HRB Open Research – leading the way
| 1 March, 2022 | Patricia Clarke |
Four years ago, the Health Research Board (HRB) launched its innovative publishing platform – HRB Open Research. In this blog, we share some of its highlights and trends from the past year and our thoughts on the importance of making research openly available.
Leading the way
“It has been a pleasure to see the HRB Open Research platform grow over the past four years. The HRB community is becoming an increasingly vocal adopter of open research principles and F1000 have been proud to work with them on this journey.”
Hannah Wilson, Senior Associate Publisher, F1000
We have long been aware of the benefits researchers gain from sharing their research as quickly and openly as possible, so we are excited to see this reflected in the figures for 2021. We aim to sustain this momentum and further cement the value and recognition of openly accessible research in the community.
HRB Open Research is the number one publication venue for HRB-funded research outputs for the fourth year in a row. Along with the 296 articles published since launch in 2018, we have now published 738 peer review reports.
Another year of impactful publishing
Last year, articles published on HRB Open Research received over 300 citations, resulting in an increase of 200% in a single year. The number of citations since launch now amounts to over 500, demonstrating that the platform is a credible outlet for researchers and a reliable source of high-quality information.
Once more, article views surpassed 76,000, rapidly raising total article views to over 157,000 since launch in 2018, underlining the impact of research published openly on HRB Open Research.
Publishing at pace
Four years on, we continue to deliver a trusted and efficient service, with HRB-funded researchers enjoying speedy publication. The figures show it takes only 10 days (median time) from submission to publication and 100 days (median time) from submission to achieving two peer review reports.
What’s trending?
As our last blog highlights, unsurprisingly, COVID-19 continued to dominate the platform as the most prominent topic area in 2021, amassing 40 publications so far.
In response to the continued public health emergency, open research practices became essential with immediate and full access to underlying data and expert peer review proving critical to developing a vaccine. Open research allowed researchers around the globe to reuse, build upon, learn, and further support efforts to tackle each new variant.
Mental health and health care delivery were also popular, making them the second and third most published topic areas of the year for HRB Open Research. Even during the height of the pandemic, its lasting impact on mental health and the provision of care due to social distancing measures and the suspension of health care services became vital talking points.
Open to all researchers
“HRB Open Research allows our research to be accessed free of charge, enabling our study findings to be shared and viewed as widely as possible by anyone with an interest in improving health service provision in Ireland and even internationally.”
Researchers, Aisling O’Halloran and Roman Romero-Ortuno
Researchers from diverse backgrounds and career stages chose our platform for its dedication to transparent, accessible, and reproducible practices. Over 600 authors from more than 100 institutions across over 20 countries published their research on the platform last year, including collaborators from Brazil, New Zealand, Denmark, Switzerland, Kenya, and the US.
Aisling O’Halloran, and Roman Romero-Ortuno, of Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, published their Research Article in the TILDA Gateway. The article explores frailty and the fair allocation of health and social care resources in Ireland. They firmly believe research should be freely available to everyone, particularly if it could influence new health policies.
What’s next?
We worked with the HRB Primary Care Clinical Trials Network Ireland to launch the HRB Primary Care CTNI Gateway this year. This new Gateway serves as a hub for all HRB-funded outputs submitted by the Network on HRB Open Research.
Established in 2015, the Network brings together researchers, patients, the public, and healthcare professionals, to improve individual patient health and health care through high quality, internationally recognised, randomised trials in Irish primary care. They aim to communicate research results to patients and healthcare decision-makers transparently. Please view the HRB Primary Care CTNI Gateway to view the research already published.
As you can see, there are many strong reasons to consider publishing your next article with us. If you have any questions about the HRB Open Research platform, please don’t hesitate to get in touch at info@hrbopenresearch.org.
