The Sir James Murray Student Champions

Open science projects need leadership to move things forward.

The leadership can be scientific - someone who is the main coordinator, perhaps a founder, or the originator fo the original data. But an essential aspect of leadership is project management. Someone to ensure that tasks are clearly assigned. That meetings happen. That the project can be easily understood by newcomers.

In thinking about scaling up open science projects towards something ambitious like Target 2035, I was reflecting on this requirement for effective management in each project. In my experience the senior academics involved in such open projects are often so distracted with other aspects of their job that they don't make time to take care of the important, more public, aspects of the open science. Similarly, the lab students involved in the open projects can be so caught up in doing experiments, writing them up, interpreting data etc that they don't have time for the community aspects of the work, such as communicating project needs, or chasing others for progress on agreed actions.

The ideal solution is an enthusiastic student, perhaps working on a different project, or writing up a thesis, or someone who was recently involved in research but who is now doing something else - one can think of all manner of scenarios. But someone willing to commit some time to managing the project. A kind of scientific cat-herder who can help keep people focussed, who can act as a collector of community inputs, a verifier of incoming data or an advertiser of current project requirements. Someone able to help with writing manuscripts, help with maintaining the project's Github presence. Someone who would benefit from a structured interaction with a wider research team and whose career and training might benefit from the experience. I've worked with many students in open projects who are really good at this and it makes a huge difference.

I wanted to convey the importance of the role - to give it a name that reflected that importance.

To myself I started calling it the Pied Piper role. A charismatic coordinator, leading others along a road to somewhere fun. But then I checked the story, and the Pied Piper leads children to their deaths. No good at all.

A better role model is Sir James Murray, the visionary curator of public contributions in the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).

Attribution: By Unknown author. - https://www.amazon.com/Oxford-English-Dictionary-Vol-boxes/dp/0195219422, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6715523

This picture of Sir James from Wikipedia captures things beautifully - he is surrounded by thousands of letters from people helping to build the dictionary by suggesting the first uses of words. The story is well told in the book The Professor and the Madman, and now in a movie with Mel Gibson starring as the man himself. The story was made famous by virtue of one of the most prolific contributors, William Minor, who was an inmate in an insane asylum and it is this aspect - that the OED's crowdsourcing exercise is contributor-blind - that stuck in my mind when I read about it many years ago. Open science projects often receive inputs from all quarters, and often involve conversations between senior researchers and junior students. What matters is not the identity of the contributor but the quality of the work. Just as for the construction of the OED.

So I wanted to call these open science student project managers Sir James Murray Student Champions.

Now, one cannot simply take someone's name without permission. I sought, and obtained, approval from two senior members of the Murray family who were both interested in the project and gracious with their time. Oswyn Murray is a retired Classics don from Oxford (and Prime Minister Boris Johnson's former tutor) and Jim Murray is Professor of Biosciences at Cardiff University. I'm grateful to them for their consideration of my request and for their time in allowing me to explain the idea. An important part of their approval was that all results of open science projects go into the public domain as a public good, for the benefit of everyone. And that the project is contributor-blind. Sir James was, as I understand it, particularly pleased by the involvement of female contributors to the OED and seeing the diversity of the contributors in open science projects is one of the most gratifying aspects of removing barriers to worldwide participation.

So we are inviting students to apply for the role of the Sir James Murray Student Champion for Chemistry Networks Projects. To ensure some continuity we're suggesting the role is one year long in the first instance, with the possibility of renewal if things go well. I hope (and kind of expect) that the Champions will form a squad, sharing expertise and ideas, and that when we're done with this virus, that the squad can get together.

Do I think this will work? Yes, I do. I'm an optimistic realist about open science - what works, what does not. An emblem of that optimism derives from what happened out the front of Sir James' house in Oxford. He received so many contributions from people, and he sent out so many letters, that the Post Office installed a pillarbox right outside his house. It's still there.

Attribution: Wikipedia, ceridwen / Sir James Murray's letterbox, CC BY-SA 2.0

If you've comments on this idea, please write below. If you're interested in actually doing the role, send me a mail, or email chemistry@thesgc.org or check out the relevant SGC page and there is more info on the various tasks involved. I think we're going to build something really extraordinary together. (Update: Chemistry World have featured the idea.)

mattodd / blog

The Sir James Murray Student Champions #6