OPENING UP SCIENCE: WHY & HOW?

DR JELENA O’REILLY

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

TODAY

A BIT ABOUT ME

• I am Lecturer at the University of York in England.
• I teach Psychology in Education and English as a second/foreign language.
• I have a lot of experience teaching English as a foreign language (EFL).
• My research focuses on how EFL learners learn grammar, importance of home language environment on child language development, etc.
• https://www.york.ac.uk/education/our-staff/academic/jelena-oreilly/

​

WHAT IS (SOCIAL) SCIENCE?

• You have an observation: Some of my students have a lot of anxiety when they have to speak in English & this is affecting their test scores.
• How many students exactly? Is this comparable to students in other classrooms? How do you know it is the anxiety that’s affecting their test score and not something else (e.g., sleep)?
• Empirical questions that need to be answered by research.

​

WHY DO WE NEED (SOCIAL) SCIENCE?

​

• We can’t trust our instincts/observations -> we need evidence.
• To collect systematic evidence that explains social phenomena.

OVER TO YOU!

RESEARCH PROCESS

IS RESEARCH/SCIENCE ALWAYS TRUE?

• Studies are often proven wrong & retracted!
• More than 10,000 retracted in 2023.
• Reasons: falsified data, financial conflicts, presenting only selected data, etc.
• One way we can reduce this is by practicing OPEN SCIENCE!

WHAT IS OPEN SCIENCE?

Aims are to make science:

• Transparent
• Reproducible
• Accessible
• Accountable

​

TRANSPARENT & REPRODUCIBLE

Transparent

= anyone can see what you did & how

• Open methodology
• Open procedures
• Information about funding/conflict

​

Reproducible

= anyone can do the analysis you did

• Open data
• Open source

​

HOW TO MAKE DATA TRANSPARENT & REPRODUCIBLE?

• By using open science platforms Open Science Framework (OSF) and Iris database

​

​

OPEN SCIENCE FRAMEWORK (OSF)

• OSF is a free, open platform to support your research and enable collaboration.

1. Search
• Find papers, materials, data
• Inspiration
• Build on previous work/replication

​

2. Design
• Design your study
• Easy to share with collaborators
• Preregister

​

OPEN SCIENCE FRAMEWORK (OSF)

3. Search
• Data
• Materials
• Supplementary materials

​

4. Publish
• Preprints

​

IRIS DATABASE

• Iris is a free collection of instruments, materials, stimuli, data, and data coding and analysis tools used for research into languages
• Peer-reviewed

WHO IS DOWNLOADING FROM IRIS?

WHY ARE TRANSPARENCY & REPRODUCIBILITY IMPORTANT?

• Decrease misconduct.
• Make researchers accountable.
• Improve & facilitate collaboration.
• Make research usable outside of academia.

ACCESSIBILITY

What makes research not accessible?

• Language
• Statistics
• Expensive

​

How expensive are journal articles?

$30 or more per articles (50 or more articles needed to write a study)

Can journals make articles free?

Yes, but they charge authors $3 -5 thousand.

​

ACCESSIBILITY

Who can benefit from having access to research?

ACCESSIBILITY

• Research should be accessible to anyone who wants it!
• OASIS database: Open Accessible Summaries in Language Studies (OASIS)
• One-page, non-technical summaries of language studies published in journals

​

OASIS EXAMPLE

<< What this research was about and why it is important

<< What the researchers did

<< What the researchers found

<< Things to consider

WHY IS ACCESSIBILITY IMPORTANT?

• Anyone can read and benefit from research!
• The information from research can be widely used to inform practice, e.g., teachers can use it to improve their practice.
• Research is not just for acedemics.

​

CONCLUSION

THANK YOU!��QUESTIONS?

Dr Jelena O’Reilly

jelena.oreilly@york.ac.uk