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How to Share Your Reproducible Research Compendium

Reproducibility means publication over the internet. Now that you have created your research compendium, you can share it with other researchers in many different ways. For example, you can simply put it on your personal or institutional website. However, if your institution supports an OAI-compliant repository, it is much more advantageous to put your compendium on such a repository.

Free online availability substantially increases a paper’s impact Steve Lawrence NEC Research Institute Read the paper

Studies show that free on-line availability of research increases the impact of the research articles by providing better chances for publications to be read and cited. In this section we describe how a researcher can provide open access to his research compendia and enjoy the advantages.

  1. Self-Archiving– Providing Open Access to the Research Paper

To provide open access to research papers, all that is needed is for authors to exercise self-archiving, i.e. put copies of their “ articles ” on an open access website (ex. a personal or institutional website). The “ articles ” may be in preprint (pre-peer review or pre-refereeing) or postprint (after peer review or refereed) form.

According to Directory of Journal Self-Archiving Policies, of the nearly 10,100 journals surveyed, over 95% have already given their official permission to author self-archiving (63% for postprints, 32% for preprints), and many of the remaining 5% journals will agree if the author asks. For example IEEE allows authors to self-archive as long as an IEEE copyright notice is displayed on the same page.

  2. Open Licensing– Providing Open Access to the Code and Data

When a work is shared on the Web, the original expression of the idea falls automatically under copyright. However, authors can remove the copyright from the published code or data by using a suitable license of their choice. An author can choose a suitable license among many different existing licenses ensuring the specific legal requirements of each research project. A listing of more than sixty existing open-source licenses can be found on the Open Source webpage.

Some of popular and widely used licenses are GNU General Public License (GPL), Apache 2.0 license, Creative Commons licenses, and Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) license. Each license sets specific rights and obligations for other researchers to use the research compendium and build their works upon the performed work.

Moreover, a new licensing structure, adapted to reproducible research and called Reproducible Research Standard (RRS), has recently been proposed. This new standard is going to be an official mark of Science Commons providing researchers with a better legal framework for publishing their research compendia publicly.

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