Reproducible Research Things Lessons
The idea with this workshop/documentation is to help researchers move along the path in reproducibility. It doesn’t take them from 0 – 100 but if they can implement one or two things, it can help them later down the track. The ‘be better than you were yesterday’ idea.
Our plan is do develop slides that pose the following questions and the corresponding answers and links.
Q1) What if a key person from your lab disappeared one day (family or personal emergency, no longer contactable)? Could you all continue your work? Would you know where all your data is stored? Could you keep running effectively for 1 month? 1 year?
- Bus factor
- Documentation
- Naming conventions
- Folder structure for readability
- Automation
- git
Q2) Imagine you're travelling and lose your laptop bag with your external hard drives? Or your office is robbed? Could you continue your work? Is your data backed up? Encrypted?
- Research storage
- Security- encrypt your hard drive
- Separating identified variables
Q3) Someone has published contradicting results to your published paper, and you've been asked to provide your data and methods. Could you?
- Research Storage – Vault
- Research Data Repository
- Documentation
- Versions of software
- Keep raw data separate (Research Storage – Vault)
Q4) If a research partner organization believes your "sensitive" data has been made available to others (ie a data breach). Could you show that steps were taken to avoid this or show that it couldn't happen?
- Research space – tracing who you have shared a file
- Computer encryption (General good computer safety)
- General good computer safety – unique passwords and use Multi factor Auth when possible
- Separating identified variables