Open Science? Open Research!

I must admit that my "science" days, at least as far as biology, chemistry and physics go, are far behind me.  Interesting topics, but I prefer thinking (and dabbling) in other topics; thus this week's topic on #ioe12 wasn't that interesting, at least as far as the video and the readings go. The presenter (Michael Nielsen, on the TED video)  did say something that I've often suspected about academia: people don't share their data, they treat it as "their data" because the name of the game is publish or perish.

It didn't surprise me that the core problem of the polymath project (was this a pun btw?) was solved by means of massive mathematical problem solving. We can indeed (as Michael says) use the internet to build tools that amplify our collective intelligence to solve problems. I think that this is an important undertaking, especially given how many smart people there are out there that solve problems every day, that could work together to thrust us (as a species) forward.

That said, what if you have competing interests.  For example, how does one tenure-track faculty member; or a new faculty member looking for a tenure-track job (or a secure job that pays more than the peanuts that adjuncts get) show that he has contributed to these massive projects and that this contribution has helped the project forward?  How does this person get credit on a resume or CV, and how does that help them get or retain a job?

A common mentre has been "wait until tenure to do the cool (or useful) things," but that is too long!  At our school (as far as I know) your tenure review is in 7 years after you get hired.  Seven years after that you can go up for a full Professor rank. Fourteen years is too long to wait to participate in open research.  Seven years is too long to participate in open research!  How will institutions reconcile the need to collaborate and augment our collective intelligence to solve problems and gain new understanding with the existing rubrics for what "faculty output" means?

Open Research (using this term more broadly since it can encompass other types of research) is important for all of our disciplines.  At the very least it means that we aren't in an echo chamber with others of similar mindset.  It allows for diverse views, knowledge and life experiences to come into the mix and provide fertile ground for new, previously unimagined, outcomes.

What do you think?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Latour: Third Source of Uncertainty - Objects have agency too!

Image
Continuing on my exploration of ANT, and asynchronous and indirect dialogue with Latour - this blog post will cover the third source of uncertainty, which according to Latour, is that Objects have agency too! As with the previous blog posts, I've pulled out quotes from the book that seemed interesting, or that I reacted to in some way, and I am responding to them here. no tie can be said to be durable and made of social stuff (p. 66) This quote seems to continue Latour's assertion that there is no such thing as "social" or "social stuff" and that "social", or the meaning of needs to be negotiated and better understood.  It also continues the thought that social can only be seen from the actions of its actors, the traces they leave behind, and that these bonds are not durable because they need continuous reinforcement. I guess Social is a perishable item. Left to its own devices, a power relationship that mobilizes nothing but social skil...
Read more

MOOC participation - open door policy and analytics

The other day I was reading ZML Didaktik on the topic of MOOC participants. In MOOCs, one of the big questions is why are people lurking and not participating? If more than 500 people join a MOOC, why are only 10% contributing with any amount of regularity?  On the same blog, in a previous blog post, I had commented (it was an open stream of thought really) that perhaps there should be an open enrollment period, and then if the system sees that certain participants are bellow a threshold of activity, the system may give them the option to self-identify as a lurker, or un-register from the class. This line of thought went along a view that compared to the traditional classroom; in a traditional classroom students register for the course, they can attend classes for a week and then decide whether or not they want to stay with the course or not. If they do stay with the course they know that there is a certain amount of "lurking" that they can get away with, but they do have ...
Read more

You've been punk'd! However, that was an educational experience

Image
It's now the end of Teaching Goes Massive: New Skills Required (aka #massiveteaching) on coursera. Well, almost, we still have a couple of days left. I guess that the lesson here is that we were (the "learners") were punk'd† by Paul-Olivier Dehaye of the Univerisity of Zurich. After that last blog post (and subsequent pickup of the post by George Siemens and others) Inside Higher Education and the Chronicle wanted to chat with me about this MOOC experience. I only had time for one of the two before things went to press, so my 15 minutes of fame went to IHE.  Both IHE and the C hronicle have written about the topic, and have received some information from Coursera on the incident.  Others have also written about it (see here , here and here ) It's surprising to me that the University, and Coursera, waited until after this thing was a big issue in order to respond in the class, and clue people into what was happening. On Wednesday (day 3 of Week 3/3 of the ...
Read more