KEMBAR78
"Building Capacity for Open Research" - AAMC | PDF
building capacity for open 
research practice 
kaitlin thaney 
@kaythaney ; @mozillascience 
AAMC / 18 sept 2014
doing good is part of our code
help researchers use the 
power of the open web to 
change science’s future.
(0)
our current systems are 
designed to create 
friction. 
despite original intentions.
current state of science 
articles 
data 
patents
some have a firehose 
articles 
data 
patents
traditions last not because they are 
excellent, but because influential 
people are averse to change and 
because of the sheer burdens of 
transition to a better state ... 
“ 
“ 
Cass Sunstein
downside of output-driven 
recognition systems
“There’s greater reward, 
and more temptation to 
bend the rules.” 
- David Resnik, bioethicist
(1)
leveraging the power of 
the web for scholarship
“web-enabled research” 
- access to content, data, code, materials. 
- emergence of “web-native” tools. 
- rewards for openness, interop, collaboration, sharing. 
- push for ROI, reuse, recomputability, transparency.
what do we mean by 
“open research”? 
community technology practices 
collaborative interoperable open review 
participatory discoverable data 
management 
recognition open tools sharing / reuse 
mentorship designed for 
reuse 
documentation / 
versioning
we’re rewarding the 
wrong behavior. 
at the sacrifice of scientific progress.
Source: Michener, 2006 Ecoinformatics.
“... up to 70 percent of research from academic labs cannot be 
reproduced, representing an enormous waste of money and effort.” 
- Elizabeth Iorns, Science Exchange
“research hygiene” 
instill best 
(digital, 
reproducible) 
practice
rethinking 
“professional development”
“Reliance on 
ad-hoc, self-education 
about what’s 
possible 
doesn’t scale.” 
- Selena Decklemann
(2)
shifting practice takes a 
multi-faceted approach. 
necessary v. sufficient
infrastructure layers for 
efficient, reproducible research 
research social capital capacity 
open tools 
standards 
best practices 
research objects 
scientific software 
repositories 
incentives 
recognition / P&T 
interdisciplinarity 
collaboration 
community dialogue 
training 
mentorship 
professional dev 
new policies 
recognition 
stakeholders: universities, researchers, 
tool dev, funders, publishers ...
freedom to prototype 
and innovate. 
(connecting the dots.)
code as a research object 
what’s needed to reuse ? 
http://bit.ly/mozfiggit
(community driven) 
metadata for software discovery: JSON-LD 
http://bit.ly/mozfiggit
fostering a (sustainable) 
community of practitioners
current activity: 
235+ instructors 
(60+, training) 
4000+ learners
focus on building capacity, 
not just more nodes.
(3)
shifting practice 
(and getting it to stick) 
is challenging. 
(takeaways and closing caveats.)
1. bake reproducible 
practices into the fabric of 
academia. and design to 
enable scale.
2. create opportunities and 
incentives for students and 
faculty to experiment, 
teach, work across aisles.
3. rethink how we reward 
researchers and support 
roles. (and don’t be afraid 
to hit refresh.)
4. be mindful of jargon/ 
semantics traps.
we’re here to help. 
teach, contribute, learn. 
http://mozillascience.org 
sciencelab@mozillafoundation.org
kaitlin@mozillafoundation.org 
@kaythaney ; @mozillascience 
special thanks:

"Building Capacity for Open Research" - AAMC