The Open Science Workshop Toolbox

About

This is a small (opiniated) collection of topics and methods used when running Open Science workshop. We have used them in several occassion for workshops in diverse settings (mostly for a scientific audience).

Adapt to the audience

Adapt the material to the audience, e.g. students or seasoned researchers.

Important points to make

• Open Science = Real Science (or better yet “Good Scientific practice”)
• Open the **whole** research cycle

Icebreaker (questions)

Used to relax the audience, so that they are more open for the following discussion.

• Organize audience by
  • research field
  • career state (student, PhD, postdoc) or time being in science
• Or, alternatively, have a short introduction round for audience members with another (unknown) person (about 1 min each)
• Who has used free online teaching resources, or scientific blogs etc. (can also be protocols for experiments etc.)
• Who couldn’t access a publication because of closed access (although you’re stationed at a well-funded western university)
• What was the longest time you had a manscript under peer review? 3 months, 6 months etc.
• Who had problems acquiring published data
• Who has tried to replicate a research paper but was not able to do so – because of various reasons (data not available, analysis scripts not available, incomplete methods descriptions)?

These questions point at some of the problems with the current scientific system that can be solved by Open Science.

Optionally include a short introduction talk

This talk can introduce the purpose of Open Science, why Open Science is important (transparency and quality check, reproducibility crisis etc.), how Open Science can be done, what are the barriers for Open Science, and finally summarize the important points. It is also useful to give positive examples of the use of Open Science, either for science itself or for individuals.

The talks we used thus far can be found here:

• Open Science session at the DGHM/VAAM 2017
• Open Science -the future of science? at the Cyano2017 conference

Use the research cycle as framework to develop ideas with audience

• Idea -> Funding/Grant application -> Experiment/Data generation -> Data analysis -> Peer Review –> Publish -> …

We normally use cards of the research cycle on a wall or pinboard and write the ideas on cards to pin to the corresponding reasearch cycle item during the session. Depending how much time is available and the interests of the audience we try to include all the facets of Open Science.

What can **you** do right now?

• Use/promote
  • open access journals
  • preprint servers (and publish freely accessible post-prints, e.g. http://dissem.in)
  • data repositories for your research data
• Document and release code
• Use the reviewing process to promote open science (e.g. “The Open Science Peer Review Oath”)
• Interact with colleagues and public via social media (blogs, Twitter etc.)
• Integrate Open Science in your classes/meetings (e.g. “The Open Science and Reproducible Research course”)
  • Do replication studies with students: Data available?, Code available and usable?, Methods detailed enough?
• Organize Trainings: Software/Data/Library Carpentry, Hackathons etc.
• Abandon the broken “journal prestige” system to influence university administration on matters of research evaluation and tenure (e.g. Felix Schönbrodt University of Munich, http://www.nicebread.de/open-science-hiring-practices/), and on grant panels and editorial boards

References/Links

General

• When will ‘open science’ become simply ‘science’?
• ‘What is open science?’ by Titus C. Brown
• OKF Open Science Working Group
• AG Open Science (German speaking)
• Open Science Radio
• 101 Innovations in Scholarly Communication
• The Open Science Training Handbook

Open Access

• Fair Open Access
• Examples of journals/community switching to OA:
  • Lingua => Glossa
  • Journal of Algebraic Combinatorics => Algebraic Combinatorics

Pre-Prints

• Preprint server:
  • bioRxiv
  • arXiv
  • PeerJ preprints
• Preprinting Microbiology
• SHERPA/ROMEO - Journal preprint/post-print policies

Open Data

• The FAIR Data Principles
• Open Science Framework (OSF) - To publish the **whole** research cycle
• Data repositories:
  • Dryad
  • Zenodo
  • Figshare
  • re3data.org – Registry of Research Data Repositories
• Data journals
  • GigaScience

Open Source

• Choose an open source license
• The Journal of Open Source Software - A developer friendly journal for research software packages
• Repositories
  • GitHub
  • Bitbucket
  • SourceForge
• Get a citable DOI for your source code with Figshare/Zenodo

Open Methodology

• Protocols.io - Publish protocols
• Open Science Framework (OSF) - To publish the **whole** research cycle

Open Peer Review

• An Open Science Peer Review Oath
• Post publication peer review journals:
  • F1000 Research
  • ScienceOpen
• Discuss published articles:
  • PubPeer: https://pubpeer.com/
  • RetractionWatch
  • PubMed Commons
  • Blogs etc.
• Publons - Take credit for Peer Review

Open Notebook Science

• OpenWetWare
• Jupyter Notebook
• R Markdown

Open Educational Resources

• Data Carpentry
• Software Carpentry

Open / alternative metrics

• Wrong Number: A closer look at Impact Factors
• Beat it, impact factor! Publishing elite turns against controversial metric
• Briefings in Bioinformatics - a single article pushed the JIP from 4 to 24
• Leiden manifesto for research Metrics

Open Grant Proposals

• A list of publicly available grant proposals in the biological sciences

Citizen Science

• Including citizens into the research process, e.g. crowdsourcing and engaging the public in massive research projects
• Online game Foldit
• Audubon’s “Christmas Bird Count“

Funders about Open Science

• Report: The rationales of open science digitalisation and democratisation in research

Misc

• https://casrai.org/credit/

License

“Can I reuse this content?” => “Yes, you can!” See LICENSE.txt.