Best Practices

These guidelines are designed to assist with the release and promotion of Open Work, as well as showcasing its value during annual reviews, tenure, and promotion processes. To support these recommendations, programs, and services are available through Open@RIT for registering your work and gathering relevant metrics and analytics. We suggest you reach out to us directly in order to receive tailored advice from our team.

It's important to note that these are recommendations, not official university policies or legal advice. For any policy or legal inquiries related to RIT projects, consult the university's legal or tech transfer offices, and for personal projects, seek advice from a personal lawyer. Any suggestions on how to improve this document, or strengthen it for any given discipline, are encouraged. Should you have any questions about them feel free to contact Open@RIT Director Stephen Jacobs.

While these are our recommendations, they are not official university policy nor do they qualify as official legal advice. In all cases, should you have any questions around policy or legal questions, refer to the appropriate offices of the university for official clarification for RIT projects or a personal lawyer for personal projects.

Any suggestions on how to improve this document, or strengthen it for any given discipline, are encouraged.

As in any public endeavor by an RIT Community Member, you should review the project’s code of conduct, contributors license agreement, and other policies, and ensure these aren’t in conflict with RIT’s Code of Ethical Conduct and Compliance.

If the project acknowledges the efforts of external contributors in a way that allows for their affiliations to be mentioned, your affiliation with RIT should be properly credited within the project documentation and/or other related areas in the project and/or its website.

Preparing your work for release can be remarkably daunting, even if you’ve done it before. To help simplify the process, we’ve compiled a checklist to follow when sharing your work to the Open world. It should help you ensure your work will reach the right audiences while following all the proper legal procedures.

Learn more about Disseminating your Open Work

Representing and defending open work during the evaluation process for tenure and promotion can be difficult. Our article: Making the Case for Open Work in Evaluation, Tenure, & Promotion can help you get on the right track. We’ve also included further reading to help you ensure your work receives the proper recognition it deserves.

Learn more about Evaluation, Tenure, and Promotion

If all externally funded work needs to be Open, a clear and intentionally worded proposal that emphasizes your ability to be impactful and sustainable around your Open Work is essential for consideration.

At a minimum, Open@RIT can give you recommendations on the language for that section of your proposal. Need more assistance? Just as you write external evaluators into your grants, you can write the services of Open@RIT into your grants to develop your Open dissemination plans, frameworks, pipelines, the creation. We can even handle the management and sustainability of the community of Open researchers and contributors you hope to develop once you’re funded.