DESCRIPTION

The open sharing of creative practice research outputs involves preparing materials documenting an outcome of practice research methodology and making them available via an institutional repository or other digital platform. While the dominant perception of open access within academia, and therefore open research outputs, is that of the open access journal article, a journal article is not the output itself when it comes to practice research, though it can be one form of making an output visible. Online 'portfolios' of practice research using various formats are created by combining brief statements or articulations of research alongside audio-visual documentation of the output, which usually includes images, video, audio files, text documents, or musical scores, though forms and formats will be contextually situated in specific disciplinary practice. Practice research outputs can also be shared via 'presentation forums such as conferences, talks and symposia' (Bulley & Sahin, 2021).

As research through practice began to gain legitimacy, it was initially assigned many different labels including '"practice-led", "practice-based", "studio-based", "creative practice", "research through design" (or RtD) and "artistic research"' (Messer, 2025, 409), with the terminological debate still ongoing. Messer (2025) helpfully defines 'practice' as 'any activities or actions taken to achieve a particular objective', usually more narrowly understood within academia to refer to 'creative practices; the visual and performing arts, craft, architecture and design, music and literature'. Practice research within this understanding, then, refers to 'research in which practice is the methodology, rather than just the subject' and 'in which the outcome of the practice (processual, artefactual, or a proxy documentation thereof) is also a fundamental component of its explication' (Messer, 2025, 406).

PRAG-UK (Practice Research Advisory Group UK) commissioned two reports by James Bulley and Ozden Sahin on what constitutes practice research and how it can be shared. In the second report, Bulley and Sahin (2021) highlight issues that influence the effective sharing of research in a digital setting, which include concerns around metadata, file types and formats, and 'item types' within institutional repositories, as well as the storing and preservation of outputs. The authors provide a number of recommendations on how practice research outputs can be structured to best present their contributions to knowledge.

As Meece et al. (2017) state, institutional repositories are a primary online location where creative practice outputs by academics are shared. However, the functionality to effectively share creative practice works did not exist until relatively recently. The Kultur project, based in the UK and funded by Jisc from 2007 to 2009, was one of the first initiatives to address this and used the EPrints model to provide 'a metadata profile adapted to practice-based outputs' (Meece et al., 2017, 209). The project also launched the first arts-focused institutional repositories at the University of the Arts London (UAL) and the University for the Creative Arts (UCA). Kultur also led to other projects with similar aims, such as the Kultivate project and the Defiant Objects project at Goldsmiths, University of London.

In the UK, the REF21 exercise introduced new expectations for all academics significantly responsible for research to submit their research for assessment. This meant a great many more practice researchers would be submitting an output. For institutions considering openness as part of their research mission, open access 'portfolios' of practice research were prepared and shared as part of their REF2021 submission. Many were PDF documents: self-contained files including both textual research statements and visual representations of the research output, as well as embedded links to online content. Other institutions employed repository functionality such as 'collections' to gather multiple repository items together under a DOI, composed of the output and documentation of methods and dissemination, especially where a 'multicomponent output' was being submitted. These examples of innovative open output sharing established a potential groundwork for future open practices of dissemination.

Individual institutions, however, have a variety of institutional repository software with varying degrees of technological resource, staff resource, and storage capacity. This leads to inequitable levels of representation and visibility between outputs. As Messer reminds, for practice research to be fully recognised 'as an epistemology as well as a methodology' requires a 'critical, collective project to improve how practice research is documented and preserved, shared and used' (Messer, 2025, 406).

The ENACT project, announced in late 2025, brings together colleagues from the predecessor PR Voices and SPARKLE projects, which investigated technical and academic challenges in sharing and disseminating practice research towards the creation of an eventual national infrastructure. ENACT will act on the findings of these projects to build the Enact: Core – infrastructure, enabling the FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) sharing of practice research outputs and data. Importantly, ENACT will engage deeply with communities of creative practice within UK institutions to ensure the infrastructure is created with the needs of practice researchers in mind, as well as drawing on the recommendations of the PR Voices and SPARKLE projects, which include the need for community input, the need to agree on articulated standards for sharing practice research objects, and the necessity that the platform not only host practice research data, but present it in a meaningful way, as well as ensuring full recognition and identification of all contributors, collaborators and participants. Such infrastructure must find ways to represent the diversity of cultures and practices in the practice research community and to honour the processual nature of practice research, in which 'contributions to knowledge, [which] typically engage in iterative and cyclical phases of experimentation and play [...] are critically evaluated and used to inform the future development of [...] practice' (Jackson et al., 2023). Both PR Voices and SPARKLE also highlighted the need for ongoing investment and provisions for training, as well as increasing capacity at institutions.

Open online portfolios in repositories are not the only option for sharing outputs, though they are a popular option. Publishing about a creative practice output within an open access journal is also possible for practice researchers, and there are an increasing number of journals focusing on creative practice. The International Journal of Creative Media Research is an 'open access academic journal devoted to pushing forward the approaches to and possibilities for publishing creative media-based research' that publishes twice per year. NiTRO + Creative Matters, out of Australia, is a combined venue 'for creative artists practicing in academia' (NiTRO), and Creative Matters, a journal publishing from 2023, contains a combination of peer-reviewed and non-peer reviewed content towards 'discussions that affect all levels of the experience of creative arts research'. The Open Library of Humanities, a diamond open access journal platform, also hosts a number of journals dealing with issues in creative practice.

References

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