Open Science

Introduction

Open Science is an important aspect of conducting scientific research. This term means different things in different teams; in our team we follow these best practices:

Ethical considerations

While we aspire to practice an open model of science, we respect the complex situations that may limit the full openness of our endeavors. We practice situated openness and align our open science goals with the goals of our research and research participants. This means we restrict the sharing of sensitive data, maintain the privacy of research subjects, and aim for transparency over openness. We also recognize that power and privilege can impact one’s ability to participate in open science, but we support each other in trying to build a more equitable scientific system.

IRB Approval

• All projects funded by the Public Tech Media Lab and including human participants must receive approval from the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the University of Wisconsin-Madison before any research activities commence.

Co-authoring and collaboration are cornerstones of our scientific work. We have an inclusive model of authorship and strive to value all contributions. We have several systems in place to facilitate our work, acknowledge contributions, and expand our network to introduce diverse perspectives.

Persistent Identifier (Long-lasting reference to a digital resource)

• We use ORCID to distinguish ourselves from other researchers and manage our identities in different submission systems.

Authorship and Author order

• We commit to conferring authorship to all who meet the criteria and to acknowledging other contributors appropriately with the Contributor Roles Taxonomy. Learn more about the criteria for authorship.

• We discuss author order at the outset of a project and check in throughout the writing process. Example author order checklist.

Inclusive Science (Using purposefully welcoming language and practices to promote a feeling of belonging)

• We practice inclusive science by thoughtfully considering our citation networks and biases and using bias-free language. Learn more.

• We follow a Code of Conduct that establishes positive and prohibited team behaviors.

We make our articles and research materials as open and accessible as possible to increase the reach and impact of our research. When possible, the Public Tech Media Lab can assist with ensuring the publications are open access.

Preregistration (Specifying your research plan in advance and registering it in a public repository. Reduces bias in hypothesis-testing research. Learn more.)

• We preregister our hypothesis-testing studies in Open Science Framework.

Methods and Protocols (Step-by-step documents describing exactly how research was performed. Sharing methods and protocols enables other researchers to reproduce experiments.)

Preprints (Version of a paper made public prior to peer review. Sharing protocols increases the speed of research dissemination. Learn more.)

• We submit preprints of our articles to arXiv.

Data Availability

• Data collected through the funded project may be under embargo for one year from the date of collection completion. After this period, the data must be made publicly available on the Public Tech Media Lab’s website, as data papers, or Zenodo.

Presentations

• We make our presentation slides and posters available in our institutional repository or Zenodo so that they are more easily discoverable and citable.

Research data include “raw” data, processed data, data at intermediate stages, and “final” datasets (i.e., the dataset that underlies a manuscript) as well as any documentation that is needed to make use of these materials. We share our research data and code in public repositories whenever possible.

Documentation

• We create readme documents (or equivalent) to track the data we are creating, the software we are using (including versions), and describe the code we are writing ourselves.

Data

• We use the Dryad Data Repository/other to make data available to others. Find data repositories for your research.

Software and Code (Broadly refers to computer programs, packages, and scripts used to work with, analyze, and visualize data.)

• We use GitHub for storing code we are writing ourselves and Zenodo for ensuring it is preserved in a citable form at the conclusion of a project.

• Our research relies on open-source and open infrastructure projects. We support these communities with labor, donations, and citations, and understand that our contributions are welcome and appreciated in these spaces.

• We assign a Mozilla Public License 2.0 open-source license to our code so others know how they can re-use it. Learn more.

Spreading the word about our research is crucial for ensuring it reaches a broad audience and has a meaningful impact. We use a variety of tools and platforms to share our research.

Copyright

• When publishing and sharing research materials, we aim to use open licenses, such as a Creative Commons license, to allow wide re-use of our work. Learn more about Creative Commons.

Social Media

• We use our official website and LinkedIn to communicate our research findings and conference presentations to a broader audience.

Keeping Ourselves Accountable

• We review this policy annually.

This policy is based on the work of Samantha Teplitzky, Ariel Deardorff, and John Borghi, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.