The Open Scholarship Survey

About the Open Scholarship Survey

The Open Scholarship Survey (OSS) is a standard, modular survey that assesses researcher norms about open scholarship practices, blockers to adoption of open scholarship, and researchers’ perceptions about their fields and the credibility of the literature. Insights from OSS data direct attention to:

Which open scholarship practices in a community are most ripe for advancement by identifying attitude/behavior gaps, where adoption of a practice lags behind the community’s support for it.
Attitude/perception gaps, where researchers may be underestimating the support for a practice in their community.
Key blockers to open scholarship adoption, which could be addressed by more targeted training, better incentives, or more awareness of a community’s norms.

Key features:

Widely applicable: Items designed for assessment across research disciplines, regions, professions, and career-stage
Standards-based: See how your community compares with peer communities
Modular: Examine the topics and activities most relevant to you or your community
Customizable: Add custom measures to maximize relevance and impact of assessment
Open: OSS is openly-licensed to maximize reuse and impact

Topics include:

Sharing data, materials, and code
Preregistration
Preprints and Open Access
Replication, Reproduction, and Robustness
Reporting null results
Perceived criteria for hiring, promotion, grants, and awards
And more…

Assessed activities include:

Attitudes: Do researchers support this open scholarship behavior?
Behaviors: Are researchers doing this behavior?
Perceived norms: Do researchers perceive that their community supports this behavior?
Incentives: Do researchers perceive rewards or punishments for adopting open scholarship practices?
Motivations and barriers to change: What are researchers' concerns and motivations for adopting the behavior?