Highlighting Open Research Practices in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences
As well as releasing our Catalogue of open research practices in AHSS (catalogue.morphss.work), the MORPHSS project has just published our first major report: *Openness in the arts, humanities and social sciences: Documenting open research practices beyond STEM*
— MORPHSS (@morphss.bsky.social) February 9, 2026 at 4:27 AM
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Open research is most often associated with disciplines in the sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)—after all, the term is often used interchangeably with open science—yet the values of transparency and accessibility are held by researchers across the academic ecosystem. The Materialising Open Research Practices in the Humanities and Social Sciences (MORPHSS) project was begun in 2025 to explore ways in which disciplines not categorized as STEM can demonstrate open research principles. The project team has now reached one of its goals, to catalogue current "open" practices in these disciplines and encourage their wider adoption.
The resulting report documents 30 open research practices and classifies them into six categories: process openness, evidentiary openness, availability of outputs, the accessible communication of research, participatory openness, and epistemic openness. It also provides recommendations for funders, publishers, institutions, and other stakeholders wishing to advance open research principles in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. The full report is now available online.
The MORPHSS project is led by Cambridge University Library in collaboration with Cambridge Digital Humanities, Coventry University, and the Universities of Sheffield and Southampton and is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Research England Development (RED) Fund, and the Wellcome Trust.