Practice Research Voices (PRVoices) - Scoping the Open Library of Practice Research

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How do we better share the knowledge generated by artists, architects, curators and creative practitioners whose work addresses critical and urgent priority areas, ranging from cultural heritage, health and well-being to climate change and global security? How could a world-leading system for accessing knowledge developed using practice research transform ideas, engagement and innovation across sectors, academic disciplines and industry? Why are such voices missing an efficient platform that could transform academic, economic and cultural impacts?This project will develop ways to let the people that perform practice research capture details of their work and share it with others. It will be informed by a report that was published in the last few months based on discussions with a large number of the people working in the field of practice research. The report established that; 1) in all fields of research, by doing something, you are engaging in practice. Therefore, the field of research into practice covers almost every area of scientific endeavour, and 2) current software for distributing research was failing the practice research community. The report contained recommendations that we aim to implement as a piece of software called a repository. This online library will allow the people who engage in practice research to make their work available to all.The project provides value for money by using existing repositories and working with established practitioners to figure out how to make these more efficient for researchers, institutions and funders. We will be working with three repositories - one that is quite advanced in addressing the needs of practice researchers (University of Westminster/ Haplo), one that is currently working with museum and gallery content (British Library and V&A) and another that is currently good at working with "typical" written article content (Jisc). By testing across a range of repositories we will produce a report at the end of the project that contains recommendations to improve all of them.Key to the overall proposal is an equitable landscape for all research, in which non-STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Maths) research is understood more clearly and talked about as of equal value to papers, publications and monographs. Moving beyond the reference to non-text outputs as "Other", such as Film, Databases, Archives and curated exhibitions, we highlight the technical issues and lack of parity for researchers working across Arts and Humanities.The project will build upon an existing community of practice researchers who are essential to the function, role and future of the University sector, contributing nationally and internationally to the broader discussion of practice research. This community, along with the research team, becomes a kernel from which to develop a rigorous academic and technical software solution that addresses how practice research is described, stored, discovered and further elaborated.