Open and Reproducible Conference Questions [ Project ]

[RaoOfPhysics]

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At a glance

• Submission Name: Open and Reproducible Conference Questions
• Contact Lead: Ping @RaoOfPhysics or @amiefairs
• External Site Link: Coming soon!
• Region: #Global
• Issue Area: #OpenAccess, #OpenData, #OpenResearch
• Issue Type: #Project
• Types of Support Needed: #Communications, Identifying questions and related resources

Description

What are we working on during the do-a-thon? What kinds of support do we need?

Our "How might we…?" session gave us the idea of creating a list of questions we could ask (respectfully) at conferences when speakers are not open about their research in any way. e.g.:

• “Great talk, could you send me a link to the data on a repository?”
• “Maybe I missed this, can you send me a link to the pre-registration?”

We would like to curate not just the questions but also resources for us to prepare for asking these questions at conferences.

How can others contribute?

Drop in suggested questions below this issue! We'll try and build a website to host them during the do-a-thon.

• Language: We welcome translations of the questions to as many languages as possible! Please also feel free to pose questions below that are not in English. :)

This post is part of the OpenCon 2017 Do-A-Thon. Not sure what's going on? Head here.

[israb12]

Hey, count me in to try and translate them into French.

[meredithjacob]

Hey - it might make sense to connect this with the Open Conferences topic #33 . That issue is more related to conference participation, but is also touching on making conference results/proceedings more open.

[RaoOfPhysics]

Thanks, @israb12! <3

@meredithjacob: Makes sense! Let's merge the discussion. :) I'll swing by later.

[Perepyolotshka]

Seeing as #33 is discussing a very big amount of OpenConference ideas, I would actually prefer to collect the questions in this thread instead for a better overview. :)

I am just going to start: The idea of asking open guerilla questions at various conferences came up in my working group. The background was a funny discussion on how it is always hard after talks to find a person, that asks the first question. So this is exactly where the open guerrillas come in:

Setting: Talk is finished. Organizers are frantically looking for somebody to ask any question, so the discussion starts. Nobody raises a hand. Awkward/ Nervous silence. Action point: Open guerrilla signals that there actually is a question in the house. This question could be anything like: Question:

1. Thank you for your insightful talk. I was wondering whether you have a openly accessibly version of your research online, because I would like to forward it to a colleague, that would love to read it!
2. Thank you, it's been really interesting to listen! Did you publish your article open access? I'd like to discuss it with my students.

(more input and question ideas are more than welcome!)

[KoenVermeir]

Hi all, we've been running a morning and afternoon session on open conferences already. It seems you're doing quite similar stuff. Maybe we could gather forces and sit together? We're located in Goethe take care, --Koen

[KoenVermeir]

Good question: what measures did OpenCon take to be an Open Conference? can the organizers chip in?

[npscience]

Firstly, I LOVE this idea. This will challenge people's behaviours, mainly the other listeners. Three thoughts:

As a way to help people ask these Qs, would it be useful to circulate business card size cards with prompts on them, that you can slip into your conference lanyard, and look at before asking? And maybe a cute animal drawing in the corner to give you courage?

Also, it may be sufficient to ask the question, but the scientist in me is also fascinated to understand what happens next:

• how does the speaker respond?
• what comes of it? are there legit reasons why not shared? does it end in someone sharing something they might not have thought to otherwise?
• does the questioner suffer any negative consequences from being a guerilla questioner, or positive ones?
• is the response different depending on whether the questioner is known as being an OA advocate or not? (I'm anticipating the: "oh no, not this person again, they're an activist/extremist" dismissal)

Is there an anonymous way for people to provide this feedback so it can be aggregated and understood and the project can learn from it?

/thought splurge

[Daniel-Mietchen]

Here are some more variations of phrases that could come after the "thanks for your great talk" intro:

• where can I find your slides?

• where can I find the code you used to generate the figure on slide 42?

• in your paper on X, the data behind figure 3 is provided as a supplementary PDF - where can I find it in a usable format?

• since you mentioned you were using a slightly modified version of the method described in paper X by Y et al., where can I find your protocol?

• since you said the manuscript has been submitted/ revised/ accepted/ is in press, can you point me to a preprint?

• since you stressed the importance of reaching out to a wider audience, was putting the paper behind a paywall the optimal way to get there?

• your figure 4 is a composite figure, where part of the annotation text actually obscures image features that I am interested in - where can I find the original images?

• since you mentioned that you had reviewed that paper with the quirky method, where can I read your review?

• as the project is finished now, where can I read the final report?

• since you have mined all this information from open-access papers, what about sharing your corpus such that others can build on it?

• have you thought about making your grant proposal/ data management plan/ experimental stimuli/ ethics approval request/ etc. public?

• the stimuli you used are not available for reuse — wouldn't it be better to use similar stimuli that are available / could be put under an open license?

• can you point me to a blank version of the consent form that your participants have signed?

• on slide X, you acknowledged funding from funder/ institution Y, which has a policy on open Z, so I am surprised I cannot find your A, B or C.

• you stated that the image on slide X was "from Wikipedia" but this is not specific enough - do you want your papers cited as "from PubMed" or would you find anything cited this way?

• as an editor/ author/ reviewer for journal X, how do you reconcile your activity with the fact that our institution does not have access to X?

• your colleague X was doing fieldwork in the same region just a few weeks/ months earlier/ later than you - have you considered asking them to bring some samples of species Y to compare them to your species Y specimens?

Not all of them are suitable for guerilla tactics, but I guess quite a few of them could be, perhaps with some tweaking.

[Bubblbu]

Awesome thread. Two thoughts:

(1) Should we create a resource that specifically discusses a few question+answer scenarios? As @npscience suggested I think that talking about the rationale and potential follow-up conversations would be cool

(2) It would be amazing if we could create a guide from this. I could totally imagine that such a document could be very helpful for journal clubs and/or as a teaching resource.

[char-siuu-bao]

I thought this was a great and fun idea to come out of the workshop!! Looking at the progression of this thread though, my only concern is that those using these tactics should be careful about how they are communicated. I feel like it could come off as extremely passive aggressive or patronizing, depending on how it was delivered and who was asking the question (for instance, let's keep in mind the power dynamics between an older white male researcher asking say, a junior WOC researcher).

[Daniel-Mietchen]

Yes, the power dynamics are very important, and the precise wording/ intonation has to fit with the situation, which may well turn out to be difficult, especially if speaker and asker do not know each other, if they stand far apart on the openness spectrum or if they have to use a language that differs from their native one(s). Some people will be offended by this kind of question no matter how politely they are being phrased, and the simple act of asking them might be considered impolite or otherwise inappropriate. Potential guerrilla questioners should keep this in mind.

I have asked versions of almost all of the above questions on occasion, and found significant differences in terms of

• asking them during the official Q & A or afterwards in a smaller circle or 1:1 conversation (or even on Twitter) with the speaker — the former will generate more handwaving and awkward situations, whereas the latter tends to give more honest and pragmatic steps forward, albeit not necessarily open ones
• asking from within an audience that knew me (e.g. after I had already given my talk) or not — the latter might get you a few grins or giggles but rarely anything productive, whereas the former frequently does actually work to some extent, especially if my presentation did tick the relevant boxes
• asking more from a principle angle or with reference to some concrete reuse — people tend to agree with the former but don't necessarily do something about it (or even know how to get started), whereas in the latter situation, they often know quite precisely what they would have to do to enable that kind of reuse, so the question then shifts to whether they'd actually want this to happen (default setting: "when I have time").

For some of these (or any other) questions, the speaker may also not be the best person to address them, since others — e.g. supervisors, postdocs, collaborators/ competitors, conference organizers etc. — might have more of a say or more information on the matter.