Tracking, Measuring & Crediting Collaborative, Open Research Activities
Goals
- Determine how (and the extent to which) collaborative and open research can be reliably measured and credited to individuals on research teams
- Recommend qualitative means of crediting collaborative activities where quantification is not feasible
- Understand the attitudes and behaviors of both participating and non-participating researchers regarding alternative reputation systems
- Facilitate the translation of credits to incentives and rewards by funders and academic institutions
Description & Deliverables
This project will define, track, and assign credits for collaborative activities in research consortiums — e.g., inter- and intra-team sharing and discussion of research findings, peer reviewing, replicating, co-authoring, data curation and analysis, and posting incremental and negative results as preprints. We will develop quantitative and qualitative measures that translate to a credit system that can be tied to incentives and rewards bestowed by funders and academic institutions. The tools and processes created and/or recommended in the proposed credit system will necessarily have practical application for stakeholders who wish to reward open behaviors over solitary acts of publication.
Deliverables
- Activity algorithm(s)
- Exemplary credit system for one or more research projects
- Documentation that relates credits to rewards
- Recognition guidelines for academic institutions and funders
What’s Needed
- Funded multi-team consortium(s) with an open science mandate
- Project platform on which grantees communicate
- Tracking tools for researchers’ protocols and outputs
- Structured progress reports that intake data from the tracker
- Algorithm that assigns credit values to shared content and interactive behaviors
Links
- Research Culture: Changing how we evaluate research is difficult, but not impossible | eLife
- Article-Level Metrics and the Evolution of Scientific Impact | PLOS Biology
- Assessing scientists for hiring, promotion, and tenure | PLOS Biology
- Interdisciplinary and Collaborative Work: Framing promotion and tenure practices and policies | Research Policy
Supporters
Dario Alessi, Danil Mikhailov, Maryrose Franko, Keith Yamamoto, Heather Joseph, Bodo Stern