Science Library Pad

LIGO Open Science Center as a model for communication and engagement

I am really impressed with the work that the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) Scientific Collaboration has done to demonstrate the possibilities of open science communication and engagement.

The LIGO Open Science Center includes the following elements:

• data, including usage notes and data releases with accompanying documents
• some data releases have associated DOIs, e.g. event GW150914 data has doi:10.7935/K5MW2F23
• tutorials on how to work with the data, including a variety of cloud and downloadable software options
• some of the tutorials are Jupyter (iPython) notebooks, which combine data and code
• a way to query and extract time-based metadata (timeline) including an offer to host data
• a webservice to query and extract data (MySources)
• software examples and downloadable packages
• examples of data analysis projects including
  an online course
• list of publications with links to both final publications and preprints, plus (sometimes) science summaries
• the science summaries are sometimes even available in multiple languages

The one thing that I have been unable to find is a clear license for data use, although they do provide guidance on how to cite data that you use.

Going beyond the Open Science Center, they have many other channels of communication and engagement.

They did a Reddit AMA on the 2nd gravitational wave detection and they have a running crowdsourcing/citizen science project on Zooniverse called Gravity Spy.  As well there is a page listing just the papers related to the detection events; the page indicates open access papers clearly, but doesn't link to preprints.

They also have the usual social media, including YouTube with documentaries, public talks, podcasts, panels, and classes.

Taken all together, this provides a really good example of the scope that open science covers - it's not just releasing data, it's releasing accompanying software, tutorials, and analysis examples, as well as providing summaries of the science and reaching out through many different channels to engage the public.  (And this is just at the publication stage of the research lifecycle; there are many other stages at which open science applies.)

You can't just release the data, you have to also teach the data.  You can't just release the science, you have to also explain the science.

All of these activities require a whole set of skills in software, websites, plain language explanation and public engagement, beyond just the scientific expertise in and of itself.

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If we take the observation of gravitational waves from a binary black hole merger (event GW150914) as an example, you can, just from the LIGO site (not counting the multiple news reports available)

• start with a step-by-step explanation of LIGO and gravitational waves
• read a science summary (in English, French, Chinese, German, Japanese and Spanish)
• read the full scientific paper as it is open access with a CC-BY license
• read the preprint that was posted to arXiv (although in this case it appears likely the preprint and full paper are the same, as they're from the same day)
• see what other LIGO documents are related to the full scientific paper
• access the data including being able to cite the data using a DOI, and learn how to work with the data using the Jupyter notebook software tutorials

Wikipedia pages created

Here are some of the Wikipedia pages I have created.  You can get this information when logged in to Wikipedia on the Contributions page, by checking "Only show edits that are page creations". Or construct the URL https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?limit=50&title=Special%3AContributions&contribs=user&target=username&namespace=&tagfilter=&newOnly=1&year=2017&month=-1

• February 21, 2006 - National Science Advisor (Canada)
• June 12, 2006 - Council of Canadian Academies
• June 24, 2006 - Canadian Association of Research Libraries
• May 2, 2008 - Near Earth Object Surveillance Satellite
• April 5, 2009 - Data.gov
• July 10, 2009 - PubMed Central Canada
• March 5, 2016 - International Open Data Day
• March 6, 2016 - Institute for Science, Society and Policy

Many preprint services

Preprints have long circulated in some disciplines.  As the science publication and rewards systems evolve to permit greater use of preprints, the number of discipline-specific preprint services continues to increase.

The two best-established ones are:

1. https://arxiv.org/ (physics including particularly astrophysics and high-energy physics; mathematics; computer science)
2. http://biorxiv.org/ (biology)

(The X is a Chi, incidentally. This is a kind of physics humour.)

Two more are in the process of being established:

• http://www.chemrxiv.org/ (chemistry)
• http://asapbio.org/ (life sciences)

In terms of publisher-based preprint services, Nature had one called Nature Precedings which is now closed.

PeerJ has PeerJ Preprints.

There are also a bunch of services hosted by the Open Science Framework:

• socarxiv https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/
• engrxiv https://osf.io/preprints/engrxiv/
• psyarxiv https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/
• agriXiv https://osf.io/preprints/agrixiv

Obviously if this continues we will get to a point where we need meta-preprint services to combine all of the preprint services.

Funding sources and supporters are quite diverse.  It's not clear to me that there are enough funders currently in place to sustainably fund a proliferation of preprint servers.  It's also not really clear to me what ASAPbio will cover that bioRxiv doesn't cover already.

arXiv is a Cornell University Library initiative with membership and private finding.  (See arXiv - Business and Governance Information and Cornell University Library - New sponsorship model broadens arXiv membership.)

bioRxiv is a Cold Springs Harbour Library initiative with private funding.  (See bioRxiv - Preprint server bioRxiv receives additional major funding.)

chemRxiv is an American Chemical Society (ACS) initiative.

ASAPbio is an initiative with a mix of public support and private funding.  (See ASAPbio - Nature - Heavyweight funders back central site for life-sciences preprints.)  Funders supporting ASAPbio's principles include the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR).

UPDATE 2017-05-08: ASAPbio appears to have a particular focus on a completely open-source repository.  There's information about the most recent ASAPbio meeting as of this writing in Research Ideas and Outcomes - Technical aspects of preprint services in the life sciences: a workshop report by Daniel Mietchen.

bioRxiv is currently closed source, but the Chan Zuckerberg funded improvements are supposed to be made open source.

There is a new preprint archive hosted by the Open Science Framework

• https://osf.io/preprints/lawarxiv

with more info at http://lawarxiv.info/

ENDUPDATE

Wellcome Trust will accept preprints in grant applications.

HHMI recognizes preprints "as evidence of productivity and will accept them for purposes such as laboratory head reviews."

Most, but not all publishers will now accept manuscripts that have previously been posted online as preprints.

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Please feel free to comment, particularly if there are important preprint servers I have missed or nuances of funding I haven't covered.