Awareness and use of open research practices: an international survey of researchers across disciplines

Pennington, CR, Norris, E, Skubera, M, Ba, Y, Moffat, R, Amaral, OB, Adamkovič, M, Adıgüzel, A, Almeida, RA, Baldwin, JR, Ballou, N, Behrens, LMP, Bertram, MG, Bjerke, IE, Blackwell, SE, Bochynska, A, De Boer, MR, Buljan, I, Canales-Aguirre, CB, Carey, H et al (2026) Awareness and use of open research practices: an international survey of researchers across disciplines. Royal Society Open Science, 13 (8). ISSN 2054-5703

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Abstract

This mixed methods study investigates international researchers' awareness and use of open research practices and explores variations across regions, disciplines, methodologies and career stages. A total of 3017 researchers across 45 countries and 24 disciplines completed the Brief Open Research Survey, reporting their awareness and use of 11 common open research practices and factors that would support their adoption. Across the sample, respondents reported high awareness of open access publications, preprints and open data, and awareness only fell below 50% for research co-production and registered reports. Use was high for open access publications, but fell below 50% for preprints, open data, open research, open materials, open peer review, open code, preregistration, research co-production, replication and registered reports. Awareness and use varied across the sampled regions (e.g. Europe versus Asia), disciplines (e.g. psychology versus physical sciences), methodologies (e.g. quantitative versus qualitative) and career stages (e.g. PhD students versus professors). Respondents reported that the top five supportive strategies were incentives from funders, institutions and regulators; dedicated funding; recognition in promotion and recruitment criteria; more training; and more information. Qualitative responses provide insight into challenges and opportunities. Estimates of awareness can guide training initiatives, while estimates of use can inform policy development and longitudinal evaluations of behaviour change. Variations between regions, disciplines, methodologies and career stages should be acknowledged.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	open research; open science; regional differences; discipline differences; methodology; research reform; meta-research; research policy; 46 Information and Computing Sciences; 4610 Library and Information Studies; Generic health relevance
Subjects:	L Education > LB Theory and practice of education L Education > LB Theory and practice of education > LB2300 Higher Education Z Bibliography. Library Science. Information Resources > ZA Information resources
Divisions:	Psychology (from Sep 2019)
Publisher:	The Royal Society
Date of acceptance:	29 May 2026
Date of first compliant Open Access:	22 October 2026
Date Deposited:	22 Oct 2026 10:48
Last Modified:	22 Oct 2026 10:48
DOI or ID number:	10.1098/rsos.260462
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/29728

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