the School of Chemistry, Food and Pharmacy to investigate the potential of using a digital alternative to the hard-copy lab notebook. The aim of the study is to develop evidence-based requirements for an electronic lab notebook (ELN) solution and to encourage researchers to engage with the possibilities of the digital notebook. Participating researchers have been using OneNote instead of hard-copy notebooks. Although OneNote is a generic notebook solution, it possesses many of the core features and can be just as effective as specialised ELN products. There is further guidance on ELNs here.

Open hardware community
Al Edwards
School: Chemistry, Food and Pharmacy

Open hardware is reproducible research equipment built using Open Source designs and low-cost, accessible componenets such as Raspberry Pi computer boards, consumer electronics and 3D printed parts. Al Edwards is building an open hardware community at the University. You can join the community’s Open Lab Team and come along to its regular meetings to find out more and meet fellow makers from a range of different disciplines. Al is planning to run a hackathon on campus when conditions permit. This Open Research Case Study will tell you about Al’s adventures in open hardware.

A member of the open hardware community, Eva Kevei (Associate Professor, Biomedical Sciences), is leading a one-year project ‘One Image: Exploring Open Source Digital Imaging for Research’, funded by RETF in January 2022. A number of collaborators in the Schools of Biological Sciences and Chemistry, Food and Pharmacy will design, build and test imaging equipment for applications including: measuring bacteria growth to tackle antimicrobial resistance (Glyn Barrett, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology); studying microbes relevant to food and health (Al Edwards, Pharmaceutics); tracking worms to study neurodegeneration (Eva Kevei); analysis of human blood platelets (Chris Jones, Biomedical Sciences); recording zebrafish behaviour (Alice Pollitt, Biomedical Sciences); and monitoring chemical oscillations in gel to model biological oscillations (Yoshikatsu Hayashi, Biomedical Engineering).