Adopting healthy scientific practices is essential for conducting good quality research. This may be intuitive but it is hard to achieve and does not happen naturally. This video from the Royal Society introduces the problem:

The term “replication crisis” emphasizes that replication, a corner stone in science, is often considered of secondary importance. If we want to fight this phenomena it is important to conduct research using practices that promote the possibility to do that.

The open science movement not only offers you a way to get credited for your work (see this post on open access for more), but also tries to solve the problem of replicability. It takes into account several aspects at the level of researchers, scientific venues, funding organizations, etc.

In this article, we will focus on aspects related to the way research is conducted and the direct implications (and advantages) for your thesis.

I am assuming that you are not interested in falsifying your data or following any other intentional malpractices. In case you wonder, if you get caught, you could face serious consequences that range from immediate nullification of your thesis to expulsion and/or immediate termination of your internship.

As a single researcher (or small group of researchers) your attention should go towards offering to other scientists the possibility to access the data that you used for the analysis as well as your procedures. This video explain in a funny way why:

In other words, these are a set of good research practices that you should take into account:

• Carefully describe the procedures that you followed for obtaining the data.
• Make your data publicly available so that other scientists can check what you are doing. This includes your mentor and your second reader.
• Document each step of the process in order to be able to share this information with fellow researchers.
• Disclose the meaning of each field in the data.
• Disclose and share the programming code that you used for developing the data as well as the analysis.

Adopting these practices has several direct benefits:

• Your supervisors and/or reviewers will be positively impressed and predispose towards a higher grade.
• You will obtain a (very) good grade independently from your findings. In fact, your thesis is not about your findings: Showing you capability to follow the scientific method is way more important.
• Your work could, starting from your data, be published in a relatively easy manner as a tangible follow up of your thesis. Thus, differentiating your CV from other graduated students.
• A fellow student could decide to continue your work. Thus, you will be able to leave something tangible after you, instead of having your thesis completely forgotten.

In a nutshell, the bottom line is that good research practices will give you a better grade.

In this article, I limited myself to describing the scientific practices that a single individual should follow in pursuing his/her thesis. Adopting a more transparent approach clearly has several benefits and a direct implication on your grade. However, the problem of replicability is bigger than it may look like from this post. It is taken into serious consideration by the entire scientific community. In case you are interested in knowing more, this video gives you a general (and insightful) view on the problem:

#good #research practices like the one promoted by #OpenScience and #OpenData lead to better grades for your #Thesis as well as to a better #Science and more visibility of your work via #openaccess.
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This article (Adopting good scientific practices increase your visibility and the grade of your thesis) is part of the miniseries on how to do a good thesis, you can see the full list of posts at the following link:

The post Adopting good scientific practices increases your visibility and the grade of your thesis appeared first on Francesco Lelli.

“Open access (OA) is a mechanism by which research outputs are distributed online, free of cost or other barriers, and, in its most precise meaning, with the addition of an open license that removes most restrictions on use and reuse.

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access

In case you wonder, there is a never-ending debate around the topic and refers to all the aspects of research. In the case of your thesis you may find yourself wondering if this is a good idea or not. In some cases you do not have to wonder at all as the university has chosen a particular path for you.

Some good reasons in favor of a the release of your thesis open access includes:

• Extra visibility for your work.
• Your thesis is going to be stored permanently and someone will take care about that at zero cost for you.
• Transparency.

On the other hand, some reasons for not to release your thesis open access include:

• You are giving away your right to use your thesis in an exclusive manner.
• You actually do not really want to have your thesis in public display.
• you may want to develop some commercial application and you do not want to give away your ideas.

As I said at the beginning, this is an open debate and for every good reason that you can find in one side, there is another valid reason on the other side.

Let’s analyze your situation. Depending to the regulation of your university you may find yourself in one of these categories:

1. Your thesis will be released open access based on university policy.
2. You would like to release your thesis open access.
3. You and/or your supervisor would like to not release your thesis open access.

In the last case (#3) you probably have done your thesis as part of an internship in a company or a lab and you have used resource that the company does not want to disclose at the moment. You may want to check with your supervisor what are your options and what is the best way to proceed. Probably you will submit your thesis following the standard procedure of the university.

The first case, that happen more often that you can imagine, is probably the worst one. Someone else chose for you and the thesis will be published in some obscure database of the university. If you find yourself in this category you may embrace point 2 and “convince yourself” that is the right way to go. I do not see what you have to loose after all.

In the second case I assume that you made the conscious decision towards “open access”. Consequently, you may want to maximize the visibility of your thesis and publish your work in as many repositories as you think they are appropriate. Please note, that I am not suggesting you to favor open access. You should evaluate this decision with your supervisor and whenever their opinion differs from what you are reading, just follow their lead. Nevertheless, if you decided for the Open Access option the link below will represent a set of resources that you may find useful for disseminating your thesis and ensuring maximum visibility.

Should You Release Your #thesis #openaccess ? What you should know before taking a decision
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Resources for publishing open access:

• www.openthesis.org
• https://oatd.org/

These are relatively known repositories after your defense you may what to submit your thesis there.

In the Netherlands, and probably in many other countries there is a similar system, all the theses, from all the universities are funneled automatically into this repository

• https://www.narcis.nl

In other words you do not have to do anything, just submit the thesis for defense following the procedure of the university and will be automatically published in the DB of the university (here you can find the one of Tilburg
https://tilburguniversity.on.worldcat.org/discovery ) as well as to the central repository.

Another popular repository in Europe is probably DART,

• http://www.dart-europe.eu/basic-search.php

You may want to check if the university automatically publish your thesis there and, if not, act accordingly.

Finally in this Swiss website you will find an interesting collection of repositories that I would recommend to explore if you have the time:

• https://www.swissuniversities.ch/en/services/e-resources-uasas/resources-by-document-type/dissertations/

This is a bit of extra work but will ensure proper visibility for your thesis. After all, what is the point of releasing your thesis open access if you are not going to share it? You spent months in building a good work, this is the time to share it!

This article (Should You Release Your Thesis Open Access?) is part of the miniseries on how to do a good thesis, you can see the full list of post at the following links:

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