RIOT Science Club

Negotiating for open publishing: Freeing journal articles from paywalls by Chris Banks
2021-06-30 13:00 - 14:00 UTC | MS Teams
About the speaker
Chris Banks (FRSA) has worked in libraries since 1985, including spending over 20 years at the British Library. Since 2013 she has served as Director of Library Services at Imperial College London. She is a member of the UUK/Jisc Content Negotiations Strategy Group, Chair of its Content Expert Group, and a member of the team currently negotiating for a new UK agreement with the publishing giant Elsevier. In non-pandemic times she sings with the London Philharmonic Choir.
About the talk
COVID-19 has thrown a spotlight on the need for open rapid reproducible sharing of scientific knowledge and yet this open means of dissemination is still not the norm and instead, the outputs of publicly funded research are too often found behind costly paywalls, accessible only via the libraries of the wealthier institutions. Chris will describe the transition that is underway which will enable more publicly-funded research to be freely and globally accessible at a fair price that recognises the value that can be added by publishers.

False dichotomy: Predatory journals and inclusivity and scholarly publishing by Dr Larissa Shamseer
2021-06-22 15:00 - 16:00 UTC | Zoom, United Kingdom
About the speaker
Dr Larissa Shamseer (MSc, PhD) is a CIHR postdoctoral fellow with the Knowledge Translation Program of the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute in Toronto. Her research to date has focused on optimizing research transparency to reduce research waste. She is currently researching equity in academic publishing and reward. Dr Shamseer completed her PhD in Epidemiology at the University of Ottawa in 2021, where she led early work characterizing predatory publishing. She has over 70 publications across these areas, including several first-author publications in high-impact journals (e.g. Nature, BMJ). Dr Shamseer also led the development of the widely-used Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic review and Meta-Analysis Protocols (PRISMA-P 2015) guideline (cited over 9000 times, Scopus), and was on the steering committee updating the PRISMA 2020 Statement. You can find Dr Shamseer on Twitter @LarissaShamseer and learn more about her work on ORCID.
About the talk
So-called “predatory” journals are pervasive in scholarly publishing and their ever-increasing presence is alarming to the science and publishing communities. Predatory journals and their content are considered untrustworthy due to their failure (and sometimes false claims) to peer review or carry out standard journal practices. Some journals once-labelled as “predatory” may not intentionally carry out nefarious or deceptive operations. Further, potentially useful research may be contained in predatory journals. This talk considers the origins and definitions of the term “predatory” journal, why researchers publish in them, their impact on research integrity, and advancing equity and transparency in scholarly publishing.

Transparency in qualitative research and using Dedoose for coding by Dr Crystal Steltenpohl
2021-06-18 14:00 - 15:00 (Europe/London) | Zoom, United Kingdom
About the speaker
Dr Crystal Steltenpohl is a community psychologist, whose research focuses on a wide range of topics related to community well-being, such as perceptions and interactions between individuals and community-based interventions. She has conducted research and evaluations using qualitative and quantitative methodology and data and designed and conducted trainings for effective collaboration and communication within organizations. She is also an active advocate of the open science movement, particularly passionate about driving initiatives focused on inclusion, diversity, equity, and access. She is actively involved with the Centre for Open Science and the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science.
About the talk
This seminar will discuss transparency in qualitative research and demonstrate practical steps to use Dedoose as tool for coding.

The producibility crisis in Philippine psychology: A reproducibility crisis in the making? by James Montilla Doble
2021-06-17 12:00 - 13:00 (Europe/London) | MS Teams
About the speaker
Mx James Montilla Doble (he/they) is a lecturer and PhD student in social psychology at the University of the Philippines Diliman Department of Psychology. His research interests include metapsychology as well as issues related to research ethics. They are affiliated with the following organizations: Center for Open Science, South East Asian Network for Open Science (SEANOS), and Philippine Researchers for Open Science (PROScience). He is also currently one of the graduate student representatives of the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science (SIPS) Executive Committee and a member of the Steering Committee of the upcoming Advancing Science in South East Asia (ASISEA) conference in Q4 2021. You can find James here: website and @lysanderjames.
About the talk
To establish the current state of psychological research in the Philippines, respondents who have completed or are completing graduate studies in psychology were asked what, in their opinion, are the most pressing issues in conducting psychological research in the country. Thematic analysis of responses shows that in contrast with the replication crisis gripping the field in other countries, an enduring “producibility crisis” continues to dominate Philippine psychology twenty years after Bernardo (1997) observed the lack of research culture among Filipino psychologists, which he attributed to lack of resources and negative attitudes towards research. Other than these threats to research production, there is a clear overlap between the problems encountered and mentioned by this study’s respondents and those already identified by metapsychologists from outside of the Philippines, such as poor research competence and efficacy, unethical research conduct, and misaligned incentive structures, e.g., publication bias and the “publish or perish” culture in academia. Implications of the connection between the producibility and replication crises are discussed, as well as solutions to both crises to improve overall producibility and stimulate the growth of Philippine psychology.

Coherence or correspondence? What truths are we seeking in reproducibility? by Prof Stephen Senn
2021-06-07 13:00 - 14:00 (Europe/London) | MS Teams

Bayesian statistics without tears by Prof Eric-Jan Wagenmakers
2021-06-03 14:00 - 15:00 (Europe/London) | MS Teams
About the speaker
Dr Wagenmakers is a professor at the psychological methods group in the department of psychology, University of Amsterdam. He is also the founder of JASP, an open-source statistics program. His research interests include Bayesian inference, models of decision making, and philosophy of science. As a noted expert in Bayesian statistics, Professor Wagenmakers has been actively promoting open research and addressing the reproducibility crisis.
About the talk
In this presentation, Professor Wagenmakers will outline the pragmatic advantages of a Bayesian approach to data analysis. Concrete demonstrations with the JASP program (jasp-stats.org) will showcase the ease with which researchers may draw conclusions from data that can supplement or supplant the conclusions afforded by a traditional analysis.

DORA: Re-thinking and re-engineering what we value in research by Prof Stephen Curry
2021-05-24 12:30 - 13:30 (Europe/London) | MS Teams
About the speaker
Stephen Curry is a Professor of Structural Biology at Imperial College London where he also serves as the Assistant Provost for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. For many years he has been a writer and campaigner on a range of scientific issues including open access, research assessment, research funding and science policy. He is currently chair of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA).
About the talk
The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) is a campaigning initiative to improve the ways that we evaluate research and researchers. It aims particularly to call out the problematic nature of the over-reliance on aggregate metrics such as the journal impact factor in assessment processes. Such metrics have enduring appeal because they appear to offer the simplicity and objectivity of numerical analyses. I will discuss the work DORA is doing to promote and develop alternative and more holistic processes of research assessment – work that is synergistic with broader moves to advance open scholarship and enduring issues of equality, diversity and inclusion.

Interpreting replications by Dr Jill Jacobson
2021-05-21 14:00 - 15:00 (Europe/London) | Zoom, United Kingdom
About the speaker
Dr Jacobson is a social psychologist who has taught statistics and research methods at the undergraduate and graduate level for the last 20 years. Her primary research is on the social-cognitive and social-behavioral consequences of various self-constructs such as depression, causal uncertainty, and self-esteem importance. More recently, she has begun examining topics in meta-science including a SSHRC-funded project on participant prospection and non-naïveté.
About the talk
This seminar will discuss how we evaluate when a replication should be considered failure/success and what that means for original studies.

Service user involvement in mental health research by Dr Sagar Jilka
2021-05-13 12:00 - 13:00 UTC | MS Teams
About the speaker
Sagar Jilka is the co-ordinator for the patient and carer involvement and engagement theme within the NIHR Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre. He has previous experience of research and applied science in academia and industry and facilitates service user-led projects.
About the talk
I will familiarise participants with the background, methods and approaches to service user involvement within mental health research. We will discuss what is meant by “PPI” (patient and public involvement) and I will provide examples of service user involvement in current research studies. We will end the session discussing how to get advice from service users, guidelines and best practices when discussing your research with service users.

The matter of facts: Citation bias and distortion by Dr Rhodri I. Leng
2021-05-04 13:00 - 14:00 (Europe/London) | MS Teams
About the speaker
Rhodri Leng is a quantitative sociologist of science. His research concerns developing understanding of how the structure of citation networks affects the spread of information across the scientific literature, how the spread of information affects the development of scientific opinion, and involves integrating this understanding into theories of scientific development. An important element of his work involves developing methods to detect citation bias and other citation distortions in the literature. This involves methods of systematic literature retrieval, systematic review and meta-analysis, citation network analysis, and content analysis.

Dynamic systems modelling and simulation - assisted thought experiments by Dr Charles Driver
2021-04-26 14:00 - 15:00 UTC | MS Teams
About the speaker
Dr Charles Driver is a researcher at the Center for Lifespan Psychology at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin. He focuses on improving methods for mapping theories of change to data and applying these to different problems across the broad domain of human development. One of his projects included writing the statistical software package “ctsem” in R, which can be used to model dynamic systems. (@CharlesDriverAU)
About the talk
Most phenomena of scientific interest can be loosely thought of as ‘dynamic systems’, in the sense that they usually change in different ways depending on different inputs. In the social sciences, phenomena are usually highly complex and dependent on many features of the world, such that any formal model is inherently a vast simplification. In order for our modelling simplifications to provide useful insight, they need to adequately represent the core aspects we are interested in, and cope with the many aspects we are not. In this talk I will discuss some of the basic ideas of modelling dynamic systems, demonstrate how simulating such systems can yield important insight and questions, and outline the ctsem software for estimating dynamic systems models in social science contexts.

Research and researcher assessment; how do we do it, are we doing it right, and what is the role of preprints? by Prof Chris Jackson
2021-04-21 11:00 - 12:00 (Europe/London) | MS Teams
About the speaker
Prof Chris Jackson is Chair in Sustainable Geoscience, at the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Manchester.
About the talk
We assess research outputs and thus researchers by a range of metrics, often during job appointments and promotions. What tools do we use and are they fair? Do they get us the desired result? What, in fact, is the desired result? And what role do preprints play in this and in, more generally, creating an open and progressive research culture?

Using Superpower R package to simulate power by Dr Aaron R. Caldwell
2021-04-15 15:00 - 16:00 UTC | MS Teams
About the speaker
Aaron is an exercise physiologist with a PhD in Health, Sport, and Exercise Science from the University of Arkansas. He is currently as ORISE Postdoctoral Fellow at the United States Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine where his current research projects are focused on human performance in extreme environments (heat, cold, and altitude). In addition, Aaron works as an applied statistician. He has gained expertise in statistics through a Graduate Certificate in Statistics & Research Methods program while at the University of Arkansas, and is continuing his education with an MSc in Analytics through the Georgia Institute of Technology.
About the talk
Power analysis has become the sine qua non for justifying for sample sizes in experimental studies. For simple one or two sample comparisons, the process is fairly straightforward. When the experiments become more complex, such as when factorial designs are implemented, the tools used for power analysis are sparse and the calculations become more difficult. A simple solution to the problem of design complexity is just to simulate the study design in order to estimate power. However, simulation tends to require more technical knowledge and some ability to write code. Therefore, Superpower R package was created to streamline the simulation process and make simulation tools accessible for the average researcher. Currently, the package allows for Monte Carlo and “exact” simulations for factorial designs with both within and between subjects factors. This allows for power estimates for ANOVA, MANOVA, and estimated marginal means comparisons. In addition, this is a useful teaching tool as it can show how violating assumptions (e.g., homoskedasticity or sphericity) can affect both statistical power and type 1 error rates. In this presentation, I will demonstrate 1) why these principles are important 2) how Superpower, in both its R and Shiny formats, can be useful and 3) how non-simulation based functions can be used to justify your alpha level.

Hans Eysenck: personality and fatal diseases; exposing a scientific scandal by Dr Anthony Pelosi
2021-04-08 12:00 - 13:00 UTC | MS Teams
About the speaker
Dr Anthony Pelosi is a consultant psychiatrist at Priory Hospital Glasgow. Since the early ‘90s, Pelosi has published extensive critiques of the work of Hans Eysenck, In February 2019, Pelosi published a paper in the Journal of Health Psychology, in which he stated that the Eysenck case is “one of the worst scientific scandals of all time,” which was also accompanied by an editorial from David Marks, in which he called for an inquiry by King’s College London and the British Psychological Society.
About the talk
During the 1980’s and 1990’s, the late Hans Eysenck conducted a programme of research into the causes, prevention and treatment of cancer and other fatal diseases in collaboration with one of his protégés, Ronald Grossarth-Maticek. This led to what must be the most astonishing series of findings ever published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. I am going to present just a selection of these findings. I will also summarise a study in which these scientists describe in detail – and without a trace of insight – a criminally negligent clinical experiment on 41 people who were at grave and imminent risk due to malignant hypertension.
I will be asking the RIOT Science Club what I have been asking myself for three decades. How on earth could this work have been published and why was nothing done about it until last year? I will be making a few suggestions. i) Professor Eysenck considered himself to be some sort of genius. Over the years, he managed to beguile numerous young researchers who egged him on in this belief. Some of them still try to defend his work on fatal diseases. ii) He was encouraged to continue this research by tobacco company scientists even when they knew that it was so flawed. iii) Eysenck thought of himself as the world’s greatest psychometrician. However, he had only a loose and fluctuating grasp of the difference between statistical significance and effect size. iv) His university and his regulatory body were not up to the task of dealing with such a person.
I will be asking for suggestions about how to undo some of the damage to science that has been caused by this scandal.

The racial origins of the p-value by Theresa Wege
2021-03-30 12:30 - 13:30 UTC | MS Teams
About the speaker
Theresa Elise Wege is a PhD student and PGTA for statistics at the Centre for Mathematical Cognition, Loughborough University. While her research is focused on preschool maths, she thinks about statistics pedagogy and introducing students to the philosophy of science as part of her teaching role.
About the talk
Where do the statistical methods we commonly use come from? In this presentation, Theresa will explore the origins of the p-value and other statistical methods and discuss their connections to eugenics and white supremacist thinking in the early 20th century. With a feminist epistemology in mind, Theresa will present the discovery of statistical methods embedded in the biographies of Sir Francis Galton, Karl Pearson and Sir Ronald Fisher. She will conclude with how thinking about the origins of statistical methods can be integrated in the statistics curriculum and how it can facilitate discussions in the open science context.

Working with large, open-source neuroimaging datasets by Corey Horien
2021-03-22 13:00 - 14:00 UTC | MS Teams
About the speaker
Corey Horien is an MD-PhD student in Todd Constable’s lab at Yale School of Medicine. His research focuses on individual differences in fMRI data in the developing brain in health and disease. He recently wrote “A hitchhiker’s guide to working with large, open-source neuroimaging datasets”.
Twitter: @coreyhorien
About the talk
Large datasets are growing increasingly common in neuroimaging. Due to the simultaneous increasing popularity of open science, these state-of-the-art samples are more accessible than ever. Nevertheless, their sheer size presents a new set of challenges that might cause difficulties. In this talk, Corey will discuss tips for working with large datasets from the end-user’s perspective. He will cover all aspects of the data lifecycle: from what to consider when downloading and storing the data to tips on how to become acquainted with a dataset one did not collect and what to share when communicating results. Emphasis is placed on practical solutions, as well as lessons his lab has learned working with large samples.

Data visualisation in R by Dr Niklas Johannes
2021-03-19 13:00 - 14:00 UTC | Zoom, United Kingdom
About the speaker
I’m a Postdoc in the Adolescent Well-Being in the Digital Age program at the Oxford Internet Institute. Under the supervision of Andrew Przybylski, I study the effects of technology use on well-being and performance. My PhD had a similar topic: Here, I investigated the effects of constant connectedness on performance and well-being. In my research, I follow open science practices. That means I preregister all studies and make materials, data, and analyses publicly available.
To learn more about Dr Johannes, visit his website.
About the talk
This session will focus on data visualisation in R.

Opportunities and challenges of open science for qualitative methods by Dr Peter Branney
2021-03-16 13:00 - 14:00 UTC | MS Teams
About the speaker
To learn more about Dr Branney, visit his website.
About the talk
Despite (perhaps in-part because of) the mocking of expertise in recent elections and the replication crisis in social psychology, the 17th century Scientific Revolution is re-emerging; albeit reconfigured as the Open Science movement in calls for open collaboration and digitally mediated open access to study designs, methods, notebooks, data and results. To date, psychologists have largely focused on experiments and the replications of findings, but it is important for us to consider the possibilities for qualitative research as open science. I will do this by weaving three threads of thought; 1) the systemic changes open science is bringing about to the research landscape and how far these reach back in history, 2) the legitimate sensitivities of qualitative data and 3) opportunities available for supporting open qualitative research.

The AccessLab by Dr Lotty Brand
2021-03-11 12:00 - 13:00 UTC | MS Teams
About the speaker
Dr Brand is currently Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Sheffield with Prof. Tom Stafford investigating the use of argument maps and automated dialogue for fostering open-mindedness and de-polarisation. Lotty was previously Postdoctoral Research Associate with Prof. Alex Mesoudi at the University of Exeter’s Cornwall Campus as part of the Human Behaviour and Cultural Evolution Group (HuBCEG). Her research spans a variety of topics related to the evolution of human behaviour and cognition. All her publications and preprints are openly available here.
About the talk
AccessLab is a novel science communication initiative in which researchers and those without research training get together to discuss how scientific literature can be accessed and used by people outside of the academic bubble. The aim is to open-up access to scientific research for anyone to find, understand, and use in their daily lives. The workshops include open discussion about how scientific research is funded and published, how to find it, how to get to the bottom of confusing media headlines, and a chance for those without formal research training to confidentially research a question of their own with a trained researcher. It’s a really eye-opening workshop that I really recommend to any researcher who cares about how scientific research is accessed, understood, and put to good use. In this talk, I’ll discuss my experience of helping to run and develop these workshops, as well as the general principles about science communication and open science that I’ve learnt through the process. More about AccessLab can be found in this open publication.
To join, follow this link.

Working with R Markdown by Dr Jon McPhetres
2021-03-05 12:00 - 13:00 UTC | Zoom, United Kingdom
About the speaker
Speaker’s bio and any relevant social links can be found here.
About the talk
This seminar will demonstrate how to use R to produce statistical output directly to a document without manually inputting values.

Psychology in a crisis by Dr Stuart Ritchie
2021-03-04 12:00 - 13:00 UTC | MS Teams
About the speaker
Dr Ritchie is a psychologist with research interests in a variety of areas, including intelligence, individual differences in cognitive abilities, behavioural genetics, and more recently in the replication crisis. In 2014, he completed his PhD at the university of Edinburgh, staying on to become a postdoctoral research fellow investigating difference in intelligence, working on the world renowned Lothian Birth Cohort dataset. In 2018, he became a lecturer in the Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre at King’s College London. In his recent book, Science Fictions, Stuart examines fraud, bias, error, and hype in scientific research, and the incentives that undermine scientific integrity. More recently, Stuart focused his energies on cross-examining scientific claims relevant to the coronavirus pandemic, and in pursuit of this has set up a Myth Busting website.
About the talk
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, psychologists and other behavioural scientists sprung into action, writing high-profile papers that described the application of their research findings to the crisis. Since changing people’s behaviours is a big part of controlling a pandemic, they saw many opportunities to use their research to help out. As we know, though, the behavioural sciences have been going through their own crisis over the past years – a crisis of confidence in the quality, replicability, and generalisability of their findings. How appropriate was it to try to apply these findings to a completely unprecedented scenario – and one where lives were at stake? What are the pitfalls in doing so? In this talk, I’ll discuss what’s happened with psychology and the pandemic, and propose a new scheme—partly stolen from NASA—to assess how ready any given piece of research is for translation to a crisis.

Rmarkdown and Github: A walkthrough for sharing code and results by Dr Oliver Pain
2021-02-25 14:00 - 15:00 UTC | MS Teams
About the speaker
Dr Oliver Pain is a postdoctoral research associate at the Social Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry (SGDP) Centre, King’s College London. His work uses statistical genetics to understand and predict outcomes related to mental health.
About the talk
This workshop will provide an introduction to Rmarkdown websites and how to host them online using GitHub pages. Oliver will take you through a few exercises to create a Rmarkdown website online.
Important note: for the practical, Oliver suggests using Rstudio and GitHub Desktop, but he will also provide instructions using R and Git on the command line. You will also need a GitHub account and to download the workshop materials in advance.

Introduction to preregistration and registered reports by Dr Kaitlyn M. Werner
2021-02-19 13:00 - 14:00 UTC | Zoom, United Kingdom
About the speaker

I am a SSHRC Banting postdoctoral research fellow in the Affective Science and Health Laboratory (PI: Dr Brett Ford) at the University of Toronto. My research takes an interdisciplinary approach to understand the factors that facilitate successful self-regulation and goal pursuit. I also have a strong interest in measurement (e.g., construct and ecological validity), advanced quantitative methods (e.g., multilevel SEM, Bayesian statistics), research design (e.g., experimental, longitudinal, experience sampling), and meta-science (e.g., transparent and reproducible research practices). Outside of the lab, I am also an Ambassador for the Center for Open Science.​
To learn more about Dr Werner, visit her website.
About the talk
This session will provide an overview of preregistration and registered reports.

Learning the hard way: Reproducible workflows by Dr James Bartlett
2021-02-16 13:00 - 14:00 UTC | MS Teams
About the speaker
Dr James Bartlett completed his PhD at Coventry University on the neurocognitive mechanisms associated with addictive behaviour in daily and non-daily smokers. James is a lecturer in psychology at Arden University and leads undergraduate and postgraduate modules on research methods. He specialises in quantitative research methods and his research focuses on addictive behaviour. All his research and resources are available here.
About the talk
The lifecycle of a research project spans months and often years, with plenty of disruptions along the way. From preregistration to publication, there is plenty of room for error as you forget what settings you used for your analyses or make a mistake cleaning your data. In this seminar, I will outline how establishing a reproducible workflow helps yourself and the scientific community. Changing your approach can be daunting, so I will be outlining the mistakes I made along the way including a spreadsheet mix-up and a cringy preregistration. By the end of the seminar, you will see how you can incrementally create your own reproducible workflow.

Chiral materials and finding your voice as an early career researcher by Dr Jess Wade
2021-02-10 12:30 - 13:30 UTC | MS Teams
About the speaker
Bio available here and here.
About the talk
Dr Jess Wade is a Research Fellow at Imperial College London investigating spin selective charge transport through chiral systems in the Department of Materials. As well as speaking on this work and her career thus far, Jess will talk on work outside the lab. This work has included campaigning for greater diversity in science, such as involving more women in physics and STEM subjects more broadly, as well as tackling systemic gender and racial biases Wikipedia. Please join us for what will be a fascinating talk on the barriers in science and how to navigate them as an early career researcher.
To join, please follow this link.

The IGDORE project: Reinventing academia with open (science) mind by Dr Rebecca Willén
2021-02-04 12:00 - 13:00 UTC | Zoom, United Kingdom
About the speaker

Dr Willén is an independent researcher in psychology. Her main professional interests are research ethics, research methodology and investigative psychology (forensic psychology). She is the founder of IGDORE, an independent virtual research institute, and a strong proponent of open and replicable science. In 2016, she finished her PhD at University of Gothenburg, Sweden, with a thesis on police interviewing techniques and verbal deception detection. The thesis included retroactive disclosure statements (RDS; p’s 27-28 in the thesis) which she followed up on in 2018 with additional statements published on her website. Her decision to publish RDS has been covered in an episode of Everything Hertz, mentioned in a piece in Undark Magazine, and she has co-authored a paper (in press at Perspectives on Psychological Science) on similar statements. Curate Science has turned her RDS into a reporting standard badge called ‘Basic 7 (retroactive)’. After 5 years abroad (Indonesia, Canada, Netherlands), she returned to Sweden in December 2019. She now resides in Gothenburg with her two children and three rescue dogs. She’s a first generation university student, liberal leftist, and a proponent of viewpoint diversity.
You can find out more about Dr Willén here:
CV – ORCID – Publons – Google Scholar – Twitter – GitHub – Blog
About the talk

Institute for Globally Distributed Open Research and Education (IGDORE) is an independent research institute dedicated to improving the quality of science, science education, and quality of life for scientists, students and their families. Founded in 2016 with one single researcher, the founder herself, the institute today has over 110 researchers from 35 countries. Dr Willén’s talk will provide a brief background to why the IGDORE project was launched, an introduction to its goals, visions, and organisation, and how IGDORE hopes to further advance the movement for open and replicable science.

Open knowledge: A silent revolution in science by Alexandra Elbakyan
2021-01-28 12:00 - 13:00 UTC | MS Teams
About the speaker
A full autobiography is available here.
About the talk
On the 5th September 2011, aged 23, Alexandra Elbakyan created a PHP script that downloaded articles for free to make them open access to all. That script came to be known as Sci-Hub, “the first pirate website in the world to provide mass and public access to tens of millions of research papers” (more information here). Now, in its 10th year, Sci-Hub has become one of – if not the – most popular means to access academic literature hidden behind a paywall. Sci-Hub’s creator will join us to talk about the origin of Sci-Hub, where it is now, and what the future holds. The talk will be composed of a 25 minute pre-recorded talk followed by a live Q&A.

Conflicts and complexities on the path to open data by Prof Louise Connell
2020-12-10 12:00 - 13:00 UTC | MS Teams
About the talk
Even with the best intentions and motivations, sharing your data in an open repository is not always as easy as it should be. Barriers can appear in a variety of forms, including uncertainty regarding copyright and data ownership, diverging interpretations of GDPR and ethical issues, and sheer lack of time and resources to curate your data into a shareable format. I discuss some ways my collaborators and I have navigated these barriers and share some tips and tricks for making the process as painless as possible.
About the speaker
My research interests surround cognitive science and embodied cognition. Specifically, I’m interested in how mental representations and conceptual knowledge are grounded, how we access and use these representations in language, and how we can create computational models to better understand human cognitive behaviour. I use a range of interdisciplinary methods from experimental psychology and cognitive modelling to corpus linguistics and machine learning. Some recent work has examined how sensorimotor experience (i.e., what we sense via different perceptual modalities, what we do via different action effectors) underpins word meaning, how distributional statistics from language capture important information about conceptual and social knowledge, how information about space and time is mentally represented, and how people combine concepts into new entities.

Reproducible Research Oxford by Dr Malika Ihle
2020-12-03 12:00 - 13:00 UTC | MS Teams
About the talk
How can an open research working group help drive a research culture change at the institutional level? Reproducible Research Oxford a.k.a. RROx (“rocks”) has been working to achieve this by (i) building cross-disciplinary communities, (ii) providing training and promoting practices that are beneficial to research communities, and sustainable for researchers, and (iii) liaising with stakeholders to inform the design of policy.
About the speaker

Malika Ihle is the Reproducible Research Oxford Coordinator, supporting the Steering Group in developing a comprehensive approach to open scholarship and reproducible research that extends across all disciplines, using both bottom-up and top-down strategies.
Malika holds a Master degree in Biology from Université de Bourgogne and Université du Québec à Montréal, and a PhD in Behavioral Ecology from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology. During her post-docs at the University of Sheffield and University of Florida, she organised a post-conference symposium on open science, she co-authored an invited idea in the journal Behavioral Ecology titled “Striving for transparent and credible research: practical guidelines for behavioural ecologist”, and she developed and taught a graduate course guiding students through the scientific pipeline, from preregistration to a reproducible and open workflow.
Malika is an Executive Committee member of the Society for Open Reliable Transparent Ecology and Evolutionary biology (SORTEE) and the UK Reproducibility Network (UKRN) local network lead at the University of Oxford.

Drifting into the world of open science and reproducibility by Dr Gavin Buckingham
2020-11-26 14:30 - 15:30 (Europe/London) | MS Teams
About the speaker
Gavin Buckingham was awarded his PhD in Psychology from the University of Aberdeen in 2008. Following the completion of his PhD, he moved to Canada to take up a position as a postdoctoral fellow in the Brain and Mind Institute at Western University in Canada working with Prof Mel Goodale. His work here mostly focused on how we perceive weight and interact with objects in the world around us. In January 2013, he was appointed as a lecturer in the Psychology Department at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. Three years later he joined the Department Sport and Health Sciences at the University of Exeter, where he is currently a senior lecturer and leads the Object Interaction Lab.
About the talk
I am going to talk about my perspectives on open science and reproducibility from the (slightly unusual) perspective of not being a significant part of the open science ecosystem. I have not developed any reproducibility initiatives. I have not devoted my career to improving science. I do not force my trainees to do things ‘my way’. But, since taking up a permanent position, I have been making small tangible steps toward improving my scientific practices. In this talk, I’ll give my reflections on how these many incremental changes to my research practices have improved the quality of my work which, hopefully, will be of interest to other scientists hoping to move in the right direction, but unsure where best to start.
