Surrey Open Research Case Study Award

Dr Ribary’s case study presented a pioneering change in research practice to the field of Roman legal scholarship. Marton won the award because he fully embraced open research practice at every stage of the research process, and because of the broad applicability of these open research processes across disciplines and career levels. He presented his research strategy as a ‘pyramid of openness’, with the research paper as the tip of the pyramid. Within this strategy he detailed his open project repository of resource files and code, through to his open data, which included sample queries and a data manual, and finally how he published both a data paper and research paper (open access, with open peer review). Marton reaped numerous benefits by being open. For example, by using open repositories, he was able to identify and easily correct a bug that a user had spotted and update with the same doi. Furthermore, his accessibility of his documentation means that it has reached users with no prior experience, leading to new collaborations, and his data paper lead to an invitation to present at a data forum about good practice, and to create a special collection advertising the benefits of data papers.