Open Science: Open Science News and Events

Open Science Team Agreements with the Bay Area Open Science Group

The Bay Area Open Science Group met yesterday, 8/23/22, to introduce our new Open Science Team Agreement template. Ariel, John, and I (the co-hosts of Bay Area Open Science Group) designed a prototype team agreement (available via Overleaf or Google Docs) that research groups can use to discuss, adopt and implement open science practices. The Template is a 2 page edit-able, version-able doc that can be adapted to meet a group's workflow and covers topics like Authorship + Collaboration, Articles + Research Materials, Data + Code, and Communication + Impact.

At the meeting we gathered feedback, and discussed what else should be included and how team agreements can be used to kickstart conversations on open science. Our conversation covered:

• What is the appropriate scale/fit for the agreement? Should it target lab groups generally or specific projects?
• How else can DEI considerations be incorporated aside from “Ethical Considerations” and “Inclusive Science” subheadings? What other concrete actions can be suggested?
• How should the agreement walk the line between advocating for specific products vs. more general processes or categories?
• What else can be defined in the software/code category? Should contributions to packages/open source tools be considered a “community” expectation?
• What other ways can open science be tied into post-project outreach and communication? Are there long-term or downstream assessments that should be included?

Next steps:

We're taking feedback shared via notes, chat, and conversations and incorporating them into the Team Agreement, with plans to release version 1 this Fall. We welcome more comments and thoughts via Slack!