UK reproducible science project wins £8.5 million

A UK initiative to promote rigour and reproducibility in science has been awarded £8.5 million to encourage open research practices.

As part of one of the largest awards made to support robust and transparent research methods, the UK Reproducibility Network (UKRN) will receive £4.5 million from Research England as part of a five-year project to deliver training in open research practices.

A further £4 million will come from the network’s 18 university members, as well as other partner institutions including publishers Wiley and Springer Nature, Jisc and the Academy of Medical Sciences.

Initially the project will be delivered across the 18 university members, but the network is expected to grow over the five years of the award, making training and material available more widely across the sector.

It will also seek to develop a framework for ongoing evaluation of institutional practices and learning in open research and share effective practices among partner institutions and across the sector.

The project was described by UKNI as representing a “major strategic investment” by Research England to ensure the UK remains at the forefront of the open research agenda, and built on the recent announcement of UK Research and Innovation’s open access policy, which will require researchers backed by the country’s main funder to publish their outputs in open-access journals.

David Sweeney, executive chair of Research England, said that the funder’s support would “enable the network to scale up its activities, and accelerate the uptake of open research practices across the sector”.

“We know that increasing the transparency of the research process supports higher standards of research integrity, and drives up the quality and reach of research,” said Mr Sweeney, adding that Research England had “supported the UK Reproducibility Network since its inception.”

Marcus Munafò, professor of biological science at University of Bristol who chairs the network’s steering group, said that the project would “allow us to drive the uptake of open research practices across UK institutions and ensure this is done in a consistent and coordinated way”.

“Open research practices – making as much of the research process available for reuse and scrutiny as possible – have the potential to accelerate the advancement of knowledge and improve the quality of the research we produce,” said Professor Munafò.

“What is most exciting is that it represents a collaborative approach – multiple institutions working together to ensure the sector as a whole benefits.”

The Research England funding comes from its development fund, which commits up to £27 million in annual funding to support projects that aid the development of the UK’s higher education research and knowledge exchange activity.

Other institutional backers include the Data Readiness Group, Australia’s Griffith University, the Research on Research Institute, the Software Sustainability Institute, the UK Data Service and research integrity trainers VIRT2UE.

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com