When Postdocs Go to Court: An Empirical Legal Research Open Notebook

[JMMaok]

Project Lead: Jennifer Miller, @JMMaok

Team Members: Adriana Bankston @abankston-policy, Melania Abrahamian @melaniaAB

3. Add your mentor's GitHub username below ---> Mentor: Beth Duckles, @bduckles

   4. Keep everything below and click 'Submit new issue' --->

Welcome to OLS-3! This issue will be used to track your project and progress during the program. Please use this checklist over the next few weeks as you start Open Life Science program :tada:.

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Week 1 (week starting 8 February 2021): Meet your mentor!

• [x] Create an account on GitHub
• [x] Check if you have access to the HackMD notes set up for your meetings with your mentor
• [x] Prepare to meet your mentor(s) by completing a short homework provided in the HackMD notes
• [x] Complete your own copy of the open leadership self-assessment and share it to your mentor If you're a group, each teammate should complete this assessment individually. This is here to help you set your own personal goals during the program. No need to share your results, but be ready to share your thoughts with your mentor.
• [x] Make sure you know when and how you'll be meeting with your mentor.

Before Week 2 (week starting 15 February 2021): Cohort Call (Welcome to Open Life Science!)

• [x] Create an issue on the OLS-3 GitHub repository for your OLS work and share the link to your mentor.

• [x] Draft a brief vision statement using your goals

  This lesson from the Open Leadership Training Series (OLTS) might be helpful

• [x] Leave a comment on this issue with your draft vision statement & be ready to share this on the call

• [x] Check the Syllabus for notes and connection info for all the cohort calls.

Before Week 3 (week starting 22 February 2021): Meet your mentor!

• [x] Look up two other projects and comment on their issues with feedback on their vision statement
• [ ] Complete this compare and contrast assignment about current and desired community interactions and value exchanges
• [x] Complete your Open Canvas (instructions, canvas)
• [x] Share a link to your Open Canvas in your GitHub issue
• [x] Start your Roadmap
• [x] Comment on your issue with your draft Roadmap
• [x] Suggest a cohort name at the bottom of the shared notes and vote on your favorite with a +1

Before Week 4 (week starting 1 March 2021): Cohort Call (Tooling and roadmapping for Open projects)

• [x] Look up two other projects and comment on their issues with feedback on their open canvas.

Week 5 and later

• [x] Create a GitHub repository for your project
• [x] Add the link to your repository in your issue
• [ ] Use your canvas to start writing a README.md file, or landing page, for your project
• [ ] Link to your README in a comment on this issue
• [ ] Add an open license to your repository as a file called LICENSE.md
• [ ] Add a Code of Conduct to your repository as a file called CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md
• [ ] Invite new contributors to into your work!

This issue is here to help you keep track of work as you start Open Life Science program. Please refer to the OLS-3 Syllabus for more detailed weekly notes and assignments past week 4.

[JMMaok]

Vision Statement

Based on the lab notebook concept often used in the life sciences, the project is an open notebook living systematic review of legal documents related to postdoctoral scholars and appointments (postdocs). The project aims to use the methods of empirical legal scholarship to describe and categorize the ways postdoctoral scholars and their appointments have been involved in the legal system. Briefly, empirical legal scholarship is a form of qualitative or mixed-methods research, often involving content analysis, that uses legal documents or decisions as its data source. We are not aware of any other research applying this method or data source to the study of postdocs. In fact, there has been little research of any kind on the legal aspects of postdoc appointments.

Building on a “file drawer” paper by Jennifer Miller (with Kristina Van Buskirk), we frame our project around the question of whether postdocs are employees or students. Based on economic theory, we expect the types of cases to reflect whether postdocs are employees producing in a labor market or students consuming in a services market.

In addition to describing postdocs’ involvement with the legal system, which we believe has a role to play in improving the experience of postdocs and early career researchers, we see this project as potentially contributing to the solution of three problems: creating an open notebook science model for empirical legal scholarship based on publicly available legal documents, creating an open notebook science model to surface “file drawer” projects, and establishing a repository of open datasets about postdocs.

More information about the project is available on GitHub https://github.com/JMMaok/postdoc/projects and Zotero https://www.zotero.org/groups/

[JMMaok]

Here is a link to our Open Canvas.

[JMMaok]

The issues on this GitHub project serve as a draft Roadmap for the project. It makes more sense as a roadmap if you sort from oldest to newest.