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Center for Open Science Workshop at University of Cincinnati

- March 12, 2015 in Center for Open Science, Center for Open Science Workshop, Communites, News, Open *, Planet, Ubuntu, Ubuntu Scientists, University of Cincinnati, Workshop

The main library of university that I go to, University of Cincinnati, hosted a workshop from Center for Open Science on March 12th.  The workshop was over reproducible research practices and how can Open Science help it- mainly with the Center of Open Science’s framework.  Since I’m a (clueless) biology undergrad with barely any research experience, I learned a lot from it and new things, again mainly with their framework.

I heard of the Center and their framework about a year ago and I had no clue of how to test it or even use it for something.  But after this workshop, I think I may have an idea for a personal or a Ubuntu Scientists (or another Open Science group) project to work on improving/teaching documentation for research or another aspect/step of the process.  I also want to figure out how to do outreach also.


Planet Open Science Now Open

- February 12, 2015 in Communites, OKFN, OKFN Open Science, Open *, Planet

In this post, I talked about building a Planet Open Science to collect the various posts from members of the Open Science community and I’m happy to announce that it is ready to use.  I created a thread where those who want to add their feed to the Planet can do so.  You can also use this contact form:

[contact-form]

Home page of Planet Open Science


From Intrigued to Interested- What is Need to Get People in a Movement?

- December 28, 2014 in Comminutes, Communites, Lou Woodley, Movement, OKFN, OKFN Open Science, Open *, Open Notebook Science, Planet

In Lou Woodley’s blog, I saw an post about what is needed to sustain a movement.  There was one thing that is missing, at least to me, and that is getting people intrigued about the movement and it’s projects.  One of the easiest ways to get people intrigued is the use of tools that collect information in one place.  Three of tools are:

‘Planet’  Feed Aggregator

Going back to this post, this tool is a good one to collect all of the blog posts from those who have agreed for their posted to be imported via feed reader.  This allows new comers to see what various people are doing within that community and connect with them.

OKFN Open Science working group started to work on one which should be ready to be used in early 2015.

Calendar/Directory

As one tool, this allows new comers to find events and people that are in that community/movement.  The only one example of a possible usage is within the OKFN Open Science working group [1,2] which should be also ready in 2015.

[1] http://discuss.okfn.org/t/open-science-calendar/96

[2] http://discuss.okfn.org/t/open-science-open-knowledge-directory/95

Resource List/Guide

This can be done via a wiki or other ways.  This tool allows new comers to easily see what projects/communities are within that movement.  One example is OARR: Open Access and Reproducible Research Compendium.

There are other tools out there but these are my top ones that should be used to generate more reason to join a movement.


 

Afterthought: I misread the title but I think it might be the same thing (intrigued and interested). I don’t know how I saw it as two different things. Maybe there are as levels.

Update: I told Lou Woodley about my post and she said,

Thanks. I think intrigued is probably the beginning stage of getting interested in something. I’ve been reading a bit about pyramids of engagement and “conversion funnels” recently too and those involve more than three stages, meaning that most stages are not entirely distinct from the previous or following stage.


Thoughts on Having a Meta Open Science Community

- October 1, 2014 in Mozilla Science Lab, OKFN, OKFN Open Science, Open *, Planet

Over the last week, I started to think about how to improve the collaboration between the Open Science groups and researchers and also between the groups themselves. One of the ideas that I thought about using simple tools that are around in other Open * places (mainly Open Source/Linux distros). These tools are your forums (Discourse and other ones), Planet feeds, and wikis. Using these creates a meta community where members of the community can start there and get themselves involved in one or more groups. Open Science seems to lack this meta community.

Even though I think that meta community is not present, I do think that there is one group that can maintain this meta community and that group is the Open Knowledge Foundation Network (OKFN). They have a working group for Open Science. Therefore, I think, if they take the time and the resources, then it could happen or else some other group can be created for this.

What this meta community tool-wise needs:

Planet Feeds

Since I’m an official Ubuntu Member, I’m allowed to add my blog’s feed to Planet Ubuntu.  Planet Ubuntu allows anyone to read blog posts from many Ubuntu Members because it’s one giant feed reader.  This is well needed for Open Science, as Reddit doesn’t work for academia.  I asked on the Open Science OKFN mailing list and five people e-mailed me saying that they are interested in seeing one.  My next goal is to ask the folks of Open Science OKFN for help on building a Planet for Open Science.

Forums

I can only think of one forum, which is the Mozilla Science Lab one, that I wrote about last a few hours ago.  Having some general forum allows users to talk about various projects to job posting for their groups.  I don’t know if Discourse would be the right platform for the forums.  To me, it’s dynamicness is a bit too much at times.

Wiki

I have no idea if a wiki would work for this meta Open Science community but at least having a guide that introduces newcomers to the groups is worthwhile to have.  There is a plan for a guide.

I hope these ideas can be used by some group within the Open Science community and allow it the grow.


Mozilla Science Lab Forums Now Open

- September 30, 2014 in Forums, Mozilla Science Lab, News, Open *, Open Science Forums, Planet

I am pleased to announce that the Mozilla Science Lab now has a forum that anyone can use.  Anyone can introduce themselves in this topic or the category.


Open Science: Improving Collaboration Between Researchers

- September 10, 2014 in Center of Open Science, Improving Collaboration Between Researchers', Mozilla Science Lab, Open *, Open Hardware, Open Notebook Science, Open Science Framework, Open Source movement, OSF, Planet, research community, science community, Science Lab, Skip to toolbar Open Science Federation

The Open Source movement has evolved into other areas of computering.  Open Data, Open Hardware, and ,the topic that I want to talk about, Open Science, are three examples of this.  Since I’m a biologist, I’m deeply connected to the science community but I want to also tie in my hobby of FOSS/Linux into my work.  There are many non-coding (and coding) based things and groups that one can use for research and I want to talk about a few of them.

Mozilla Science Lab

Mozilla, the creators of Firefox and Thunderbird, started a group last year that aims to help scientists, “to use the power of the open web to change the way science is done. [They] build educational resources, tools and prototypes for the research community to make science more open, collaborative and efficient.” (main page of Mozilla Science Lab).

Right now, they are are focusing on teaching scientists the basic skills in research via the Software Carpentry project.  But I know that they are planning to get some projects for the community-building side for non-coders.  I don’t know what those projects are but I know that they will be listed soon on the mailing-list of the group.  For myself, I can’t wait until I get my hands on those projects to help them grow.

Open Science Framework

Another fairly new project within the last two years that was started by Center of Open Science that focuses on creating a framework that allows scientists to use the, “entire research lifecycle: planning, execution, reporting, archiving, and discovery”, (main page of OSF) fully and be able to share that with other people in there teams but thy could be in another place not near the head researcher.

I think this is one of the best tools out there because it allows you to upload things on the site and also from Dropbox and other services.  I played around with it a bit but I have not fully used it, but when I do, I will write a post about it.

Open Notebook Science

This is maybe one of the oldest projects that I think there is for Open Science and it’s Open Notebook Science.  It’s the idea of have the lab notebook publicly available online.  There is a small network of these.

I think, along with the OSF project, it is one of the best tools out there mainly because the data and other stuff is publicly available online for everyone to learn from your mistakes or to work with the data.

Hopefully as the time goes by, these projects will grow and researchers can collaborate better.