The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) declared 2023 the Year of Open Science, featuring actions across the federal government to advance national open science policy, provide access to the results of the nation’s taxpayer-supported research, accelerate discovery and innovation, promote public trust, and drive more equitable outcomes. This fall, the University Libraries has brought members of the CMU community together to discuss these topics and more in a series of open science-focused events.
“One of our goals is to make practicing open science as easy and accessible to our campus researchers as possible. The Open Science & Data Collaborations Program supports this goal in a number of ways, including outreach and events,” said Open Science Program Director Melanie Gainey. “In celebration of the Year of Open Science, we hosted a series of events that included learning opportunities, chances for fostering connections and relationships within our campus community, and lively conversations on the future of open science.”
The semester kicked off in September with “In Conversation: The Evolving Landscape of Data Sharing.” This virtual roundtable featured life science researchers sharing their thoughts on the opportunities and challenges of data sharing. Moderators Ana Van Gulick of Figshare and Huajin Wang of the Center for Open Science, along with the panelists, explored how new policies from funders like the NIH impact the health psychology, molecular biology, and systems neuroscience research communities and shift the ways in which scientists think about doing and sharing their work.
The next event was “Women in Data and Wikipedia: An Afternoon with Ada.” In honor of Ada Lovelace Day, the CMU Libraries and the Sustainability Initiative hosted an afternoon edit-a-thon to celebrate women in STEAM. Attendees learned the ins and outs of editing Wikipedia and helped add overlooked figures to the world-wide, open encyclopedia.
“The idea manifested from a desire to foster a community event to introduce open science in a fun but practical way, allowing for an open exchange of ideas and collaboration. And, importantly, to increase the visibility of underrepresented people on Wikipedia!" said Open Science Program Coordinator Lencia Beltran.
Entrepreneurship Librarian Jimmy McKee added, “We chose Wikipedia because it enables open access to information, encourages public engagement, and allows for collaborative editing and peer review. These qualities connect to open science by emphasizing sharing of knowledge, transparency, and accountability." Beltran and McKee, along with Director of the Sustainability Initiative Alex Hiniker and OSPO Community Manager Tom Hughes, brought the event to life.
From October 19-21, the Libraries hosted a collaborative bioinformatics hackathon in partnership with cloud computing and bioinformatics company DNAnexus. Focused on data management and graph extraction for large models in the biomedical space, each team worked on a dedicated part of the problem. All pipelines and other outputs generated in this hackathon were shared publicly after the event in a preprint in BioHackrXiv. The next iteration of the hackathon in Spring 2024 will incorporate validating pipelines in the CMU Cloud Lab.
“Hackathons are an excellent way to connect beginners with experts in the field, working together on innovative projects with tons to learn and explore,” said researcher Jędrzej Kubica, the first author of the preprint, who received funding to travel to CMU from Poland for the hackathon. “It was a great opportunity to share ideas and experience, which I think has a huge impact on the research community overall.”
The signature event of the semester was the virtual Open Science Symposium, held November 3. A full day of virtual talks and panels, the conference explored how open science is transforming doing and sharing research in a variety of science and non-science disciplines. Topics included tenure and promotion policies, open data for communities, the sustainability of open access publishing, automated science, and more.
“Generally, I have been trying to keep open science as a central tenet of my research, and it was extremely interesting to see how it manifested across different fields,” said biomedical engineering Ph.D. candidate Colette Bilynsky, who attended the symposium. “In particular, I'm excited to see how technologies like the Cloud Lab change how biomedical engineering research is done, and how resources like Open Alex can facilitate systematic evidence synthesis.”
Speakers included Helen and Henry Posner, Jr. Dean of the University Libraries Keith Webster, Associate Dean for Digital Infrastructure Sayeed Choudhury, CLIR Postdoctoral Fellow in Community Data Literacy Taiwo Lasisi, and other researchers and thought leaders in academia, industry, and publishing.
“It was a pleasure for me to participate as a presenter at the Open Science Symposium,” said LaKeisha L. Harris, dean of the School of Graduate Studies and Research at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore and co-lead of Institutional & Departmental Policy Language for the Higher Education Leadership Initiative for Open Scholarship (HELIOS). Harris spoke about HELIOS at the symposium, and also participated in a Q&A session. “I enjoyed listening to the remarkable work that is taking place to advance the dissemination of research. For the past year, I have been able to engage with many colleagues from across the country who are exploring the benefits of open science. As a faculty member and administrator at an HBCU, I welcome any opportunity to share the research and innovation that takes place on smaller campuses that are making a big impact.”
The final open science event, held on the morning of November 8, was “Morning Brew: Exploring Open Science at CMU Libraries.” This informal mixer event provided a chance to meet with open science specialists and demo tools and resources that help support open data and publishing.
“During the Year of Open Science, we interacted with students and researchers from all of the colleges to better understand the opportunities and the challenges of open research in their disciplines. We are excited to take what we learned from these conversations and have it inform how we support Open Science as it rapidly evolves and becomes an integral part of the research process,” said Gainey.
Together, these events allowed beginners and experts alike to examine the evolving landscapes of data sharing in academia and research today. To further engage with the Libraries’ open science offerings, check out the Open Science and Data Collaborations (OSDC) program and the Open Source Programs Office (OSPO), and subscribe to the Open Science newsletter to stay up to date on the latest news.
by Sarah Bender, Communications Coordinator
Feature image by Jaredd Craig on Unsplash