MORPHSS

Project News

  • Coming up! The MORPHSS Catalogue launch event and panel discussion: 19th March 2026

    There’s still time to book your place! This online event introduces the MORPHSS Report and Catalogue of open research practices in the arts, humanities and social sciences — a living resource that documents 30 open research practices across these disciplines, providing a starting point for the exploration of open practices in AHSS — and invites responses and discussion from an invited panel of experts across these fields.

    In this launch event and panel discussion, researchers from MORPHSS present on the catalogue and recent work, before a panel discussion and Q&A offers a series of additional perspectives on questions surrounding openness in arts, humanities, and social sciences fields.

    The session will be chaired by Dr Samuel A. Moore, PI for the MORPHSS Project. Panel guests will include members of the MORPHSS Project team and representatives from the UKRN Qualitative Social Sciences SIG, UKRN Arts SIG, and Copim’s Open Book Futures Project.

    Register to attend the event here: Eventbrite: MORPHSS Catalogue launch event and panel discussion

  • Introducing MORPHSS Work Package 3: Facilitating open research data in the social sciences

    In debates about the applicability of open research to the arts, humanities and qualitative social sciences, expectations around data sharing have proved particularly contentious. Common objections are ethical (the need to protect participants’ safety and anonymity [1], questions of data ownership and extractivism [2]), epistemological (challenges emerging from the context-dependency of qualitative data [3,4]), and practical (issues of time and labour in qualitative data preparation [5]). New concerns around the (mis)appropriation and exploitation of openly available data by AI agents have also emerged relatively recently [6]. 

    Its advocates, on the other hand, frame open qualitative data as a responsibility to both research and participant communities [7] and a key mechanism of transparency [8], amplifying participant voices and evidencing the rigour of qualitative research. Ongoing debate around these issues, coupled with a lack of awareness among many qualitative researchers of how to access guidance around data sharing, indicates the need for orienting resources aimed at qualitative research communities. It indicates, too, the need for a nuanced and flexible consideration of open data within open research advocacy and evaluation.

    Responding to these challenges, work is now underway on the third component of the Materialising Open Research Practices in the Humanities and Social Sciences (MORPHSS) project, Facilitating open research data in the social sciences. As part of this work package, we’re conducting a series of interviews with researchers who conduct or lead mixed methods (qualitative and quantitative) or ethnographic research. Our aim is to explore researchers’ perspectives on and experiences of sharing qualitative data within these two methodological approaches, neither of which has so far been central in considerations of qualitative data sharing. 

    In order to access a variety of views, we’re speaking to researchers across a range of career stages, disciplines and locations, including both those with experience of sharing qualitative data and those who have considered sharing such data but have ultimately decided against doing so, at least so far. We hope to explore mixed methods and ethnographic researchers’ thoughts on the nature of the ‘data’ or qualitative materials they collect and create and the anticipated role of such data in assessments of a work’s robustness. We aim, too, to learn more about researchers’ decision-making processes in relation to whether and how to share data, as well as the processes by which those who do so prepare their data for sharing.

    These insights will be placed in the context of a broader assessment of existing work on debates around qualitative data sharing and best practice in implementing decisions around sharing or restricting data. We aim to develop and collate guidance around qualitative data sharing for researchers in the social sciences, including on situations where data sharing may not be possible or appropriate. Outputs will include a navigational tool to support researchers in their decision-making and practice around data sharing, and a report summarising our findings. 

    [1] Class, B. et al. (2021). ‘Towards Open Science for the Qualitative Researcher: From a Positivist to an Open Interpretation’, International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 20. https://doi.org/10.1177/16094069211034641

    [2] Majic, S. (2018). Not there for the taking: DA-RT and policy research. Qualitative & Multi-method Research, 16(2), 14–16. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3524305

    [3] Feldman, S. and Shaw, L. (2019). ‘The Epistemological and Ethical Challenges of Archiving and Sharing Qualitative Data’, The American Behavioral Scientist (Beverly Hills), 63(6), 699–721. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764218796084

    [4] Mauthner, N. S. et al. (1998). ‘The Data Are out There, or Are They? Implications for Archiving and Revisiting Qualitative Data’. Sociology, 32(4), 733–45. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038598032004006

    [5] Tsai, A.C., et al. (2016). ‘Promises and Pitfalls of Data Sharing in Qualitative Research’. Social Science & Medicine, 169, 191–98. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2016.08.004

    [6] Field, S. M. (2025). ‘Open With Care! Consent, Context, and Co-production in Open Qualitative Research.’ Preprint. Open Science Framework. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/6z9c3_v1

    [7] Bishop, L. (2009). ‘Ethical Sharing and Reuse of Qualitative Data’, The Australian Journal of Social Issues, 44(3), 255–272. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1839-4655.2009.tb00145.x

    [8] Elman, C. and Kapiszewski, D. (2014) ‘Data Access and Research Transparency in the Qualitative Tradition,’ PS: Political Science & Politics, 47(1). https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096513001777.

  • Surfacing a diverse landscape of open research…

    This editorial first appeared in UKSG eNews 604 on 20th February 2026, and is reproduced here with permission.

    Surfacing a diverse landscape of open research across the arts, humanities and social sciences: The work of the MORPHSS project

    Voices in the humanities and qualitative social sciences are increasingly challenging the dominant frameworks of ‘Open Science’ and their application by funders, publishers and institutions, suggesting these are tailored around quantitative research in STEM subjects and overlook the broad range of research methodologies and approaches across different disciplines. In particular, policies and guidelines around openness tend to emphasise practices in support of reproducibility and replication, including pre-registration and open data, code and materials – practices that are more applicable to research in some areas than others. As a result, existing policies and guidelines risk alienating and disadvantaging researchers in the arts, humanities and social sciences (AHSS), for whom these practices and aims are often less relevant or achievable.

    Moreover, at a time when open research is increasingly becoming a part of regulatory and evaluation frameworks, treating STEM-focused expectations around openness as universally applicable risks devaluing research in AHSS. Research communities and organisations therefore urgently need to diversify our understanding of ‘openness’ to both accommodate practice across a broader range of disciplines and engage those communities who feel underserved by narratives of open science. This blogpost outlines one contribution towards such efforts to pluralise and diversify ‘openness’, in the work of the Materialising Open Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences, or MORPHSS, project.

    Introducing the MORPHSS project

    Funded by the AHRC, Wellcome Trust and Research England Development (RED) fund, MORPHSS is a three-year project that aims to catalogue, pilot, and showcase open research practices in the arts, humanities and social sciences (AHSS), with a particular focus within the social sciences on qualitative research.

    As well as foregrounding the diversity of open practices that are taking place in these areas, we’re working to theorise openness itself in ways that are appropriate for these disciplines – modifying and reimagining existing concepts and applications of ‘open research’.

    Documenting open research practices in AHSS

    Work on MORPHSS has so far involved cataloguing a range of open research practices across AHSS, resulting in the MORPHSS catalogue, a living resource that currently includes 30 open research practices across these disciplines, from Annotation for Transparent Inquiry to co-production, experimental longform publishing, reflexivity, public scholarship and more. For each practice, a detailed description is accompanied by examples and suggestions of further reading and resources. Many of the practices we’ve identified involve openness with and to a wide range of actors, including research participants and communities, and general audiences.

    The MORPHSS catalogue also places each open practice in the context of the MORPHSS typology of openness in the arts, humanities and social sciences – six types of openness we’ve identified in these disciplines.

    Epistemic openness is openness to a wide range of forms of knowledge including lived experience, Indigenous knowledges and professional and practice-based knowledge. Participatory openness involves openness to participation and collaboration with individuals and communities outside the academy, through practices like Community-Based Participatory Research. Process openness involves making aspects of the research process available to others via mechanisms like positionality statements or the open documentation of creative methods, while evidentiary openness means sharing research evidence in contextually appropriate ways with research communities or participants. Finally, while availability of outputs means making outputs openly available, accessible communication of research involves communicating research to wider audiences in coherent and engaging ways – via podcasts, for example. This typology is explored more fully in our forthcoming report Openness in the arts, humanities and social sciences: Documenting open research practices beyond STEM, is available via the MORPHSS repository.

    The MORPHSS catalogue is open to feedback and suggestions from researchers and research-supporting colleagues or organisations on how we can improve and expand it. Future versions of the catalogue will be informed by this feedback. In this way, the catalogue is a living resource that will be shaped and developed by the research communities it concerns.

    Applications and recommendations

    Published under a CC-BY licence, the MORPHSS catalogue can be used by anyone for any purpose, including to develop training materials and resources around open research in AHSS. In particular, we hope it will be useful to librarians and other research support colleagues seeking to develop AHSS-relevant guidance, information, training and advocacy materials around open research.

    The MORPHSS report Openness in the arts, humanities and social sciences: Documenting open research practices beyond STEM further includes a number of recommendations for publishers, funders, institutions, learned societies and individual researchers on how to diversify their policy and practice around openness. We emphasise the importance of flexibility, acknowledging diversity of practice, creating inclusive guidance and advocacy materials and engaging with AHSS communities in the review and revision of requirements and expectations.

    At a time when AHSS disciplines are underfunded, at risk of devaluation, and in need of evaluation frameworks that recognise their contributions to knowledge and society, we hope the project’s efforts to reimagine openness for the arts, humanities and qualitative social sciences present a timely intervention on behalf of AHSS communities.

    Jenni Adams can be found on BlueSky (@jenniad.bsky.social).
    Miranda Barnes can be found on BlueSky (@mirandab-oa.bsky.social) and LinkedIn.
    Follow the MORPHSS project on BlueSky (@morphss.bsky.social)

  • Launching the MORPHSS catalogue & report

    The MORPHSS Project are proud to share our first set of deliverables! We’ve produced a new resource for open research in the arts, humanities and qualitative social sciences: The MORPHSS catalogue documents 30 open research practices in AHSS disciplines, with detailed descriptions, examples, suggested resources and further reading. We’ve also published a new report, “Openness in the arts, humanities and social sciences: Documenting open research practices beyond STEM”, in which we explore the narrow focus of existing frameworks of open research & propose more inclusive ways of accommodating the diversity of open practice across all disciplines.

    You can find the catalogue at: https://catalogue.morphss.work/
    Our report DOI: https://doi.org/10.17613/jn1y1-mj246

    The catalogue isn’t exhaustive, but a starting point in efforts to document and theorise open practices in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Keep your eyes out for our online launch event next month. And please feel free to share the catalogue and report to your networks!

    If you are an arts, humanities, or social sciences researcher and have any feedback or want to share an open research practice not represented in our catalogue, see the ‘about’ page for our feedback form link. We would love to hear from you.

    The MORPHSS (Materialising Open Research Practices in the Humanities and Social Sciences) Project is funded by the UKRI Research England Development (RED) Fund, the Wellcome Trust, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), and is a collaboration between the University of Cambridge and the Universities of Sheffield, Coventry, and Southampton.

  • Joining the team

    Image shows a pair of white hands, the right hand using a pen to write the word "Welcome" in black script on a piece of brown paper. The paper is the top sheet in a haphazard stack. To the left and write is ivory paper with drawings and text. The table below the sheets is a dark granite. Boughs of eucalyptus are scattered about.

    We are delighted to announce Jenni Adams will be joining the team! Jenni is currently Open Research Manager within the University Library’s Scholarly Communications Team at the University of Sheffield. She will join the project as Research Associate, investigating open practices in the Social Sciences and working closely with Prof Stephen Pinfield, MORPHSS Project Co-I at Sheffield, who will lead the Social Sciences work on the project. We extend a warm welcome to Jenni as she begins her post and look forward to working with her!

    Photo by cottonbro studio