[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to the Research Culture Uncovered podcast, where in every episode we explore what is research culture and what should it be. You'll hear thoughts and opinions from a range of contributors to help you change research culture into what you wanted to be.
[00:00:25] Nick Sheppard: Hi, it's Nick, and for those who don't know me yet, I'm Open Research Advisor based in the Library here at the University of Leeds. You're joining us in season three of the Research Culture Uncovered Podcast where I'll be speaking to colleagues from both the University of Leeds and from other universities and organizations about open research, what it is, how it's practiced in different disciplines, and how it relates to research culture.
[00:00:48] If you haven't already, you can catch it with season one, which was an introduction to the podcast and to my co-hosts in season two with my colleague Tony Bromley, who was in conversation with a number of presenters from the REDS Conference of 2022. [00:01:00] That's the Researcher Education and Development Scholarship International Conference held in Leeds.
[00:01:05] But now I'd like to introduce my guest for today, my colleague Dr. Dorka Tamas, who's been working on a series of open research case studies here at Leeds. Dorka has recently been awarded her PhD from the University of Exeter, examining the presence of the supernatural in Sylvia Plath's poetry. She's presented in several conferences and symposia and is a co-founder of the Sylvia Plath Society.
[00:01:27] So, hello Dorka and welcome to the podcast.
[00:01:30] Dorka Tamas: Hi. Thank you for inviting me to talk here.
[00:01:34] Nick Sheppard: Now Dorka, despite having worked with you for a while, since about May, I think is it?
[00:01:39] Dorka Tamas: Yes.
[00:01:39] Nick Sheppard: Is it May? We've actually only met once, very recently and very briefly on a bit of a flying trip to Leeds. So you were actually visiting weren't you to take part in an event at York, so maybe tell us a bit about that, but it was a bit of an epic journey cos you're not actually based in Leeds you had took quite a long way.
[00:01:55] Dorka Tamas: Yes, I'm based in the Southwest, so it was a long train journey. I was invited by the University of York's ReproducibiliTea network team to present in their, um...it was an event on open research for early career researchers, and they saw me talking before in a similar event that Nick invited me to, to present on open access monographs. And so I ended up talking to a very different audience, similar people who are at...people who are at the similar stage as me, being early career researchers, and my presentation was focusing on open access monographs for ECRs.
[00:02:39] Nick Sheppard: So you're becoming a bit of an expert in open research? Is that fair to say?
[00:02:44] Dorka Tamas: I wouldn't call myself an expert, but I think I've definitely gained a lot of knowledge of open research through this job, and, you know, it's such a vast area and it's ever changing and developing, so it's, hard to keep track of it to be honest.
[00:03:02] Nick Sheppard: So maybe you can tell us a bit about your role here as I've just introduced you doing this project for us on case studies. It's fair to say when you started back in May, your knowledge about open research was perhaps a bit limited at that point? You've learned a lot since then?
[00:03:19] Dorka Tamas: Yes, definitely. I published an open access journal article, kind of, uh, I think it was last year and it was published. So I was familiar with the concept of open access, because my university paid for a gold open access, which was very great, you know, but that was all my knowledge really of open research. Um, because I work in humanities and English, data is not something I come across or not traditional quantitative data, so all of the other aspects of open research, like the open data, open code, um, preprints was not something I had any knowledge of really, and sadly it was not even a training in my, uh, PhD education, which I think Leeds is doing well, that it's really incorporated now into, uh, PGR training.
[00:04:17] Nick Sheppard: Yeah. So I mean, you mentioned...so your background's in English, and I said at the top, so your PhD was in the supernatural in Sylvia Plath's poetry? Perhaps give you an, an opportunity...I know you'd like talking about Sylvia Plath if you want to just tell us a little bit about that research and your PhD and you're working on a monograph I think at the moment aren't you?
[00:04:37] Dorka Tamas: Yes, so I'm trying to turn my PhD thesis into a monograph, which is a slow process, but hopefully in a couple of years time you will see it. Um, yeah, and Silver Plath was an American 20th century poet, and she tragically died very young. But my work was looking at the different ways in which her poetry engages with this umbrella term supernatural, which, you know, included, um, cold War American McCarthyism, Fairy Tales, uh, including the early modern witch hunt, including also some religious imageries, including narratives from classical sources such as OVID's Metamorphosis and all other aspects, and how her poetry is using these, um...the theoretical framework of the early modern witch hunt particularly, and how her writing inform us a lot about the Cold War period and that post-war period.
[00:05:41] Nick Sheppard: Mm-hmm. Okay. And so obviously that is, you've already alluded to the fact that, you know, that's English obviously and poetry, which we wouldn't necessarily associate perhaps with data as you said, and you didn't really have much training around open research, so you aware of open access. Um, do you think in retrospect you would've benefited from more training around open research through your PhD?
[00:06:08] Dorka Tamas: Definitely. I think something that I...you know, I never thought about my, uh, research material as data. And when I was working with archives, because I forgot to mention I was working with a lot of archival materials, especially during the pandemic, these were all digitized archives, um, that I had access from various universities, mainly from the Smith College in the US. Uh, so I did not have a good organizational system. I did not have a good research data management, um, background, and now I'm sort of suffering the consequences of that because my files are just sort of scattered with not real actual metadata, just very badly named files. So this is something I definitely would have benefited, and something that actually, um, came up recently in one of the open research case study interviews I was conducting with somebody, uh, this person mentioned that, something that he would like to see more included in PGR training is, um, helping people to understand, sort of the process of publication and also where to publish and what kind of deals the university has with publishers. Um, cos I know that lLeeds has these contracts with certain publishers, um, that you can publish open access. So that would be something I think that PhD students and me, myself as well, would have benefit.
[00:07:43] Nick Sheppard: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we do have workshops...we do run workshops in the Library, but it is such a big area, just open access, let alone open research. I mean, already you've mentioned a few different aspects...so you mentioned preprints, and we've touched a little bit about open data already, which we can expand on. Um, and obviously these are things that I guess, that you've picked up through the course of this project, the open research case studies project? So perhaps tell us a little bit about your role here at the university, albeit remote - as we've said, you're based on the South coast - and some of the other things that you've sort of learned through that, through that project around the different practices associated with open research?
[00:08:22] Dorka Tamas: Yeah, sure. Um, so I started working on the open research case studies with Chris, a colleague, in May, and we sort of, um, distributed the faculties among ourselves and I was paying attent...I was conducting
[00:08:41] Nick Sheppard: Sorry to interrupt, we've got eight faculties at Leeds, is that right? It's quite a big university, I'm just making the...
[00:08:50] Dorka Tamas: Yes, we did have a lot of faculties and we had also a couple of other topics such as I was focusing on open education, and I also did a case study with, um, the Leeds Special Collection, um, in terms of, you know, archives and digitization and accessibility. But, um, I learned a lot, especially about STEM subjects and how open research is relevant in other fields that are, you know, not at all like mine. And it was very interesting to see how certain fields are so advanced and certain practices have been, you know, part of their research culture for a very long time. They might have not called it open data or you know, open access or something, but it was something...part of the research culture, just because their work is so collaborative, and I think particularly, research or researchers that have to work together in a lab setting or work on codes together, it is essential to be transparent and open and follow, uh, certain protocols as well. But for other researchers like me, I guess, who works alone in a long research project, um, it's very, it's very different, and other parts are not too relevant like, yeah, like I mentioned open data. I don't work with other people's data. However, some people might consider the poets...the poems I worked with as, as a kind of data.
[00:10:30] Nick Sheppard: Yeah. Well that's...so terminology is interesting. I mean, I have a background in English as well, and the, the, the sort of joke that I always make working in a big research intensive university is, you know, with a degree in English, it means I can read, you know, that's my sort of only skill really. So when you're dealing with different disciplines and different expertise, that can be quite challenging. So poetry as data, you know, often we talk about data and people do think of it as spreadsheets of numbers in the STEM context, but as you say, that can be a wider range of materials in different, different disciplines. Uh, I wonder what Sylvia Plath would make of us, uh, regarding her poetry as data though. Do you think she would've appreciated that?
[00:11:10] Dorka Tamas: I think she would find it very peculiar and probably would laugh about that.
[00:11:15] Nick Sheppard: And um, so you've obviously been interviewing different people around the university, so how many sort of case studies have you done between you, you and Chris, would you say? Do you know the number at the moment?
[00:11:27] Dorka Tamas: Uh, I don't know the exact number, but I think it's probably close to 60. So it's between like 50 to 60 I think.
[00:11:35] Nick Sheppard: Yeah, so a good number. I mean, I've, I've seen a few of them and just for anybody that is listening, you can access some of these case studies on the blog. We're still working on them, aren't we Dorka? I know you are still working with Chris and we'll release them over time as, as we get more together.
[00:11:51] And, uh, have you done any in English, um, for example, in your own discipline?
[00:11:56] Dorka Tamas: Yes, I did, uh, one, uh, with a, with a researcher, Bridget Bennett. Uh, this was actually one of my first case studies I'd done. Uh, so I was very new to the whole, um, you know, interviewing people part as well. Um, and it was very interesting to see because her research is also quite different to mine. And, um, she was talking a lot about the...how we can make research outputs, um, publicly available. Not in terms of just academic dissemination, but I know that she was working with you Nick together, um, to write a Wikipedia entry, and um, and also she was mentioning other sort of outputs from a research, like, um, not just conferences, but radio talks, uh, blog, all these other outputs, uh, for public engagement that could be more accessible I think for, uh, for the, a general public.
[00:12:58] Nick Sheppard: Yeah, no, I did work with Bridget on, um, on, as you say, a Wikipedia article. And, uh, we, I will actually be speaking to a Wikimedian as part of this podcast series as well. So a colleague called Martin Poulter, we'll talk about Wikipedia and Wikimedia more generally in more detail later on. Um, just to...I'm just thinking back to when you said at the beginning, so you, you mentioned rReproducibiliTea, which is obviously a play on words for the reproducibility journal club. And again, there'll be, um, links in the to show notes, if people are unaware of ReproducibiliTea, but the concept of reproducibility. Reproducibility. I can't say the word now because it's sort of, uh, I'm conflating it with ReproducibiliTea, but the concept of reproducibility and how and whether research and science can be reproduced. And so again, that's not perhaps something relevant to English in the same way as the STEM subjects, I guess?
[00:13:53] Dorka Tamas: Um, yes, that's very interesting. I guess in my specific area it is very hard to conceive, but I was just having an interview the other day...I did an interview with someone who is more involved with digital humanities and, uh, he works in translation studies and he does a lot of textual based analysis and he was talking about reproducibility in the humanities. And the way in which he understood it, um, he gave this very good example, which will be in the case study I write up, uh - wait Serge Sharrof is his name - which was, uh, his example was that if someone is analyzing a text, then looking at, for example, um, if this text is a blog post? Is this text, uh, a news article? Is this text a form of propaganda? What sort of text is it? So, and then we can use definitions for each of these concepts of what kind of medium is this? And then we can base the textual analysis on that. And then we can sort of reproduce that...could be reproducible by other researchers as well, if we have exact definitions the way in which we conduct our textual based analysis. Which is, you know, it's a nice idea and it's interesting, um, my, uh, my area where, um, I analyze poems and the whole idea is that this is my reading, and there could be multiple meanings. Um, I think reproducibility is, is uh, is a very difficult concept, but I think, um, I'm sure that there will be a way in which we can make that useful.
[00:15:40] Nick Sheppard: And did you, um, discuss that with colleagues in other disciplines? I mean, what was your process for these case studies? Did you have a sort of standard process, whether you were talking to somebody in English or in Chemistry, or, or, I know you didn't do Chemistry, but you know, in terms of different disciplines, how, how did you actually approach the project?
[00:16:00] Dorka Tamas: Yes, we did, uh, we did have a lot of questions that were sort of set questions for all people. I like to start the interviews with general questions, like asking them what does open research mean to you? Where do you deposit your work? Um, does open research inform your teaching practices? Um, and then going into different aspects of open research that are relevant for the particular researcher and the particular area of study, for example, preprints. For some people that would be quite relevant and very much the thing that they do in the field. For some people, it's not something they engage with. Um, and I would ask questions about their attitudes towards open access, about what kind of day-to-day work with, about, uh, pre-registration. That tended to be for me, something that only one or two person talked about, um...
[00:16:59] Nick Sheppard: So maybe, so I'm just..perhaps you could describe what pre-registration is cos I'm, you know, as you say, did you encounter colleagues that hadn't heard of that term? Didn't know what that was?
[00:17:11] Dorka Tamas: Yes. Actually quite a lot of people did not hear anything about pre-registration. So pre-registration comes from the field of psychology. It basically helps you to make your research process transparent and accountable. So you would pre-register your protocol and methods of data collection in a particular website. They have certain repositories and websites where you can upload your, um, pre-registration, um, as, as I mentioned, like the protocol, and then once you do your data collection and data analysis, um, people can also read your pre-registration and protocol and hold your research accountable for, for...that you were doing what you said that you were.
[00:17:59] Nick Sheppard: Yeah, and it's, cos again, you know, pre-registration is something that I've learned about relatively recently, and as you say, it's certainly not...it's come from psychology and I know... I've spoken to a lot of colleagues in different disciplines who can see how it would apply to their research, but I think it's got a long way to go in terms of, um, you know, application in other disciplines.
[00:18:20] Dorka Tamas: Yeah, actually I talked to somebody, uh, not long ago who said, um, he was talking about pre-registration and how it's really relevant in their field in terms of ethical approval that they need to gain for doing medical research. And he mentioned that once he found a discrepancy between the pre-registration and the actual research of an author, and he contacted with the editors of the journal about that, and then he got a complaint from the author.
[00:18:52] Nick Sheppard: Oh, right. So was there any resolution to that, that you were aware of?
[00:18:55] Dorka Tamas: Yeah, I mean he said that he's happy about it, that he got a complaint because at least it means that it worked and something happened and it wasn't just, um, covered up.
[00:19:05] Nick Sheppard: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that, and again, that's exactly the point, isn't it, in terms of transparency and making that entirely transparent.
[00:19:12] Um, so we've mentioned some of the components of open research that you've, you've sort of come across, you know pre-registration, so preprints and again, preprints are versions of papers that are before they go through peer review?
[00:19:27] Dorka Tamas: Yes, they have been submitted for journals and they haven't been peer reviewed yet. So there are different repositories, a lot of people mentioned, uh, arXiv, um, arxiv.org which seem to be a place where people put up preprints. There are different versions of this, uh, like bioRxiv, which is specific for the field of biology. There's medRxiv specific for medical sciences.
[00:19:54] Nick Sheppard: And, um, we talked about open data, but can I suppose one of the issues that we come across is that not all data can be open. I mean, did you find people concerned about, I mean, medical is a good example, you know, where data about people's medical records can't necessarily be open. Was that something that, that came up?
[00:20:14] Dorka Tamas: I talked to people who work with human data, who actually produce, um, open data sets. It obviously has to be anonymized and completely remove any, any data that can re-identify a person, but, um, if it's...so there are lots of people I talk to who deposit open data sets or use other people's open data. There are people I talked to who do not work with human participants and therefore they don't have any ethical concerns really about their data sets being open. Um, I think it is just a matter of, um, you have to do it right, which involves a lot of work and a lot of people rather bring up, um, the idea of making useful metadata so that other people can use it, and that's a long and timely process to, to do.
[00:21:10] Nick Sheppard: Yeah. And, um, did you get much of a sense through these case studies of what the barriers are to practicing open research? Um, I mean, I'm assuming, you know, I think there are barriers, um, would you say to people actually practicing this still?
[00:21:32] Dorka Tamas: Yes. Um, I think there are barriers. There are numerous barriers. One thing I guess, it's not sort of a barrier, but I think this is important to mention that there are lots of people who would...who practice open research, but they are not necessarily familiar with the terminologies. So, um, I think just getting that communication across can be challenging in itself to, to almost educate researchers in, in, this something, because I think, you know, researchers do so many things anymore....there's so many, uh, projects and, and teaching as well. So even just, um, having the right terminologies for people...cos sometimes I would approach people for interviews and they would say, "I don't do open research" and then they clearly have open access publications and all other things. So I think it's, uh, one challenge, as I said, is, is the terminology and having that communication for researchers. I think another aspect is, um, having, uh...because obviously there are, there are a lot of fundings for, uh, for example, open access, um, that is now by the UKRI. Journal articles have to be open access, which are UKRI funded and from 2024 monographs have to be also open access. But I think the question also comes in what happens with those people who do not have access to these funds, particularly, um, staff and early career researchers or other research that, um...I also talked to somebody who, who does not have really UKRI funded research. His research comes from elsewhere, the funding comes from elsewhere, so what happens with these other aspects of research because, um, if it's only one aspect that is supported really by, by money that is the UKRI funded research that can, I think, create a new sort of higher hierarchy between publications and, and researchers themselves.
[00:23:43] Nick Sheppard: Yeah. Okay. Thank you. And, um, did you speak to anybody outside the university...did you speak to somebody from Octopus? Have I made that up or...?
[00:23:57] Dorka Tamas: Yes, I did have a couple of, um, Interviews where I talk to external, um, participants like, um, Alex Freeman, who you will do an interview...
[00:24:07] Nick Sheppard: Yeah. So I'm, I'm gonna be...that's, it's just reminding me that you'd already spoken to, to Alex. So Alex Freeman, um, we'll be interviewing on this podcast as well. It might already be there if you have a look. Sorry, Dorka. So you, you spoke to Alex?
[00:24:19] Dorka Tamas: Yes, I spoke to Alex and we discussed, um, Octopus as, as a new platform for, um, research dissemination. And uh, I also did another, um, external interview with someone who did, uh, an exhibition at the Cultural Institute at Leeds. So he is the head of English in the University of Huddlesfield, and because of his research interest and archives available at Leeds, he was, um...He was managing this exhibition at the Cultural Institute, which is a different form of public engagement and, and research dissemination.
[00:24:59] Nick Sheppard: Okay, great. Um, and so you've mentioned you're probably going on for 60 separate case studies now. Um, I did mention there's a few of them on the blog at the moment, but when can we expect to see more of these? I mean, I'll probably link some in the show notes for this, I think but I, I know we're still, you're still working on them aren't you in terms of actually getting them signed off by the interviewees and that kind of thing?
[00:25:22] Dorka Tamas: Um, I think by the time this podcast episode comes out, there will be probably a lot more available on the blog post and hopefully soon after in other resources like the University of Leeds library website.
[00:25:39] Yes, I'm still working on a couple of case studies. I will have one actually next week, and I had one yesterday as well. But, um, the lot of the, the people I interviewed, they are very happy to help and they're very happy to distribute the case studies and have, uh, a CC-BY Creative Commons license on the case studies.
[00:26:02] Nick Sheppard: Yeah. Yeah. So as I say, yeah, we will be disseminating these. And we've also been liaising a little bit, haven't we, with UKRN? So they've released their own case studies recently that, again, I'll link in the show notes. Um, I haven't actually managed to have a look at them myself yet. Have you had much of a look at those case studies?
[00:26:19] Dorka Tamas: Yes. Uh, so they're also collecting the...uKRN is also collecting case studies on open research, and they also link various universities' open research case studies. So I'm pretty sure that ours...a lot of ours will be on their website as well. They're very interesting because you can really see the different approach they took, or different institutions took. I think a lot of ours is very in depth while a lot of the UKRN case studies are sort of a short summary of a certain research area with little anonymized quotes from particular researchers.
[00:27:00] Nick Sheppard: Yeah. So yeah, as I say there, they will be linked in the show notes. And, uh, just to emphasize really that, you know, you and all the work that you and Chris have been doing here at Leeds and, and in liaison with myself and other colleagues, you know, we're just exploring aren't we really what open research means in different disciplines and really trying to communicate the benefits and the challenges in different disciplines? And that kind of thing?
[00:27:22] Dorka Tamas: Yeah.
[00:27:23] Nick Sheppard: Um, so I suppose, uh, we've been talking for quite a while now. What's, what's next for you? We're hoping you'll stay with us for a little while longer, but longer term do you plan to continue working in academia? Is that your long-term goal?
[00:27:39] Dorka Tamas: Yes. As, as much as there are many issues in the institutional side of academia, I love teaching, I love researching. I really enjoyed working in the case studies and you're getting to know other fields and having this other type of knowledge that not necessarily on my research subject and as I said, I'm working on my first monograph.
[00:28:04] I'm still, you know, participating in conferences, trying to do sort of other research as well, doing other public engagement events, participating in various reading groups, organizing conference. So, you know I'm kind of busy, but I would, um, love to continue working as well.
[00:28:23] Nick Sheppard: And I guess some, I mean, you know, some of that, is it open research? I mean, I mentioned at the top that you're the co-founder of the Sylvia Plath Society. I mean, you know, blog posts and, you know, conferences...I mean, that's, that's open research, isn't it, I guess?
[00:28:36] Dorka Tamas: Yeah I think we can definitely think about it in that way. Um, and I'm part of a reading group, um, called them...well it's a gothic literary reading group called The Haunted Shores, and we have a monthly reading group where, you know, everyone is invited to join. And we have, uh, people joining from, um, from US, Australia, some people in the UK who arenot research staff, but are sort of academic support staff like, like you or like me at the moment.
[00:29:08] Nick Sheppard: Yeah. Okay, great. Well thank you very much for speaking to us today and um, if people do want to get in touch with you either about Sylvia Plath or um, uh, the Supernatural or Open Research or the case studies, um, I'll make sure that your details are in the show notes associated with this recording. And, uh, they can find you on Twitter, can't they, and, uh, various other places? So we'll, we'll link that in the show notes. So thanks, Dorka. Thanks very much.
[00:29:34] Dorka Tamas: Thank you Nick. Thank you. Bye
[00:29:36] Nick Sheppard: Bye-bye.
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[00:30:04] Email us at academicdev@leeds.ac.uk. Thanks for listening, and here's to you on your research culture.