Qualitative data from focus groups on “Open, transparent and rigorous research across disciplines and research types”

This data deposit contains qualitative data for the project “Open, transparent and rigorous research across disciplines and research types - focus groups”.<b>Description of the project</b>This small-scale project involved holding 3 x 90-minute focus groups on the topic of open, transparent and rigorous research across disciplines and research types. The aim of the project was to initiate a conversation across researchers at the University of Sheffield about the different contexts, meanings and challenges to open research across different subject areas and research types. Ethical approval for this study was received from the University of Sheffield Professional Services Ethics Review Procedure (application number 066805).The focus groups were held at the University of Sheffield in April-May 2025 and were facilitated by a staff member from the University Library. Researchers across the University of Sheffield were invited to participate, with invitations shared in staff and PGR student communications and via Faculty graduate schools. 28 researchers participated, with researchers allocated to focus groups to achieve as far as possible a balance in each group across different disciplines, career stages and research types. Of the 28 participants, 10 identified themselves as established researchers, 10 as early-career researchers and 8 as PGR students. 2 were from health disciplines, 3 from science disciplines, 3 from the arts and humanities, 7 from engineering disciplines, and 13 from the social sciences.Two of the focus groups took place in person, and one took place online. Focus group participants received a short agenda containing some of the main discussion points in advance of each session. Focus groups were recorded using University-approved Google Meet software and auto-transcribed, before transcriptions were manually checked and corrected. Recordings of the sessions were deleted once transcripts had been created, checked and agreed.<br><b>Contents of the deposit</b>This deposit contains:A README file (.txt)Three transcripts (.pdf files) - one for each of the three focus groupsFocus group discussion points (agenda) - a short topic guide shared with participants in advance of the focus group (.pdf)Focus group discussion points (full) - the facilitator’s focus group guide including additional discussion points / probes (.pdf)A copy of the short presentation on open research used during the focus group discussion (.pdf)A copy of the Participant Information Sheet for the project (.pdf)A blank copy of the consent form for the project (.pdf)Participants were able to choose whether or not to assign copyright to the University. Those who chose not to do so have given permission to have their text anonymised and for the resulting dataset to be made available under the CC BY licence. Where participants have retained their copyright they are free to reuse their data as they wish.