Open Research Programme

MORE will establish Manchester as a leader in AI-ready scholarly communication through a collaborative, standards-focused approach developed in partnership with N8 institutions. It represents a commitment to building genuine institutional alternatives to publisher-owned infrastructure, ensuring that Green Open Access is not merely a compliance mechanism but a sustainable route to dissemination that the University controls. The focus is on transforming Author Accepted Manuscripts (AAMs) into structured, machine-readable JATS XML, capturing metadata, relationships, and provenance in formats suitable for discovery and analysis.

The Current Research Collection represents an extension of the Library's collection development expertise to the University's research outputs. Just as the Library curates physical and digital collections with rigour and intentionality, the CRC applies a collection-based approach to research outputs – treating them as a unified, actively managed collection spanning a rolling ten-year window rather than fragmented records scattered across commercial platforms and institutional systems.

We will enhance the Library's RDM service, underpinned by a comprehensive Research Data Stewardship model that actively supports FAIR data creation, connects research to institutional capabilities, and increase the proportion of Manchester's research data shared via Figshare and disciplinary repositories. The service will integrate research security requirements, ensuring that openness and security operate as complementary aspects of responsible data management.

We will develop Manchester's offer for research software as a recognised output, building on the outputs of the Research Software Project (completing March 2026), which is scoping policy, catalogue, and support requirements in partnership with Research IT, the Software Sustainability Institute, and Innovation Factory.

We will develop an advanced Open Research skills programme, delivered through the established My Research Essentials (MRE) programme, that combines Library professional expertise with researcher and research technical professionals (RTP)-led training. This ensures Manchester researchers are equipped to engage fully with Open Research practices across the research lifecycle.

We will provide the data, analysis, and infrastructure needed to support a successful REF 2029 submission, ensuring the University maintains full compliance with Open Access requirements, and has access to evidence on research quality, collaboration, and impact.

This Area of Work brings together two related but distinct strands: supporting the University's performance in global rankings through the Global Rankings Taskforce, and ensuring that our approach to research metrics remains aligned with responsible assessment principles through implementation of our CoARA commitments.

This dual focus reflects a deliberate institutional position: engaging strategically with rankings while maintaining integrity in how metrics are used to assess individual researchers and research quality.