Tools and practices for open research collaboration

Digitalization and internet have changed academic practices, such as publishing and publicity of research results, but also the ways academics work and collaborate. This paper presents a new type of open research collaboration, as conducted by the SOMUS research project, for discussion and further development. In this paper we describe and evaluate the tools and practices of this ongoing research project. It should be noted that we mainly discuss research practices of project management and teamwork, while particular research methods such as data gathering and analysis are excluded. This viewpoint is chosen since we have found the project management as the key issue in developing open research practices. Besides describing our practices and tools we point out some possibilities and challenges they create. We have found open research collaboration to be interesting and beneficial from the researchers‟ point of view. At the same time, openness creates tension between our way of working and traditional academic processes.