RoadMap

[ChiaraBertipaglia]

Infusing a culture of open science within the community of researchers at the Zuckerman Institute

Vision Statement

I am working with my mentor Mateusz Kusak and my Open Life Science cohort to create a document outlining the strategy to infuse a culture of open science within Columbia University’s Zuckerman Institute so that its community of neuroscientists can thrive in a healthier, truly collaborative environment of openness and transparency that can lead to transformative science.

Project output

Written document that outlines the open leadership strategy for infusing a a culture of open science within the community of researchers at the Zuckerman Institute (ZI). -- Committed: by the end of this OLS program I will have developed a solid plan for the following milestones. -- Stretched: by the end of this OLS program, milestone 1 will be complete and the survey will be ready to be circulated.

• Milestone 1 Assessing the ZI climate: where we are, what we need and where we want to go with our open science practices and policies Tasks [ ] a) Find a good example of climate assessment survey about open science that might already exist: -- connect with Maria Cruz, Melanie Imming, Marta Teperek -- retrieve old survey sent by eLife, although that was very preprints-centered [ ] b) Draft survey. Enquire about: -- inclination to deposit code/software openly -- inclination to deposit datasets in open repositories -- inclination to publish own manuscripts as preprints -- consideration of other people’s preprints (do you red/cite/review them?) -- inclination to publish own peer-reviewed manuscripts as open access [ ] c) Socialize survey among the OLS cohort before survey is ready to be spread [ ] d) In parallel: identify community members who are skeptical about preprints and/or open code and interview them. Have ~10 1:1 conversations to -- to learn their motivations -- to ask them how the ZI could further support them

  • Milestone 2 Identifying and engaging critical stakeholders among the ZI community of researchers and leadership who will be involved in this project (open leadership best practices) Tasks [ ] e) Identify who already publishes preprints and/or code openly and interview them. Have ~10 1:1 conversations -- to learn what motivates them to adopt open science practices (mix of PIs and postdocs) -- to ask them how the ZI could further support them -- to ask them to be community champions for this cause by: --- being consultants to create programmatic content (both events and communications) --- helping us advertise events by signing email announcements; introducing events; etc --- participating in events [ ] f) present the vision for this project and data from c (survey), d and e (1:1 convos) to CEO to make the case for why we need to develop programmatic content around open science, and support in general, as an institute, an open science culture. Goal: obtain CEO’s buy-in, in the form of behavior modeling and funding

• Milestone 3 Exploring pathways for open knowledge dissemination and selecting the most suitable one for my organization Tasks [ ] g) Find good examples of communities that have run engaging programs about open science: -- connect with Maria Cruz, Melanie Imming, Marta Teperek -- connect with issues #4, #6, #11, #15, #16, whose project vision is similar to mine -- consult with community champions about creative ways to engage audiences about open science: move away from the lecture/presentation model and find someone who could lead workshops about several aspects of open science (case studies usually capture the imagination) [ ] f) run a series of workshops

Metrics and Evaluation

How do we evaluate if the community at ZI has actually embraced a culture of open science? Different individuals may embrace different aspect of openness at different times. To be able to track any behavior change in the form of data/code/manuscripts sharing, we would need to be able to conduct a benchmarking study that has access to the researchers’ data/code/manuscripts before and after this project.

• Ask other open science "practitioners" about how they measure culture change

[SamGuay]

[...] its community of neuroscientists can thrive in a healthier, truly collaborative environment of openness and transparency that can lead to transformative science.

This statement is so powerful. Perfect.

Your roadmap is quite incredible too, detailed enough for outsiders to get it. The survey is such a great idea.

How do you plan to launch the survey and make researchers complete it? Lack of time is one of the many reasons we're often told. What can we do to make it look worthy of their time (i.e., engage them in the whole process)?

I'm definitely happy to help if needed!

[ChiaraBertipaglia]

@SamGuay thank you for you kind words! Yes, surveys are definitely tricky, but I've seen cases in our community where we got a high level of engagement from the population of researchers. In all those cases the survey had been conceived, crafted, signed and launched by community members. So yes to your point: engage people from the start, and ideally do it to the point of losing ownership of the project. In my case I think I should find a handful of community members who are sensitive and passionate about OS and start involving them at least as consultants. It's not always easy to involve them deeply to the point that they want to take ownership, but I'll try ;)

The alternatively to this bottom up approach would be to promote the survey by having someone like the institute director send it and endorse it. I guess it depends on the reputation of the director in that case.

[cassgvp]

"Survey" is on my official job description too 🙄😉. We have one which was run in our department last year, and Reproducible Research Oxford are in touch with Brian Nosek to reuse some resources they have and running a University wide one. I'm sure we could get in on this resource too.

[ChiaraBertipaglia]

after a lot of thinking and consulting with experts suggested by my mentor, I removed the survey from my roadmap, and replaced it with interviews of samples of community members, aimed at creating persona profiles. You're welcome to take a look at my project development plan https://github.com/ChiaraBertipaglia/Infusing-a-culture-of-open-science-within-the-community-of-researchers-at-the-Zuck/issues/3