Open research is an umbrella term for a range of practices aimed at making the processes and outputs of research more widely available. Its aims and purposes include addressing knowledge inequities, democratising research processes and conversations, supporting collaborative efforts to address social and scientific problems, and enabling greater scrutiny of research findings.
The MORPHSS Catalogue of Open Research Practices in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences was created in 2025-6 as part of the MORPHSS project (Materialising Open Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences). It includes details of open research practices in arts, humanities and social sciences (AHSS) disciplines, focusing in particular on the qualitative social sciences and areas of the arts and humanities outside the computational digital humanities - areas which have been under-addressed in existing accounts of open research. The work underlying this catalogue is discussed in more detail in the MORPHSS report Openness in the arts, humanities and social sciences: Documenting open research practices beyond STEM
The catalogue is by no means exhaustive, but aims to collate a range of relevant open research practices across AHSS disciplines. These include a number of participatory approaches and forms of public scholarship, though we acknowledge that we have only been able to include a selection of representative practices from these broader categories. If you would like to suggest additional practices for inclusion, please see the 'Feedback' section on the right.
The disciplinary scope of the practices detailed here includes:
Anthropology and Development Studies; Archaeology; Architecture; Area Studies; Art and Design; Built Environment and Planning; Business and Management Studies; Classics; Communication, Cultural and Media Studies; Economics and Econometrics; Education; English Language and Literature; Geography and Environmental Studies; Film and Screen Studies; History; Law; Leisure and Tourism; Library and Information Management; Modern Languages and Linguistics; Music; Performing Arts; Philosophy; Politics and International Studies; Social Work and Social Policy; Sociology; Sport and Exercise Sciences; Theology and Religious Studies
Information about open practices not included here
The catalogue does not include details of a number of open research practices, common to quantitative research in STEM subjects, that are already well-documented. Readers seeking information on these practices are directed to the sources listed below:
- Open access publication of journal articles: UK Reproducibility Network (UKRN)
- Open software: The Turing Way; UKRN; Software Sustainability Institute
- Open (quantitative) data: The Turing Way; UKRN
- Pre-registering (quantitative) research: Center for Open Science; UKRN
- Registered reports: Center for Open Science; UKRN
MORPHSS is funded by:
MORPHSS is:
