Daniel-Mietchen
commented
3 years ago I have just submitted. The video sits at https://youtu.be/r8Yk07BCwXo , and my responses to the six main questions (each with 1500 characters maximum) are as follows:
Current state
Researchers have a range of different types of interactions with their research, with other researchers, research institutions or the research landscape more generally, including society at large. These interactions are governed by a complex network of parameters that range from personal preferences to group habits to the availability of research resources to codified law and to infrastructure. Any such interaction might trigger decisions affecting some aspects of these networks.
Upon closer inspection, there is often a disconnect between some of the key elements of this network, in particular between research policies, research practice and research infrastructure as well as the values held by individuals or groups of researchers. All of this complicates decision-making and other behaviors by actors in or even near the research ecosystem.
These complications can lead to conflicts or scholarly malpractice, which would be desirable to reduce. They also mean the different actors in the system are missing out on potential opportunities to develop their values collaboratively or to use their values as a variable when searching for collaborators, facilities, events or projects to engage with.
What change is needed
I want to assist researchers and others in operationalizing their research-related values by making it easier to express them and to integrate them into their research practice.
To this end, I want to develop a modular system through which they can formalize these values - or any applicable subset thereof - in a standardized and machine actionable fashion that would be aware of common types of interactions and associated decisions that individuals and groups are facing in the research ecosystem or its vicinity.
This system would assist its users in assessing - privately or in a way they can share - alignments between their own values and actions as well as between theirs and those of individuals, groups or organizations they interact with. Analyzing these alignments over time or in specific contexts can help identify areas for potential adjustments, both for individual actors, actions or interactions, and systemically.
Signalling particular values or alignments in private, in groups or in public can facilitate small-scale interactions but - if properly organized - could also help in bringing about or improving collaboration at a larger scale, or it could trigger collective action on collective action problems like the adoption of open science practices or the transition to a more sustainable way of living and doing research on this planet.
Barriers and questions to address
Multiple factors modulate change here. They can for instance be personal (e.g. habits, preferences), organizational (e.g. bureaucracy, institutional inertia) or societal (e.g. systemic biases, cultural sensitivities), and they may act across multiple levels (e.g. the incomplete transition from paper-based to digital ways of working), within or across domains, locally or globally.
I will thus look into ways in which scholarly values manifest themselves at various levels, starting from open science-related ones. For instance, the license chosen for a particular publication or other scholarly object - or as a default in a certain context - is a statement about the value ascribed to elements of openness like adaptability to or reusability in novel contexts.
Such an implicit value statement could in principle be compared to more explicit ones (e.g. licensing recommendations in an open-access policy) to assess alignment, but systems to do that systemically are only nascent in open-access contexts and essentially absent for many other dimensions of scholarly values.
However, components of innovations in other parts of the research system or even beyond will likely be relevant. With this in mind, I will also look into systems like ontologies or controlled vocabularies for expressing permissions related to the use of data or material specimens, or more holistic initiatives like Estonia’s approach to e-government that embodies a range of values in nationwide digital infrastructure.
Detailed plan (still just 1500 characters max)
I will start by analyzing a range of statements about scholarly values by actors in the research ecosystem. At the levels of individuals, these might be pledges they have written or signed, and at the levels of groups or legal entities, they might be mission statements or guidelines on ethical research, good scientific practice or climate justice, or the code of conduct for an event or a project.
These statements will be categorized and decomposed into individual policy elements that can be expressed in terms of controlled vocabulary and linked through ontological relationships.
Next, I plan to represent key components of such value statements in one coherent system. I will try to adapt the system such that it can express a core set of value statements and handle different use cases. In doing so, I will pay special attention to facilitating coordinated collective action.
Once this is set up, mechanisms can be prototyped that allow researchers and other actors in this space to engage with their own values in a more systematic fashion. This means experimentation with key components of their daily research practice, e.g. calendars, browsers, email notifications.
The last bit of the puzzle would be to expand the value communication from said integration with an actor’s workflows to actually signalling their values to others in specific circumstances, e.g. through T shirts, machine-readable badges or Thank you buttons.
All of this is then to be iteratively improved.
Expected challenges
I expect a range of challenges, primarily involving social and technical aspects of the project as well as their interplay, with some perhaps being more of a legal or ethical nature.
On the social side, for instance, some might question the need for such a value signalling system, others might question my approach to it in general or with respect to specific issues like equity and inclusion or dimensions of diversity. My approach to that is open documentation and openness for voluntary participation by anyone.
On the technical side, foreseeable challenges include the choice of the format in which the values statements are to be represented and signalled, as well as integration with the tool chain used in research workflows. My approach here is based on open-source code and on open documentation.
Most of the challenges will probably have both a social and a technical component, details of which will likely only emerge when actually trying to build such a system. For instance, any integration of a new element into a tool chain can be perceived as an intrusion, and habituation effects might modulate the effectiveness of system components like notifications.
To address these challenges, early and steady involvement of a community of interested users will be essential, and I think that collaboration with Free Our Knowledge, Ronin Institute and IGDORE is a good basis for that, but it will need to be combined with attention to things like usability and accessibility.
Role of openness
The communication of anything closely related to values is sensitive in multiple ways, so establishing and maintaining trust is essential. Consequently, the initial focus when developing the system will be on openness in terms of process, governance, documentation, standards, participation and licensing.
There are two more aspects of openness that are relevant: first, openness will feature prominently in the values the system is being prototyped with. Second, participation will be entirely voluntary, so only by people or others who are open to the approach taken here.
As the system matures, it will increasingly be used to communicate values, potentially on a broader variety of dimensions and between a larger group of actors, so issues related to governance will become more important, and the intent is to give it an open foundation, e.g. by excluding potential take-overs by commercial entities, though interoperability with them might well be desirable.
I would like to mention too that the inspiration for this project has strong open connotations: the modular and machine-actionable setup is inspired by Creative Commons licenses, and parts of the community signalling are inspired by user boxes, open-access indicators and Thank you buttons on Wikimedia projects as well as by experience with the signalling of the Sustainable Devlopment Goals in the open-science journal Research Ideas and Outcomes that I edit.
The collaboration partners in the project - Free Our Knowledge, Ronin Institute and IGDORE - are all active around opening up certain aspects of what it means to be a scholar and to engage in research.
as per https://shuttleworthfoundation.org/apply/form/ .
Seen via https://twitter.com/ShuttleworthFdn/status/1444985371159302144 .
See also my previous attempt at https://github.com/Daniel-Mietchen/ideas/issues/1225 .