Strengthen the Interoperability and Reusability of Research Outputs (SIRRO)
Rigorous design, transparent reporting, and reproducible workflows are major factors strengthening the interoperability and reusability of research data and are hence crucial to increase the value of research data and, more broadly, the value of research outputs. The aims of the SIRRO project are to 1) fortify SwissRN as an existing community engaging with ORD practices that have the goal of strengthening interoperability and reusability, and 2) intensify the efforts of SwissRN towards a systematic assessment of the impact and obstacles in the implementation of ORD practices.
More specifically, the focus of this project is on the ORD practices of preregistration and data management planning as measures to avoid bias and to increase quality. The project contains four parts:
- Assessment of researchers’ understanding and perception of ORD practices across disciplines and their perceived impact on careers.
- Assessment of types of research outputs that are already produced and disciplinary differences herein.
- Assessment of hurdles and incentives for a community, here researchers in animal studies, to adopt preregistration and data management practices.
- Develop and dispense appropriate training activities on preregistration, data management practices and good research practices in general.
Funded by swissuniversities Swiss Open Research Data Grants program Track A, August 2022
Why preregistration? Ask the Texas sharpshooter
Work packages
Survey
What is the understanding of ORD practices, and rigorous, transparent, and reproducible research practices more generally, across disciplines? What is the perceived impact of ORD related requirements on careers?
→ Large-scale, interdisciplinary survey together with FORS (Swiss Centre of Expertise in the Social Sciences)
Population: Researchers working at Swiss universities and universities of applied sciences
Goals:- Cover all types of research;
- Compare groups
- Cluster Sampling (approx. 1500 institutes), multi-stage stratified sampling with over-sampling of some disciplines
- Questions not normatively suggestive
- Link to evaluation practices & barriers: feasibility of ORD implementation
Assessment
What are research outputs? All digitally available information required to- reproduce research results
- validate conclusions
- reuse research data in further projects
- raw and processed data
- all software components of the research pipeline
- preregistrations and/or protocols
- standard operating procedures
→ Exploratory data analysis with publicly available data from the SNSF
Feasibility
What are the hurdles for a community to adopt preregistration as a measure more widely? Why are DMPs often not a part of preregistrations? What can be incentives to do both? How can researchers be supported for the adoption?→ Feasibility study on the implementation of preregistration in the field of animal sciences
Training
Design and teach Good Research Practice courses with a focus on preregistration and data management planning at several locations.→ Four 1-day training events at
- Uni Bern (31th May 2024),
- Uni Geneva (7th June 2024),
- Uni Zurich (6th May 2024) and
- ETHz (6th May 2024)
Material available at osf.io/g45nt
SIRRO Team
Eva Furrer
Leonhard Held
Rachel Heyard
Michael Ochsner
Manuel Pfister
Christina Priboi
Evie Vergauwe
Hanno Würbel
Image credit:
Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Pix4free.org
Scriberia with The Turing Way community CC-BY 4.0
Comic book illustration of HARKing CC-BY 4.0