Training and Consulting for Open and Reproducible Data Science.

I am in the process of making my newsletter FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable). Here's how.

Heidi Seibold

I am an advocate for Open Science. The FAIR priciples are very near and dear to my heart. I was excited when the Open Science folks at Jülich archived a bunch of my posts and gave them a persistent identifier (DOI, see archived posts here). This was exactly what I was still missing to make my posts more FAIR.

Making my newsletter FAIR

The Open Science Retreat 2024 was a full success. We co-created so many things and had a wonderful time at the Dutch dunes. Read on to learn what came out of the retreat.

The Open Science Retreat follows an unconference model. Except for the plenary sessions, all activities are optional. The edition 2024 was mainly organised by OSC-NL. Here’s a few of the things we did:   Unconference sessions: Collaborate on diverse topics from measuring open science to FAIR code (more below)   Walks: Whether alone, with a mentor, or in a group.

Check out what happened at the Open Science Retreat 2024!

I have volunteered for many initiatives and was always happy to do so. Recently I started to realize that being able to volunteer is a privileged position to be in. To be truly fair and allow all enthusiasts to join an initiative we have to rethink the way we do things. A constructive criticism.

I’ve got to get this off my chest, you all! I’ve received yet another email asking whether I could speak at an event. For free.

 “Why for free?”

you ask? I am a fan of a lot of the volunteer-based initiatives in the research community, but

 I think we have gone too far.

Too many things are expected to be done for free in the scientific community. Too many things are not budgeted into grants as they could be.

Volunteerism has gone too far!

Fraud in science continues to be a highly discussed topic in the scientific community and also in mainstream media. I've always seen Open Science as a way to improve rigor in science, but can it also avoid fraud?

I will not discuss cases of (alleged) fraud or scientific misconduct in this post, but focus on how I believe we can avoid it in the future. If you are interested in learning more about one of the major recent scandals, I recommend listening to the Freakonomics radio episode on the Gino case (see box below).

 Why Is There So Much Fraud in Academia?

Freakonomics radio episode on the Gino case with wonderful interviews.

Avoiding fraud and improving rigor through Open Science

New frameworks for course websites are popping up all the time. In this post, I'll review some of them.

Today I want to talk about three interesting frameworks for building course websites: Quarto, the Carpentries Workbench, and Nebula. All of them rely on the use of Markdown and are thus easy to version control, reproducible, and reusable. They’re all pretty handy when teaching software skills, as they allow incorporating code in a straight-forward way.

Markdown-based course websites

Have you complained about the inefficiency of public administration before? I think, you're not alone. In this post I want to share my journey with trying to help increase efficiency through data literacy in the public sector.

I am a person who likes to solve problems. Most of my time is spent solving problems in academia, but I decided to leave my usual grounds for a special project where I can help solving problems in the public sector. Why do I care about solving problems in the public sector? Public service is for us, the public. If it’s inefficient, we are all harmed.

Data literacy in the public sector

I get asked for career advice all the time (even though I am just figuring stuff out myself). Generally I try to help by listening and asking questions, but there is one thing that I tell everyone who wants to hear it: pick work where you like the people.

How do you pick the research group you want to work with? My recommendation is to pick based on two things:   Do you like the topics they work on?   Do you get along with the people in the group (in particular your boss/supervisor)?  The first is quite obvious for most people, but the fact that the second may be even more important is not as clear. Team dynamics matter so much!

How to pick a research group to apply to?

The academic publishing system is broken. I think we can all agree on that. But what if you want to have an academic career and at the same time stick to your values of openness? Here's my pragmatic take.

I understand the fear of not publishing in established journals. We all want to have a good career and feel like publishing our papers in the journals that our peers and employers deem worthy seems like an important step. As a pragmatic open scientist, I generally recommend not to be too hard on yourself and start your Open Science journey with the steps that feel easy to implement.

A pragmatic Open Scientists Guide to Publishing Papers

What are good strategies to develop an Open Science Policy? Here's our opinionated guide. This post was co-created with Sander Bosch, Open Science Programme Coordinator at VU Amsterdam.

At the Open Science Retreat 2024 Sander and I had a conversation about his experience in policy development. Since we believe that his experience is valuable for a lot of people out there, we decided to write down three simple rues to create an Open Science policy:   Develop output policies first and combine them into an Open Science policy later.

3 simple rules for creating Open Science Policies

With the beginning of a new year we like looking back at our achievements in the previous year. I do that as well and I am more than proud to report that we were able to teach more than 1000 people last year through the Digital Research Academy.

Stop celebrating researchers with many publications

Making your research or code project FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) and reproducible can feel like a chore. But if you have access to the right templates and resources, it can be quite the simple and rewarding task. Let's make it easy for ourselves to do the right thing!

So today let me share some templates for setting up #FAIR and #reproducible projects. I asked folks on social media what suggestions they had and got so many that I was not able to put them all here without making everyone’s head explode ;). Please do follow the respective social media links if the links here are not enough for you (especially Mastodon). Thanks to everyone who contributed to this list!

Setting up a FAIR and reproducible project

More and more funders are recognizing the vital role of software in research. How can you leverage your software skills to aquire funding?

In this post I want to share:  Stay tuned also for an upcoming post on: Did I miss anything in this post? Let me know and I will happily add it!  This will be one of my longest posts ever, but I think it may be helpful for you. Let’s start with a few examples of how funders recognize software more now and then I’ll share a list of funding opportunities.

How to Get Funding By Caring About Research Software

What are other people doing and what can you do to secure funding for software projects?

In a previous post I wrote about:  Today’s post is all about: Did I miss anything in this post? Let me know and I will happily add it!   Case Studies   Software can play a very small or a very big part in research projects and thus in grant applications. If you develop or want to develop research software, here are a few examples that may be valuable case studies to learn from.

How to Get Funding By Caring About Research Software (II)

I am an advocate for Open Science. The FAIR priciples are very near and dear to my heart. I was excited when the Open Science folks at Jülich archived a bunch of my posts and gave them a persistent identifier (DOI). This exactly what I was still missing to make my posts more FAIR.

Students and early PhD candidates often don't understand all the talk about Open Science. They think Open Science is just 'normal' science. The older researchers are the ones who teach them otherwise. Let's change that!

In the process of publishing my first PhD paper, the journal asked whether I would like to publish open access. For me that was a no-brainer. When I talked to my supervisor, he said something along the lines of “you’re gonna be an expensive PhD student”.  I want to mention that my supervisor was always supportive of my Open Science and reproducibility activities and actually taught me a lot in this regard.

Early career researchers want Open Science - what about the supervisors?

Spaces where you can gather with like minded people to discuss, learn, and collaborate can be really powerful. Could a space like this exist for Open Science?

Walking along the little stream back to Dagstuhl castle (during the seminar on Research Software Engineering: Bridging Knowledge Gaps), I thought about how inspiring this place is, how perfectly set up for collaborating, learning from each other and also for having just a fabulous time. All the rooms, from the regular meeting rooms to more special ones such as the room of armors are equipped with flip charts;

Dreaming about a perfect space to work on Open Science

Code clubs are initiatives where people meet to improve their coding skills and help each other out. I am a big fan of them as I believe that they can help improving the quality of research. Because as we all know: Better Software, Better Research.

I recently learned more about the code club at the Max Planck Institue of Psychiatry (MPIP) in Munich and would like to share how they organize it in the hopes that it might inspire you. Thanks to the organizers Vera Karlbauer and Jonas Hagenberg for helping me write this post.

Code Clubs - good coding practices for all

Taking notes and drawing little images helps me think, but they are also helpful to others. Would sketchnoting also be for you?

I started sketchnoting by taking notes about scientific presentations and meetings. They help me think and keep me focused on what is said. If used to find it very hard to concentrate during presentations and I found a couple of ways to focus on what is said and trying to really understand it. One of them is making myself come up with questions about the talk (a skill that now also helps me be a good moderator) and the other is sketchnoting.

Sketchnoting

I am excited to share that the Digital Research Academy incorporation is almost done. We had our notary appointment last week, set up the bank account and are now waiting for the official registration of the DRA Digital Research Academy GmbH.

I published my first post about the initial idea for the Digital Research Academy in May 2023. Now, just a year and a few months later, the Digital Research Academy is becoming not only an initiative but a company. Last week Joyce Kao, Melanie Imming and I went to the notary and signed all the relevant documents.

Incorporation of the Digital Research Academy

Too many code projects in research are done by a single person. Keep reading on why that's bad and how to do better.

It’s been a while since my last post. Founding the Digital Research Academy, holidays and LOTS AND LOTS of workshops and events have taken all my time. But it’s time to start writing again. One of the workshops I taught since my last post was on collaborative coding at the wonderful RSE summer school at KIT (click through the timetable to find all kinds of cool materials).   Image: There is more to collaboration than we see.

Collaborative Coding

Since founding the Digital Research Academy,  I’ve been thinking a lot about how we can build organizations that are rooted in the values Open Science. An important aspect of this is ensuring their financial sustainability. We live in a capitalist world and as much as it annoys me sometimes, we all need an income.

Open Science Business Models

I am reading the book The Creative Act by Rick Rubin and I can’t help but wonder:

 How does creativity relate to and fit into my work?

Can people who care about evidence and scientific rigor make creativity part of their work?

 TL;DR

In this post I share four take-aways I had about creativity in relation to our work

 1:

Innovation requires creativity.

Creativity in our work

Does using machine learning solve our problem of p-hacking and HARKing or do we have the same problems as with statistical tests and models?

As a statistician I have been trained early on in understanding statistical tests and with that the meaning, history and problems of the p-value. Every researcher who works with data has seen a p-value and most have even printed one in their own papers. Most researchers, including statisticians, struggle understanding the p-value.

Is Machine Learning and AI solving the problem of p-hacking?

A new year always comes with the feeling of a new beginning. Let's look at what's to come this year. What are you up to? Do you have any resolutions? Ready to take the next step towards more open and collaborative research?

On new year’s eve, my husband and I have a habit of looking back on the year. It’s incredible how my life changed in 2023 compared to the years before, especially my professional life. Yet my professional drivers have stayed the same:

 improve the quality of research

. I am happy to report that I feel like I had more impact on the quality of research in 2023 than any other year.

Ready to improve research quality this year?

The two scales that lead to questionable research practices.

Last week I listened to a talk  by Leo Held on the topic “Are questionable research practices ever OK?”  at the German statisticians conference DAGStat. As part of the talk he described fraud as something we cannot ignore any longer as it happens too much, but also made us aware that questionable research practices not only come from fraudulent behaviour, but also from honest mistakes or incompentence.