Office for Open Research

The Office for Open Research supports researchers at the University of Oxford to adopt open research practices and helps deliver the University’s strategic approach to open research.

We bring together expertise in open access publishing, research data management, copyright, digital preservation, open infrastructure, and research metrics to provide joined-up support across the research lifecycle.

We support researchers at all stages of their work to make research outputs open, reusable, and sustainable – now and in the future.

We can support you by:

  • Advising on how scholarly outputs can be published open access
  • Providing guidance on meeting Research Excellence Framework (REF) requirements
  • Supporting effective research data management, including data sharing and preservation
  • Offering tools and services that enable open and sustainable research practices
  • Identifying, piloting, and evaluating new open research tools and services on behalf of the University
  • Advising on copyright and licensing, including the use of permissive licences to support sharing and reuse
  • Delivering free training and events on copyright, open access, research data management, and open research methods

Contact us: openresearch@bodleian.ox.ac.uk

Oxford Open Research Prize

What does excellent open research look like?

The Oxford Open Research Prize was created to celebrate outstanding examples of open research at the University, recognising practices that make research more accessible, transparent and reproducible. These range from sharing data, code and research materials to developing open tools, infrastructure, collaborative approaches and more.

The inaugural prize in 2026 attracted 45 applications from across all four academic divisions, with six projects receiving awards for excellence in open research.

Our open research prize case studies feature the award-winning projects and a wide range of other entries, showcasing how Oxford researchers have put openness into practice across disciplines, the challenges they've encountered, and the impact of their approaches. They offer practical examples and ideas for researchers interested in adopting open practices themselves.

 

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