---
# System prepended metadata

title: Research reporting guide
tags: [about-us, process]

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# Research reporting guide

Last updated: 2023-04-14
URL for this page: https://hackmd.io/@investinopen/research-reporting
URL for this site: https://hackmd.io/@investinopen/how-we-work

## Purpose

As an evidence based organization focused on meaningful change in the open science space, we rely on quality research performed to high standards of accuracy, reliability, and transparency. We want to apply that same standard to the research products we produce for internal and external audiences. As a highly collaborative organization, we want to ensure the process of drafting, reviewing, editing, and publishing is also highly transparent and involves as many eyes and minds as possible to ensure we’re meeting our goals and aspirations as an organization. 

To that end, we want to offer these guidelines for generating research [**reports**](https://www.leaderonomics.com/articles/functional/streamline-communications-digital-workplaces) of whatever type and audience to maintain a consistent style, tone, and quality. We don’t want to lose the voice of those writing it but we want to harmonize that voice with the voices of our whole team, past and present, making a melding chorus rather than a discordant ensemble. Alignment around a consistent style will also allow your colleagues to provide feedback on the content of your ideas rather than how they are presented, making the feedback cycle shorter, easier, and overall more efficient for everyone involved.

## Standards

While we don’t aim to have all of our research products published in peer-review journals, we should respect the standards of scientific research and scholarly publications by working at all times with those standards in mind and ensuring our research products are of the highest quality possible within the constraints of time, money, and other resources. We should be aware of opportunities where our research products can be published in respected peer-reviewed journals to broaden our reach and establish us as the premier research organization we aspire to be.

## Guidelines

### Formatting

1.  Drafts should be composed in a collaborative document that enables commenting in a shared folder that is accessible to everyone on the team. 
    
2.  Drafts should be shared often and early in the process for feedback from the IOI team, particularly other researchers and analysts, as well as knowledgeable subject matter experts. 
    
3.  Delays, blocks, and other impediments to completing the work on the established timeline should be flagged early to ensure supplemental resources are made available and additional help is provided to complete the work on time to the high standards we set for ourselves.
    
4.  Drafts should be focused on the content with minimal formatting and styling. Titles and section headers should be clearly marked out using built-in [heading text styles](https://it.umn.edu/services-technologies/how-tos/google-docs-apply-modify-heading-styles) to represent the information hierarchy, but other formatting should be kept to a minimum until the report has been reviewed and is being prepared for publication or dissemination. This includes changes to the font colors other than simple bolding of text and enlargement of any text for emphasis.
    
5.  Sources should be reliable, authoritative, and accessible. References to “click-bait” or other low-quality content should be avoided. Whenever possible, we should be using peer-reviewed research or reports from reputable scholars in the field. When describing case studies, we should reference high quality journalistic pieces or direct interviews we’ve conducted ourselves. Blogs without clear sourcing that are purporting to provide second hand information without attribution should be avoided. 
    
6.  Sources should be clearly indicated in the text and included in a bibliography following an accepted academic style format.
    
7.  Graphics should be kept to a minimum and only used when they directly contribute to the understanding of the material (charts, graphs, and images of key relevance).
    
8.  The tone of the paper should be neutral and balanced whenever possible, allowing the data and other evidence to “speak for itself.” As Wikipedia states, a [neutral point of view](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view) is “representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic.” As an organization advocating for more and better investment of open infrastructure, we have a desired outcome, but as an evidence-based organization, that desired outcome should be based on facts and data clearly and accurately represented.
    
9.  Quotes and other statements from those we have interviewed or otherwise engaged in the research should be clearly identified and attributed. There should be a clear discernment between what is being described by the author and what is being described by someone interviewed or used as a source. This ensures we don’t take credit for the opinions and thoughts of others while clearly distinguishing our thoughts and positions as an organization.
    
10.  Whenever possible, you should use [the active voice in your writing rather than the passive](https://writing.wisc.edu/handbook/style/ccs_activevoice). While it may seem more “academic,” passive voice is often wordier and more ambiguous in its meaning. We want to be clear and precise in our writing whenever possible, as well as concisely making our points for people who don’t have the time, energy, or interest in parsing the meaning of opaque sentences. 
    
11.  The structure of the reports should follow the generally accepted outline of standard research report, including sections covering:
    a. Executive Summary (if necessary for longer reports)
    b.  Introduction
    c.  Background
    d.  Methodology
    e.  Findings
    f.  Discussion
    g.  Conclusion
    h.  Acknowledgements 
    i.  Bibliography
    j.  Appendixes (if needed)

###  Literature reviews

We should have a clear process for what literature was included in the review and how we went about searching for it, as well as any conclusions about the state of literature on the topic. These can be included in the report itself but should be made publicly available for others to reference. 

Whenever possible, include a list of not only the resources reviewed, but also additional resources available that may be of interest but weren’t consulted for time or other constraints, referencing the policy outlined for the literature review. 

### Bibliographies

Whenever possible, we should reference sources using the DOI or other persistent identifier rather than a plain URL.

### Datasets

Datasets used in the analysis should be archived in accordance with our research data management plan and made available in an accessible format unless there are privacy or proprietary information concerns worked out with participants or the dataset owner. An effort should be made to reasonably redact information so some public release can be made of the available data in the event the full dataset can’t be released for privacy reasons (anonymization, obfuscation, etc.). We should always strive to release all the data we have that’s safe to release.

### Referencing survey and interview results

Those participating in a survey should be referred to as “respondents” while those participating in an interview or focus group should be referred to as a “participant.”

## See also

- Our [house style guide](https://hackmd.io/@investinopen/house-style), which outlines how IOI’s external documents and content should be written.
- IOI [Zotero guide](https://hackmd.io/@investinopen/zotero)
- [Description of IOI research products](https://hackmd.io/@investinopen/research-products)
- Other IOI [standards](https://hackmd.io/@investinopen/standards)
   - [Citation style](https://hackmd.io/@investinopen/standards#Citation-style)
   - [IP licensing](https://hackmd.io/@investinopen/standards#Licenses)
   - [ORCID identifier](https://hackmd.io/@investinopen/standards#ORCID-identifier)
- [IOI publications catalog](https://hackmd.io/@investinopen/publications)
- [IOI privacy policy](https://investinopen.org/ioi-privacy-policy/)
- Archived copy of this page (via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine): https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://hackmd.io/@investinopen/research-reporting

## Additional resources
* [Fair use: the four factors](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/107) (US law)
* Open Philanthropy Project. [Reasoning Transparency](https://www.openphilanthropy.org/reasoning-transparency). December 2017.
* Open Philanthropy Project. [Cause Selection](https://www.openphilanthropy.org/research/cause-selection).
* Jake Orlowitz. [You’re a Researcher Without a Library: What Do You Do?](https://medium.com/a-wikipedia-librarian/youre-a-researcher-without-a-library-what-do-you-do-6811a30373cd) November 2017.
* [The Wikipedia Library](https://wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org/) ("allows active editors to access a wide range of collections of paywalled reliable sources for free")

## Acknowledgement

Parts of this guide drew inspiration from [Openphilanthropy.org](https://www.openphilanthropy.org/research/history-of-philanthropy#Other_work_weve_commissioned).

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This page first published: 2022-05-19

###### tags: `process` `about-us`
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