User:Solstag/OCSDNet Proposal with Sarita and Jenny

Study title:

Social development from open and collaborative science communities

Research team: Sarita Albagli (principal researcher), Jenny Molloy (research collaborator), Alexandre H. Abdo (external collaborator)

Proponent Organization: Open Knowledge Brasil

Associate organization:

Instituto Brasileiro de Informação em Ciência e Tecnologia (IBICT)

Total budget cost (CAD):

80,000.00 CAD, to be supplemented by local grants

Abstract

The Open Science movement expands worldwide and, more recently, also within the so called emergent and developing countries, or the Global South. In those countries, the debate on science and technology´s role for social development is not new, as expressed in well-known notions such as appropriated technologies, social technologies, and social innovation, among others. A recent novelty in this field resides in the still initial but growing dissemination of experiences valorizing the adoption of open and collaborative knowledge production´s methods and practices as a key condition for their sustainable and participatory implementation, from a bottom-up perspective. On the other hand, development challenges also mobilize and propitiate new opportunities for science to experience with more open and collaborative approches. However, since this is a new phenomenon,in Brazil, there is scarcity of knowledge and systematized information about those experiences, their potentialities, obstacles, and requirements. This proposal aims at stimulating the adoption of open and collaborative science perspectives and methods to respond to “development challenges” by experimenting with community-driven working groups as an enabling mechanism for OCS. It proposes to situate the main issues involved with the implementation of such practices (focus, motivations, methods, instruments, and difficulties). As a result it will provide a reflection on the learning for OCS aproach for development goals resulting from these initiatives, as well as on the bottlenecks and necessary actions and strategies for their promotion and diffusion. It will approach in more detail open scientific data projects, due to the following: the existence of a sufficient volume of such experiences in Brazil in connection with development targets (health, environment, living conditions in cities, participatory decision making) as to allow research results; and the growing importance of open and shared data for development given by the international community (see the debates for the UN post-2015 Development Agenda). The proposal addresses OCSDNet themes one (motivations), three (communities of practice) and five (potential impacts) through the central question: How is the adoption of OCS approach useful for designing and implementing projects and initiatives that aim at social development targets? The project´s methodology is based on an action-research approach organized along two axes (each one counting on one Coordinator): On the action side, we will form new communities of practice by regions, subject and open practice, along the lines of the Open Knowledge global and Brazilian open science working groups. A coordinator will be responsible for mobilizing and facilitating the growth of these communities through a group of OCS advocates, who will experiment with diverse tools and approaches to community building that are suited to their context. The groups will raise awareness and knowledge of OCS within their research communities and with wider stakeholders, focusing on how development can be a motivator and a strong justification to practice and promote OCS. With this tagline, we will support events and sessions around open science in development during relevant scientific and citizen meetings, to engage and attract larger audiences. Finally, bridging ideas from professional and citizen scientists, we will foster activities that participants propose out of their scientific practice, where direct impact on development is arguably expected, and produce a record of these experiences. On the research side, by following the growth of these communities and mapping them, the research team will be in a better, and privileged, position to observe and inquire about the motivational and coordinational issues regarding the adoption of open scientific practices in projects for development targets, as well as their obstacles and requirements. It will also increase the knowledge about the usefulness and implications of these forms of knowledge production for those targets, both in terms of their effectiveness and of more collaboration with the broader citizenry. This will involve developing both an empirical basis and a conceptual framework in order to understand the breadth of open scientific practices and their likely contributions to development, and to iteratively refine this framework based on observation and experimentation provided by observing the growth of these new communities.

Design and methodologies

While we acknowledge that action-research is not simply split into action and research components, our attempt to build a grassroots network of scientists as an enabling mechanism for adoption of OCS research, while at the same time being scientists trying to participate and study these networks, means that for this project extra care must be taken to maintain a degree of separation between action and research.

Action component

Lead: To be recruited, supported by Jenny Molloy and Ale Abdo

We will identify regions, subjects and open practices with a high potential for mobilization as open science communities of practice and for producing knowledge that is relevant to development outcomes. This potential will be assessed on current OCS activity and also ease of reach. For logistic, language and cultural reasons, we will concentrate our efforts in communities and projects in Brazil (with possible connections with other Latin American initiatives, with some perspective of collaboration with Africa).

We plan to seed groups of researchers interested in OCS around three categorisations:

• by region: tropical forest or semi-arid regions
• by subject: drug discovery or environmental monitoring
• by openness: scientific data or open notebook science

Each of these categories is independent, for instance regional groups would include researchers working across subjects and OCS methodologies. We expect to refine this selection in consultation with initial researchers recruited via the open science working groups of Open Knowledge and Open Knowledge Brazil. These researchers will be interviewed to identify the current status of OCS practices in their communities and how they access and share knowledge about OCS in their particular contexts.

The coordinator and advocate group will identify mobilisation and coordination strategies for catalyzing activity, which could include initiatives such as:

1. setting up mailing lists and other discussion channels
2. setting up blogs, social network profiles and other publication channels
3. setting up wikis and other documentation channels
4. organizing awareness, training and discussion sessions about OCSD
5. requesting space during conferences to raise awareness of OCSD
6. producing videos and other useful materials

The OCS advocates will lead these actions, with advice and administrative support from the action component coordinator. All will be as open to participation as possible with outcomes also shared openly in line with OCS principles and practice. Monitoring and feedback on progress will take place monthly via a recorded online call between all participants, who will also be encouraged to participate in calls and meetings with the global OK open science working group and Ciência Aberta in Brazil. In order to sustain activities and build capacity for OCS advocates to support the establishment of further working groups in the South, the lead coordinator will provide mentoring opportunities and connect the group to other relevant open knowledge streams e.g. other OCS working groups, local open government data initiatives, local citizen science communities. This process will foster a group of OCS research practitioners and leaders within Brazil.

Research component

Lead: Sarita Albagli, supported by a Research Assistant. Advised by Ale Abdo and Luca Maciel

The research axis will be organized in two parts:

(a) We will identify and characterize existing experiences in Brazil which are demonstrative of the use of open science for development, with focus on open data projects. This part will be based on data collection on the Internet; and interviews with those who have a broad and informed view of the field of Open Science in Brazil and can help to select significant initiatives, such as advocates, practitioners and privileged observers. The idea is to present a qualitative and updated overview which can subsidize the project´s action component. For this selection, the following aspects will be considered: - innovativeness in terms of open knowledge production´s methods and instruments; diversity in terms of focii and approaches and, as far as possible, the regional diversity within the Brazilian context; - time of existence sufficient to analyse their problems, results and learning.

(b) We will monitor the action component, producing information and analysis based on observation, registration, and interviews with working groups´participants. The purpose of this part is to evaluate the adherence to the procedures of open, collaborative science, its requirements and obstacles. This survey will consider:

• types of participants, their motivations, background, and institutional affiliation; tools and channels of data and knowledge sharing;
• informational governance structures and processes;
• openness for external collaborations;
• conditions for access to data and materials, and for participation in the research results.

The collected material in the survey will be registered on wiki, leaving room for contributions.

Outcomes and relevance

All of the potential communities identified for establishment of working group activities engage in research that generates knowledge relevant to development. The choice of tropical forests and drug discovery or semi-arid geographies and environmental monitoring is strategic as these two groups have potential to interact on common themes, with the OCS methodologies of open data sharing and open notebook science potentially cutting across many research efforts.

The outcomes of the action component will have developmental relevance at several levels. Firstly, individual researchers participating in working groups during the project will continue creating knowledge through their own research with a potentially greater social incentive and ability to use OCS approaches and particularly to disseminate results openly. We expect, for example, more development-related scientific data to be released, greater involvement of citizen scientists and open participation in projects led by working group members and greater experimentation with alternative methods of collaboration and communication, although demonstrating a downstream impact on development is not within the scope of this project. Some individuals will also be trained in community leadership and digital engagement which will not only build capacity for leadership is OCS research and practice but also be applicable beyond this in collaborations and policy engagement around their particular research. The findings from the action component will be shared via blogs, mailing lists and social media channels with the open science community but also the broader open knowledge community, with includes open development practitioners and civil society groups. Working groups may be useful testbeds for other social innovation projects and learning from this experiment will complement other groups who are promoting the sharing of sustainable social practices for development .

Outcomes of research components shall contribute to:

• advance the state of the art of the knowledge about the OSC for development, in its theoretical, methodological, and empirical dimensions;
• enlarge and promote the debate on OCS both in the research communities and in the political and institutional agendas;
• promote the dissemination of new practices in OCS in different areas, especially those pursuing social social development targets; - training of researchers at the scientific initiation, masters, doctorate and post-doctorate levels, encouraging and guiding the conduct of research on this topic, motivating new agendas, issues and research procedures in the field of OCS for development;
• stimulating international articulation and cooperation in OSC, mainly on a South-South level, addressing the Global South research interests;
• formulate and disseminate new issues and challenges for institutional and governmental strategies and policies able to address and support OSC initiatives.

Monitoring and evaluation

Action component

The community coordinator will be in contact with working groups throughout the project, and monitoring their progress will take place via a recorded monthly online conference call open to members of each community and with participation of Jenny and Ale. This call will be recorded and the main updates, outcomes and learning points summarised and openly shared. The key monitoring criteria will be member engagement in the working group, activities being planned or underway, whether development is being incorporated into the discourse of the community, the ability of the working group to document its activities, usefulness of tools and channels created, and any shift in adoption of open practices within the working group, around it, or that was recognized as relevant. As the group progresses and becomes more established, with positive outcomes in the above criteria, we will start monitoring actual incorporation of development goal as targets of open practices. It is possible that this happens earlier in the process, and if that happens we will have to discuss whether to focus on that so there's no mismatch between early movers and the overall community. The community of the working groups, plus the Open Knowledge Brasil community, is also expected to monitor the progress of the project, in particular reports will be presented by the community coordinator to the Open Knowledge Brazil community during their biweekly meetings at least once a month, regarding expenses of the project which would already have been publicly recorded. In case of any mobilization activity taking place outside of Brazil, relevant academic and openness communities are expected to be informed and, in case they choose to, welcome to help plan, monitor and criticize the process.

Research component

Three sets of monitoring and evaluation procedures will be adopted in the project´s research component:

• Online availability of data collection, in order to receive not only contributions, but also corrections and critical perspectives.
• Organization of 4 Research Seminars (1 per Semester), aiming at hearing invited specialists, activists and practitioners in OCS, as well as to present, debate, and disseminate partial and final results.
• Elaboration of an interpretative synthesis, systematizing the results and proposed actions and strategies, to be submitted to critical views and expertise, in the last semester of the project´s duration.