NHMRC Survey of research culture in Australian

As part of NHMRC’s Research Quality Strategy, a survey was conducted to gain insight into the research culture in Australian NHMRC-funded institutions. Views were sought from researchers (senior, mid-career and junior), research students (masters and PhD students), institutional representatives and ethics committee members. The survey was conducted by ORIMA Research on behalf of NHMRC in October-November 2019.

The survey received 1,768 responses.

The survey report (page 6) highlights that 55% of respondents agreed that researchers in their immediate research environment are committed to open access publishing when publishing results.

Open Scholarship question and response summary
The survey included a number of questions about open scholarship which we have summarised below, results show that encouraging open access publishing has the potential to improve research quality and that funders have a large amount of responsibility for the quality of research.

Question 20 asked respondents to indicate the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with statements about the immediate research environment. Responses to open scholarship statements were as follows (Figure 12 in the report):

(20e) Researchers in my immediate research environment are committed to appropriate data and code sharing when publishing research results.

(20f) Researchers in my immediate research environment are committed to open access publishing when publishing research results

Question 58 asked respondents to indicate what effect they thought certain features of the Australian research environment would have on researchers in terms of encouraging the production of high quality research. Responses to open scholarship features were as follows (Figure 4 in the report):

(58o) Data sharing policies

(58e) Support of open access publishing

In response to Question 59, 53% (Ranked 2nd out of 11 options) of respondents said that funders had the largest potential to improve research quality (Figure 33 In the report).

Question 60 asked respondents to indicate which actions (from a multiple choice list) by funders, institutions and researchers they thought had the largest potential to improve research quality.

Responses to the action 'encouraging open publishing practices e.g. data sharing, publishing openly (preprint servers, open access journals)' were as follows (Figures 34-36 in the report):

48.8% (Ranked 4th of 11) said encouraging open publishing practices by funders would have a very positive or positive effect overall,
47.4% (Ranked 6th of 11) said institutions,
45.9% (Ranked 5th of 13) said researchers.

Author Harry Rolf

Last modified 10 June 2020