Mozilla Science Lab Promotes Data Reproduction Through Open Access: Report from 9/10/2015 Online Meeting
Reporter: Stephen J. Williams, Ph.D.
Mozilla Inc. is developing a platform for scientists to discuss the issues related to developing a framework to share scientific data as well as tackle the problems of scientific reproducibility in an Open Access manner. According to their blog
https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2013/06/14/5992/
We’re excited to announce the launch of the Mozilla Science Lab, a new initiative that will help researchers around the world use the open web to shape science’s future.
Scientists created the web — but the open web still hasn’t transformed scientific practice to the same extent we’ve seen in other areas like media, education and business. For all of the incredible discoveries of the last century, science is still largely rooted in the “analog” age. Credit systems in science are still largely based around “papers,” for example, and as a result researchers are often discouraged from sharing, learning, reusing, and adopting the type of open and collaborative learning that the web makes possible.
The Science Lab will foster dialog between the open web community and researchers to tackle this challenge. Together they’ll share ideas, tools, and best practices for using next-generation web solutions to solve real problems in science, and explore ways to make research more agile and collaborative.
On their blog they highlight various projects related to promoting Open Access for scientific data
On September 10, 2015 Mozilla Science Lab had their scheduled meeting on scientific data reproduce ability. The meeting was free and covered by ethernet and on social media. The Twitter hashtag for updates and meeting discussion is #mozscience (https://twitter.com/search?q=%23mozscience )
Open Access Meeting Announcement on Twitter
https://twitter.com/MozillaScience/status/641642491532283904
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Mozilla Science Lab @MozillaScience
Join @khinsen @abbycabs + @EvoMRI tmrw (11AM ET) to hear about replication, publishing + #openscience. Details: https://etherpad.mozilla.org/sciencelab-calls-sep10-2015 …
AGENDA:
- Mozilla Science Lab Updates
- Staff welcomes and thank yous:
- Welcoming Zannah Marsh, our first Instructional Designer
- Workshopping the “Working Open” guide:
- Discussion of Future foundation and GitHub projects
- Discussion of submission for open science project funding
- Contributorship Badges Pilot – an update! – Abby Cabunoc Mayes – @abbycabs
- Will be live on GigaScience September 17th!
- Where you can jump in: https://github.com/mozillascience/paperbadger/issues/17
- Questions regarding coding projects – Abby will coordinate efforts on coding into their codebase
- The journal will publish and authors and reviewers get a badge and their efforts and comments will appear on GigaScience: Giga Science will give credit for your reviews – supports an Open Science Discussion
Roadmap for
- Fellows review is in full swing!
- MozFest update:
- Miss the submission deadline? You can still apply to join our Open Research Accelerator and join us for the event (PLUS get a DOI for your submission and 1:1 help)
A discussion by Konrad Hinsen (@khinsen) on ReScience, a journal focused on scientific replication will be presented:
- ReScience – a new journal for replications – Konrad Hinsen @khinsen
- Background: http://rescience.github.io/
- ReScience is dedicated to publishing replications of previously published computational studies, along with all the code required to replicate the results.
- ReScience lives entirely on GitHub. Submissions take the form of a Git repository, and review takes place in the open through GitHub issues. This also means that ReScience is free for everyone (authors, readers, reviewers, editors… well, I said everyone, right?), as long as GitHub is willing to host it.
- ReScience was launched just a few days ago and is evolving quickly. To stay up to date, follow @ReScienceEds on Twitter. If you want to volunteer as a reviewer, please contact the editorial board.
The ReScience Journal Reproducible Science is Good. Replicated Science is better.
ReScience is a peer-reviewed journal that targets computational research and encourages the explicit reproduction of already published research promoting new and open-source implementations in order to ensure the original research is reproducible. To achieve such a goal, the whole editing chain is radically different from any other traditional scientific journal. ReScience lives on github where each new implementation is made available together with the comments, explanations and tests. Each submission takes the form of a pull request that is publicly reviewed and tested in order to guarantee any researcher can re-use it. If you ever reproduced computational result from the literature, ReScience is the perfect place to publish this new implementation. The Editorial Board
Notes from his talk:
– must be able to replicate paper’s results as written according to experimental methods
– All authors on ReScience need to be on GitHub
– not accepting MatLab replication; replication can involve computational replication;
- Research Ideas and Outcomes Journal – Daniel Mietchen @EvoMRI
- Postdoc at Natural Museum of London doing data mining; huge waste that 90% research proposals don’t get used so this journal allows for publishing proposals
- Learned how to write proposals by finding a proposal online open access
- Reviewing system based on online reviews like GoogleDocs where people view, comment
- Growing editorial and advisory board; venturing into new subject areas like humanities, economics, biological research so they are trying to link diverse areas under SOCIAL IMPACT labeling
- BIG question how to get scientists to publish their proposals especially to improve efficiency of collaboration and reduce too many duplicated efforts as well as reagent sharing
- Crowdfunding platform used as post publication funding mechanism; still in works
- They need a lot of help on the editorial board so if have a PhD PLEASE JOIN
- Website:
- Background:
- Science article:
- Some key features:
- for publishing all steps of the research cycle, from proposals (funded and not yet funded) onwards
- maps submissions to societal challenges
- focus on post-publication peer review; pre-submission endorsement; all reviews public
- lets authors choose which publishing services they want, e.g. whether they’d like journal-mediated peer review
- collaborative WYSIWYG authoring and publishing platform based on JATS XML
A brief discussion of upcoming events on @MozillaScience
Meetings are held 2nd Thursdays of each month
Additional plugins, coding, and new publishing formats are available at https://www.mozillascience.org/
Other related articles on OPEN ACCESS Publishing were published in this Open Access Online Scientific Journal, include the following:
Archives of Medicine (AOM) to Publish from “Leaders in Pharmaceutical Business Intelligence (LPBI)” Open Access On-Line Scientific Journal http://pharmaceuticalintelligence.com
Annual Growth in NIH Clicks: 32% Open Access Online Scientific Journal http://pharmaceuticalintelligence.com
Collaborations and Open Access Innovations – CHI, BioIT World, 4/29 – 5/1/2014, Seaport World Trade Center, Boston
Elsevier’s Mendeley and Academia.edu – How We Distribute Scientific Research: A Case in Advocacy for Open Access Journals
Reconstructed Science Communication for Open Access Online Scientific Curation
The Fatal Self Distraction of the Academic Publishing Industry: The Solution of the Open Access Online Scientific Journals
This is very insightful. There is no doubt that there is the bias you refer to. 42 years ago, when I was postdocing in biochemistry/enzymology before completing my residency in pathology, I knew that there were very influential mambers of the faculty, who also had large programs, and attracted exceptional students. My mentor, it was said (although he was a great writer), could draft a project on toilet paper and call the NIH. It can’t be true, but it was a time in our history preceding a great explosion. It is bizarre for me to read now about eNOS and iNOS, and about CaMKII-á, â, ã, ä – isoenzymes. They were overlooked during the search for the genome, so intermediary metabolism took a back seat. But the work on protein conformation, and on the mechanism of action of enzymes and ligand and coenzyme was just out there, and became more important with the research on signaling pathways. The work on the mechanism of pyridine nucleotide isoenzymes preceded the work by Burton Sobel on the MB isoenzyme in heart. The Vietnam War cut into the funding, and it has actually declined linearly since.
A few years later, I was an Associate Professor at a new Medical School and I submitted a proposal that was reviewed by the Chairman of Pharmacology, who was a former Director of NSF. He thought it was good enough. I was a pathologist and it went to a Biochemistry Review Committee. It was approved, but not funded. The verdict was that I would not be able to carry out the studies needed, and they would have approached it differently. A thousand young investigators are out there now with similar letters. I was told that the Department Chairmen have to build up their faculty. It’s harder now than then. So I filed for and received 3 patents based on my work at the suggestion of my brother-in-law. When I took it to Boehringer-Mannheim, they were actually clueless.