Open research

MishMash works in the open by default. What follows is what the centre has undertaken to do with its publications, its data and its code, and it applies to everyone working in the centre.

Why open research and not open science

The centre says open research rather than open science on purpose. Artistic research produces exhibitions, performances, scores, instruments and documentation, not only articles and datasets. A term that covers only science would leave out half of what MishMash makes, and with it the people who make it.

Publications

Results are published in open access channels, with early versions in recognised preprint archives so that the work is readable before a journal’s process is finished. Given the breadth of the centre, outputs range from monographs and book chapters to journal articles and conference papers.

Co-authorship across disciplines and institutions is encouraged, even though it is harder at the start. It is the practical test of whether the interdisciplinary dialogue is real.

Data

Research data follow the FAIR principles: findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable. Datasets are deposited in trusted repositories with a persistent identifier, most often DataverseNO or Zenodo. Artistic material belongs where creative practitioners already look for it, such as Freesound and the Research Catalogue. Material from libraries and museums connects to the European cultural heritage infrastructure.

Data are released in standard, open file formats, with the documentation and software needed to read them, and with a data management plan. The rule is as open as possible and as closed as necessary: privacy and copyright set the limits, and where they do, the centre says so rather than leaving a dataset unexplained.

Where the centre can choose, data carry a permissive licence, normally CC BY. The site’s own data are published at mishmash.no/data/.

Code

Software and hardware developed in MishMash are released as open source, on public platforms, under permissive licences. Licensing is a live discussion in the network, since the interests of a freelancer, an institution and a company are not the same, and the centre would rather have that discussion in the open than settle it by default.

The website itself is an example: the code is MIT-licensed and the text is CC BY, as set out in the terms of use.

Why it matters here

Open research is not only a funder’s requirement. Permissive licences put tools in the hands of people and institutions that cannot buy them, in Norway and far beyond it, and that is part of what the centre means by working responsibly with AI.