Development of the Brief Open Research Survey (BORS) to measure awareness and uptake of Open Research practices

Abstract

Objectives: Whilst the need for Open Research practices is well documented, there remains a lack of validated questionnaires to assess their prevalence. This study validated the Brief Open Research Survey (BORS) to measure Open Research awareness and uptake. Methods: The survey was developed in six steps: 1) a scoping exercise collated previous questionnaires on Open Research, 2) a brief (<5 minutes) questionnaire was developed, 3) peer-reviewed, 4) piloted, 5) revised, and 6) the final questionnaire was distributed to researchers across universities in the UK Reproducibility Network. Results: Respondents (n = 1,274) reported being most aware of Open Access Publications (94.1%), Preprints (85.3%), and Open Data (83.4%) and least aware of Registered Reports (38.1%), Study Preregistration (50.8%) and Research Co-production (53.7%). They reported having mostly used Open Access Publications (77.8%), Preprints (56.5%) and Open Data (52.5%) and having least used Registered Reports (8.7%), Replication Studies (16.3%), and Study Preregistration (25.3%). The most commonly reported areas of support required to enable Open Research were incentives (51%), dedicated funding (46.2%), and recognition in promotion and recruitment criteria (39.6%). Conclusion: We developed the Brief Open Research Survey that can be used to assess prevalence of Open Research practices and track uptake of these overtime.