An open research about documentation practices in many kinds of laboratories. English spoken.
Una investigación abierta sobre prácticas de documentación en varios tipos de laboratorios. ¡Se habla español!
Uma pesquisa aberta sobre práticas de documentação em vários tipos de laboratórios. Fala-se português!
The idea is to get to know, study and showcase documentation practices developed by practitioners in labs, specially citizen labs, makerspaces, hackerspaces, informal learning spaces, etc. We believe that proper documentation of projects is crucial in opening opportunities to engage persons, share visions, foster communities, inspire initiatives and reproduce objects. Documentation is not the master of universe. It does not capture everything that is happening between us, with us, on us. But it helps us tracking the reasons why we obtain certain findings in our experiments, prototipes, communities. Also, it allows us to testify and learn from those who came before us, improving our initiatives.
Adapted from the Lean Canvas. Documenta?! Open Canvas (editable)
In 2015, I was researching about open laboratory notebooks (indeed open notebook science proposed by Jean-Claude Bradley) with Antonio Lafuente's supervision in Madrid and he introduced me to the citizen laboratories, specially Medialab-Prado (MLP). He suggested me to expand my research scope to informal spaces that explore collaborative experimentation and learning such as medialabs, citilabs, hacklabs and maker spaces.
Suggestion accepted, I started participating in some researches conducted by MLP mediators-researchers in order to observe the knowledge production process and their documentation practices. I discovered that they fully embrace the idea of laboratory since it represents an experimental approach in the sense that allows us to explore something without be able to anticipate the final result, as a possibility of producing collectively new knowledge by trial and error. But when it comes to documenting, they do not follow the standard of keeping laboratory notebooks.
In some extent, the idea of lab notebooks sounded quite weird. When I explained it, they understood as a bureaucratic activity or something only related to academic research. On the other hand, there was a unanimous perception that they must share information about the activities they were conducting. The problem here is that, beyond work overload, the dominant logic of the cultural sector reduces documentation to a past activity, a kind of proof that something was done or accomplished. Rarely it was identified as a "technology of aspiration "(APPADURAI, 2003) that looks at the future.
In may 2015, I examined 120 initiatives published on the “Medialab Prado Comunidad” - an online plattform created in 2013 as "a space for share projects, work together and meet other users". Or "a social network dedicated specifically to the online collaborative work that aims to be an extension of the work that is done in the workshops, offering contact and documentation for medialab users so that “the most important information for group operation is easily available to all” (Medialab-Prado, 2013). I identified that the great majority of the project documentation rested on the first description of initiatives in order to attract collaborators. We could only have an idea of the starting point of the initiatives, but we can not follow their developments or access findings. The basic structure was: a) projects name, b) general escription; c) tools and materials; d) promoter; e) collaborators; f) links; g) images. I also noticed low interaction among the participants through of the platform, finding a very small number of posts and documents upload.
To be continued ...
I believe that we can do it better if we do it openly, together and most of all, caring for each other. Since my background is the academic culture, mostly based on competitiveness and secrecy, I believe that this open research will specially deal with three challenges:
- To acknowledge, compensate, and/or otherwise reward contributors equitably for their work.
- To be transparent with contributors and users about how my projects’ decision-making, information-sharing, and content-sharing.
- To create multiple, inclusive pathways to participate in my projects and celebrate the accomplishments of people from all the forms of diversity we hold together.
Since it is my first open project, I don´t have a stable roadmap. I am still learning with the help of Mozilla Open Leaders 7 (Design & Concur group) and my mentor Felipe De Santo. The main idea is to connect with people and projects that have a common interests on documentation. For instance, you can particpate by: suggesting practices and groups to be studied or invited to join in, studying this practices together, recommending literature about documentation; sharing your insights or experience about documentation; helping enhance participation, equity and inclusion etc.
Code of conduct: Documenta?! adopts the Mozilla Community Participation Guidelines that "put people first and do our best to recognize, appreciate and respect the diversity of our global contributors". It aims to contribute in a healthy and constructive manner within our community. Briefly, this code of conduct expects the following behaviour: a) be respectful (value other’s viewpoints and styles); b) be direct but professional (no one holds "the truth."); c) be inclusive (facilitate new perspectives to be heard); d) understand different perspectives; e) appreciate and accommodate our similarities and differences and f) lead by example (match actions with words).
By contrast, the following behaviors are not tolerated: a) violence and threats of violence; b) personal attacks; c) derogatory language; d) unwelcome sexual attention or physical contact; d) disruptive behavior and e) influencing unacceptable behavior.
Please let me know if you experience any code violation. Suggestions about how we can make this space more inviting are wellcome.
In 2018, I participated for the second time in Labic, a citizen innovation laboratory promoted by the UFRJ Communication School. This initiative is inspired by other Latin American experiences, carried out by Segib, and Spanish as Medialab-Prado, but the format of public call for projects + public call for collaborators + intensive work meetings has local adaptations. In this issue, the theme of postcolonial / decolonial had great prominence among the projects. These debates led us to problematize relationships between laboratory records and the colonial perspective - identified as extractivist, patriarchal, misogynist and mercantile. Would the laboratory notebook, even open, strengthen or weaken such a perspective?
I am Brazilian researcher, working on the information science field, and I have studied open laboratories notebboks, specially citizen labs documentation practices in Spain and Brazil during my PHD research, that resulted on the thesis "New laboratory notebooks and new epistemic cultures: between experiment policy and politics experiment". I also was team member of Ubatuba Open Science Project, an action research that related open science with development issues - video. Since I study the commons perspective as a third way of "governance of the commons" (Ostrom), I would like to understand the possibilities and limits of documentation to enhance such practices.
"According to Jean Claude Bradley (Sept, 26, 2006), open notebook science refers to “a way of doing science in which — as best as you can — you make all your research freely available to the public and in real time”. It claims for a new form of formal communication between scientists, enriched by the early opening of information and results. It demands a new practice: making available in real time the totality of scientists’ laboratory notebooks on online platforms, as well as free licenses that make possible the access, reuse and redistribution of content by any person or automated system. This innovation does not only include raw data and information about positive results of a given piece of scientific research; it also disseminates partial status, weaknesses and challenges at a stage when they have not yet been solved by scientists. Sharing the “backstage” of science, its intermediate stages, doubts and difficulties is part of Bradley’s strategy aimed at promoting a “faster science, better science” and at attracting collaborators and resources in order to solve scientific questions challenging him. Bradley defined open notebook science in the following way:
[…] I will use the term Open Notebook Science, which has not yet suffered meme mutation. By this I mean that there is a URL to a laboratory notebook (like this) that is freely available and indexed on common search engines. It does not necessarily have to look like a paper notebook but it is essential that all of the information available to the researchers to make their conclusions is equally available to the rest of the world. Basically, no insider information. (Bradley, Sept, 26, 2006)
"(...) open notebook science’s origin is situated at the junction of new forms of collaboration in digital environments and the emergence of a free digital culture. Its first practices were carried out in the context of the UsefulChem project, launched in 20059, to fulfill Bradley’s personal objective of “making a useful contribution to society” because “In thinking about what has meaning for me as a scientist, I realized that the work I was doing wasn’t having the kind of impact that I would like it to have, and it was not benefitting mankind in the way I would have hoped. I concluded that this was partly a consequence of secrecy” (Bradley, Sep 2010)." (Clinio, Albagli, 2017)
References
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Beyond the Dichotomy between Natural and Knowledge Commons: Reflections on the IAD Framework from the Ubatuba Open Science Project - Anne Clinio, Sarita Albagli - https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01816671v1
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Open notebook science as an emerging epistemic culture within the Open Science movement - Anne Clinio, Sarita Albagli - https://journals.openedition.org/rfsic/3186
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Why open notebook science? - Anne Clinio - http://livroaberto.ibict.br/handle/1/1061
"Documenting is not recording facts but showing processes. It is not an occupation, but an attitude towards life: a mentality rather than a technique. The processes of collective construction and collaborative prototyping are invisible or disappear after the presence of the deliverable because those processes escape conventional documentation tools. The EduCaaS team, in collaboration with Antonio Lafuente, is designing a digital tool that makes these processes visible and also models them so that they can be replicated, modified and evaluated. This tool is a fundamental piece in citizen laboratories, understood as listening devices and open spaces of collective creation fundamental for the democratic renewal of our society."
Video credit: Medialab-Prado
References
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Doc.Art Github repository - Doc.Art (2017) - https://github.com/docART/documentacion
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Manual Doc.art - Antonio Lafuente - https://www.academia.edu/36042065/manual_docART
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El arte de documentar - Antonio Lafuente, David Gómez, Juan Freire - https://www.academia.edu/37938364/El_arte_de_documentar
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Los laboratorios ciudadanos y el anarchivo de los comunes - Antonio Lafuente - Link: https://www.academia.edu/14834106/Los_laboratorios_ciudadanos_y_el_anarchivo_de_los_comunes
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Como hacer un prototipo? - Antonio Lafuente, Mariana Cancela - https://www.academia.edu/30989047/C%C3%B3mo_hacer_un_prototipo
According to Carla Boserman, a relatograma is one possibility of visual narration that contains drawings and words to register a situation where there are people doing, explaining or sharing things. If nowadays we have many digital technologies to record events as facts, the relatograma aims to register “what does not appear in the photo". It documents (or tell us) how things happen from the point of view of an observer who does not try to make a neutral, objective report or recreate unattainable objectivity. On the contrary, the rapporteur assumes a committed position, from his own unique and situated perspective, to composes a scene that depends on her/his capacity to see (and document). In that sense, elaborating a relatograma is closed related to the rapporteur's sensitivity to highlight details, give voice to the secondary, speak about emotions, disagreements, doubts, jokes, unforeseen events etc. Its potential is about trying to draw how prototyping and social innovation activities happens.
Image credit: Disección de un relatograma, Wikimedia Commons, user: carlaboser
References
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Cómo hacer un relatograma - Carla Boserman - http://laaventuradeaprender.intef.es/documents/10184/72154/Guia-LADA_Como-hacer-un-relatograma.pdf
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Relatogramas: Dibujo y cognición en laboratorios sin muros - Carla Boserman - Máster en Comunicación, Cultura y Ciudadanía Digitales, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, 2013
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Dibujo y cognición en la laboratorios sin muros - Carla Boserman (2013) - http://www.carlaboserman.net/relatogramas-dibujo-y-cognicion-enlaboratorios-sin-muros/
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Entre grafos y bits - Carla Boserman (2014) - http://revistesdigitals.uvic.cat/index.php/obradigital/article/view/33
The Global Open Science Hardware (GOSH) movement seeks to reduce barriers between diverse creators and users of scientific tools to support the pursuit and growth of knowledge. It depends on documents that are understandable and communicative.
References
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Manifesto do Hardware Científico Aberto e Global - http://openhardware.science/gosh-manifesto/portuguese/
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Global Open Science Hardware Roadmap: Making Open Science Hardware ubiquitous by 2025 - http://openhardware.science/global-open-science-hardware-roadmap/
Between 2016 and 2017, the initiative of the Brazilian collective BaixaCultura, in partnership with the Spanish Zemos98, researched documentation experiences in 20 collectives around Spain. From this process, a "recombinant methodology" has emerged. The idea is thata documenting is broader than publishing in social networks, but to systematize information, register facts, tell stories and constitute memory. The group's learning was recorded on the blog http://enfrenta.org/
- Our will.
- Previous literature, researches.
- Groups experience.
- Anne Clinio
- Put your name here... :)
Anne Clinio E-mail: anneclinio at gmail dot com Twitter: anneclinio
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