At the midpoint of their Open Research Fellowship year, Professor Zuduo Zheng and Associate Professor Sebasian Kaempf are progressing their research projects and exploring open research practices within their disciplines.
In this post, check in with our 2024 Open Research fellows and learn about the challenges and opportunities that open research presents to UQ researchers.
About the fellows and their research
Research projects
Professor Zheng is working on traffic modelling and road safety management involving connected and automated vehicles.
A/Professor Kaempf is working on a searchable online archive for declassified Pentagon and CIA documents relating to CIA influence on movie scripts.
Read Announcing the 2024 Open Research fellows for more about the fellows and their research projects.
Fellowship work
Through their fellowships, the fellows are advancing the principles of open research at UQ, addressing key challenges in reproducibility, data governance, and researcher support. This contributes to a more transparent and collaborative research environment.
They have discussed open research issues and opportunities with University stakeholders who provide services to researchers including:
- the Library
- UQ Research Computing Centre
- Deputy Vice Chancellor (Research and Innovation)
- Research Systems team
- researchers from Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty.
Open research opportunities and challenges
Reproducibility of research through infrastructure
Professor Zheng’s research focuses on designing reproducible experiments for driverless car scenarios. This involves collecting extensive data and using scripts to ensure that other researchers can replicate his findings.
He published his first dataset to UQ eSpace, the University's Research Repository, and assigned it a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) to meet the FAIR data principles.
The fellowship facilitated sharing these scripts and data, enhancing transparency and reproducibility.
- About UQ eSpace
- How to request a DOI.
Enhanced data governance
It is common for researchers to use GitHub for code sharing, however UQ eSpace can also host and publish software. Professor Zheng’s engagement in the fellowship highlights the importance of this capability for reproducibility and reuse.
The fellowship has enabled the development of a process for UQ researchers to publish code on UQ eSpace, enhancing data governance.
Learn more about where to publish research software.
Awareness of tools and access to training and support
Both fellows noted the challenge of finding time for training and the isolation researchers feel due to a lack of knowledge about available tools. The fellowship aims to bridge this gap by connecting researchers with support experts and facilitating knowledge transfer.
Professor Zheng has been sharing his experiences and promoting tools such as:
to Higher Degree by Research students and academics in engineering disciplines to help foster a culture of open research within the University.
Data security and accessibility
A/Professor Kaempf’s project involves a large dataset that was not in secure storage and only accessible via an outdated website. This unique dataset entailed newly declassified Pentagon and CIA documents about their involvement in Hollywood film and TV productions.
The fellowship provided a secure storage solution through the UQ Research Data Manager and ensured all collaborators had access. Training was provided to the project team on using the system, securing high-value datasets and making them accessible.
Open Practices and Digital Scholarship Preservation
A/Professor Kaempf aims to create a fully searchable archive of his data, initially disrupted by the loss of the web interface.
The fellowship is supporting the preservation and public accessibility of this data, highlighting the importance of sustainable digital scholarship solutions, especially for humanities research.
About the Open Research Fellowship
The fellowships aim to bridge the gap between open science policy and practice by involving researchers directly in the implementation of open research principles.
Open research promotes transparency, collaboration, and accessibility, encompassing practices like open access publications and data and software sharing. When adopted by researchers, practices such as these can enhance research quality and trust.
The fellowships support UQ's Research Roadmap, part of the Toward 2032 UQ Strategic Plan 2022–2025, by fostering communication and knowledge sharing between researchers and research support professionals and improving the integrity and transparency of research outputs.