How we do research is changing dramatically. Policies to promote ‘openness’ and ‘transparency’ are becoming commonplace among journals, institutions and funders (UNESCO, 2021). These ‘open research practices’ involve making data publicly available, sharing research materials, and pre-registering analysis plans (UKRI, 2025).
It is vital that qualitative researchers from all research areas play an active role in the discussion around transparency, openness and rigour. Our deep engagement with conversations of reflexivity, positionality, community engagement, ethics, participatory approaches and impact can provide important insights for developing a more transparent research culture.
Whether you are new to these ideas, or a seasoned open qualitative researcher, this symposium will provide both an introduction and a means to develop our collective voice, and determine how openness and transparency are best applied in qualitative research contexts.
While qualitative voices are becoming louder in this conversation, we still have opportunities to develop this conversation further across disciplines, and ensure our voices are heard.
Themes
We encourage you to reflect on and consider your past, current, or future work in relation to the overarching theme of transparency, openness, and rigour.
Contributions across all academic disciplines are welcome, as are theoretically inspired, methodologically oriented, and empirically grounded inquiries that link to these overlapping themes:
Theme 1: Exploring how openness and transparency can contribute to qualitative scholarship
- Exploring how specific ‘open research practices’ (e.g. open data, materials or public engagement) might impact qualitative research and rigour
- Understanding what openness and transparency mean to qualitative scholars
- Discussing opportunities and challenges around transparency in qualitative research
Theme 2: Asking critical questions about qualitative openness and transparency
- Interrogating the aims of open research policies.
- Considering the ethics of openness in qualitative research
- Exploring ownership in qualitative research – who ‘owns’ this data anyway?
- Critiquing journal or institutional policies on open qualitative research
Theme 3: Using empirical examples to explore how openness and transparency impacts qualitative rigour in a variety of contexts
- Sharing a case study exploring how you navigated openness in your qualitative research projects
- Discussing a problem you encountered with open research practices (and how you resolved it)
- Sharing how you engaged participants or students with open qualitative research
