We're building a platform that helps researchers use collective action to establish positive cultural norms in academia, so that individuals can adopt open and reproducible research practices without placing their careers at risk.
Academia functions like a 'tragedy of the commons dilemma' (or collective action problem) -- the widespread adoption of open science practices could benefit everyone in the research community, but their adoption is impeded by incentive structures that reward sub-optimal research/publication practices at the individual level. Our platform functions much like Kickstarter, but for cultural change rather than products. Any researcher can propose a campaign calling for their peers to adopt a particular behaviour if and when there is a critical mass of support in their community to do so. Pledges remain inactive and anonymised until this time, allowing vulnerable individuals to signal their desire for positive culture change without risking their career in the process. Then -- after the critical mass is met -- all signatories are de-anonymised on the website and directed to carry out the action together, thus creating momentum for change and protecting one another's interests through collective action. We anticipate that over time, these campaigns will grow increasingly larger in size and scope, and eventually become a powerful driving force in aligning the academic system with the needs of research community and principles of science itself.
Project FOK is divided into two separate repositories:
- (1) a 'platform' repository, which is for developing the code behind the website (you probably don't need to look at that repo unless you're a developer or project admin)
- (2) this 'community' repository, which is for storing documents (e.g., marketing materials) and organising discussions (including the design of new campaigns, using the Issues feature)
- Help us by doing the following:
- Watch + star this repository (top right of this page)
- Join our mailing list
- Log in to the website and pledge to any campaigns that you support
- Follow/retweet us on Twitter and Facebook
- Join our Google Group
- Share our GofundMe campaign (and donate if you can afford to :))
- Read the project roadmap to see how you can contribute
- Look through the list of campaign proposals (any issue starting with 'Campaign') and comment on any that interest you, or add a thumbs up to show your support (this will help us decide which campaigns to post on the website). If you don't see a campaign that you think should be there, propose it by creating a new issue.
- Comment on any other project issues that you have thoughts on.
- Look through the Project board to see if there's any tasks you can complete
- If you're a developer, head over to the platform repository to see what work needs to be done.
- Prior discussion at https://gitlab.com/publishing-reform/discussion/issues/78
Tips for using R-markdown in Github Issues:
- Use the '*' character to make bullet points
- If you want to reference a specific comment, highlight the text of interest and press 'r' (this will copy the referenced text into your reply)
- React to comments by clicking the little emoji
- Format text using this guide