Interviewer: Okay. Okay, so I've started the recording. Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview. And you have already seen the form of consent and signed it. But as a reminder, this interview is being recorded and will be transcribed by myself and my student research assistants with the help of a local large language model. Is that okay with you?

Interviewee 07: Yes.

Interviewer: Brilliant. And so this is a study about Open Science practices in linguistics. And the first question I'd like to ask you is, where do you situate yourself in linguistics? Like, what are the subdisciplines of linguistics or the areas of linguistics that you're particularly interested in or that you've been involved in?

Interviewee 07: So I'm particularly interested in sociolinguistics, dialectology, variational linguistics, I've been involved with some language documentation work and yeah, language annotation and let's say processing of some kind, but that's not something I've been doing too much work in yet.

Interviewer: Great. So we're going to start with you and your personal beliefs or associations. So like, what do you personally associate with Open Science practices? What are Open Science practices to you?

Interviewee 07: Open Science practices for me are or means that maybe research is made available to a majority of people. So people that have access to let's say that have general access to the internet or whatever location they can get their language data from or other data. I mean it could be everything. It doesn't have to be language but for linguistics obviously it's language data and that yeah it's not restricted in any kind of way. And then it's also that it how do you say that that it's logical not but that you can understand how this how the results came upon and that there are no hidden I don't know, there's no hidden information on anything so that you can basically replicate or yeah look at the data yourself and maybe find another way to analyze things or to find other results or something like that.

Interviewer: Yeah, it's a really, really great start. And I've been talking about Open Science, but linguistics is traditionally considered like a humanity rather than a science. And so some humanities scholars prefer to use the term Open Research instead of Open Science. And others prefer the term Open Scholarship, which is often thought of as an umbrella term that includes Open Science. Slash Open Research. And Open Education and I was wondering whether you have any thoughts on this whether you think Open Science is suitable or not so suitable for linguistics? Or if any other terms seem to be more suitable to you? I’m going to put them in the chat or so you can see them.

Interviewee 07: Okay so I think open. So it doesn't surprise me that um that linguistics is not considered science for some people. That's something I hear a lot or have heard a lot. But I think it's not wrong to add linguist or language research or language science into the field of science. So I think that's fine. To use that word open research obviously is more makes a bit more sense especially if you want to exclude linguistics from science which is really depends on what you do. Because for example if you do phonetic experiments or other kind of experiments for me that's still science. So it's not just research it's not just reading and I don't know analyzing speaker information or anything. It's really doing something more scientific. Maybe. Um open scholarship I feel like that means a bit something else because it's more like that whatever the scholar is doing is open. So that could be like everything. That's not. Maybe, I don't know that open scholarship is like, a teacher or a professor that is just very open about whatever they're doing. And it doesn't have to be, necessarily doesn't have to be research or have to do anything with data, but it's just like working very openly and something like that. And open education, it's kind of everything, all of the above plus maybe, I mean it kind of means more. It also means open education. I would rather associate with in general having the possibility to access everything you can educate yourself with so it doesn't have to do anything with research or science or university at all. It could be school or preschool or whatever just being able to access educational material which is not the case always. So that would be good.

Interviewer: Yeah, this is really interesting. I mean, people disagree, right? So people have different definitions of these terms and different understandings of these terms. I'm going to, in the interview, continue to use the term open science, but I mean it very broadly to include open research, open education, so feel free to use whichever term you feel is more appropriate, I don't mind. I'd now like to talk about your own experiences. So as a student you've done some research as part of term papers and you wrote a bachelor thesis and also I know you've worked as a student research assistant, so you've been involved in some research processes there. And I'd like to know whether you've been involved in any open science practices as part of these various little projects.

Interviewee 07: I haven't really contributed to any open science, but maybe, well, it's not. So whatever I did, didn't contribute to open science, and I haven't done that kind of research. Um or haven't done research to kind of share with other people it's always been just for my for my actually scratch that for my BA thesis. For one of my BA theses I conducted sociolinguistic interviews via a survey. What was it called So? Sosci Survey? Yeah And so I didn't conduct them, but I kind of created this, interface where people would go through and they would answer my questions and they would like insert their answers and, everything. And I actually added that to my, as an appendix to my, to my, BA thesis, I added the, the Fragebogen, what is that? The questionnaire, and then I added a link to an Excel table where people could eventually look at the data I was examining in the process of this work. So I didn't publish my BA thesis, but theoretically it would be possible to look at the data I obtained and then also what the questions were exactly. Through this appendix the questionnaire in the appendix. So maybe that is like a mini step of going into a direction of opening up your research or your science. And for the other BA thesis, I worked a bit more on something my professor was working on. And he and two colleagues actually, they created an online PROJECT for language varieties of LANGUAGE or for varieties of LANGUAGE and that was very so that's very open science I would say. So they have like this online tool where you can look at everything. You can go into the examples the sources they use and the papers. These this data is based on. So it's kind of open. I mean I don't know really of if the individual papers the PROJECT is based on also open their data collection mechanisms or whatever, but it's pretty open to a certain point, so I wouldn't expect that. But I didn't contribute directly, but it was like a work parallel working, so yeah. Exactly. And for other term papers, I mean, I always, yeah, I think I haven't really worked with data. I haven't finished any term paper I've been working with data. So there's the term paper I'm working on that has a lot of data. And the goal is to really, yeah, just don't hide anything, really just make, everything visible and show how the data was obtained or what data was used and how it was processed so that certain results can be identified.

Interviewer: Yeah. And thinking back to the first BA thesis in particular, was it a requirement to have an appendix with the full survey, like all the items and the data? Or was it like a choice you made?

Interviewee 07: I don't think it was. So I would say it was not obligatory. I talked with my supervisor and I think he suggested that it could be a nice idea to like have everything in one, in one document. It was really long. It was like 90 pages then or something, but he kind of suggested it. And then I thought it was a good idea because, why not? And I also, that's also a possibility for me to like have everything in one place. So I don't have to like search for the appendix or like the questionnaire and then that, and then that I just have one document. That's really long with the a link to a to a. It's like a temporary or it's like a I don't know. I'm not sure where exactly what platform I use but he suggested a platform where you could just save like save a file data. I should look that up but yeah just a platform that scholars often use and you have like a URL, you can access it and then use the, look at the data.

Interviewer: Sounds good. Yeah. So I know you've attended some sessions of ReproducibiliTea in the HumaniTeas. My question would be like, what was your motivation for attending the sessions that you attended? And yeah, what did you gain from them? And what would what else would you like to learn about that's related to open science?

Interviewee 07: My motivation was as mostly that I don't know enough about it and that's also my, that was also my or is my motivation to take classes on topics I haven't really focused on yet because I think it's still important to like look at other aspects and look at open sciences as like a very important general subject almost in in when you when you conduct or conduct research in whatever kind of discipline. And so I thought it would be really interesting to just hear about it and I thought the talks were also very diverse. So there was some more specific let's say factful or talks and there were others that were a bit more general and where maybe concepts that haven't been clear to me or I haven't heard about yet were just explained or talked about. And then also through questions of the other participants, things became clear. So I think it was just a nice way to kind of dive in into this topic and see the relevance, I think. And then as now when I'm writing this term paper right now, it's always in my mind to like okay so whatever we're doing it can't be something no one else can like understand because also throughout the class I had last semester I had to present a paper where the code was not available. And so yeah. And then it became difficult to just sometimes even understand what why things happened or like why certain analyses were or certain methods were chosen over others you know. So I think that's important, yeah.

Interviewer: And now let's think beyond your own experiences and linguistics field more broadly. So in your case, thinking about your other your co-students on the MA linguistics program. How aware do you think they are in general of open science practices? And how widespread are these ideas in the students' work?

Interviewee 07: I think honestly, that depends on. I think that really depends on what or how the study or the university that they're studying at and the specific institute is kind of is constructing their studies. Because in my in the university I studied at the university I studied for my bachelor's they didn't really do a lot of let's say language analysis or data science at all. So linguistics was really just reading stuff analyzing whatever you read and then kind of puzzling it together into a new form. So that's something I’ve been doing a lot. And then coming to CITY was really different because I felt like many people around me knew about this. And you already get that when you're in a class and then it's about, they're talking about data or they're talking about language documentation or whatever, and transcription, annotation, then questions come and people are like, okay, so is this available somewhere? Or, okay, so how is this coded? Or how is this annotated? And when I first heard it, I was like, okay, that seems to be something important. So I think in CITY, students are really more aware than in other universities where maybe the focus is on something else. But I haven't done a master's degree in other universities, so maybe it changes. But from what I've been experiencing, I also heard that the BA in CITY is already very different. Linguistic students do more phonetics or they do more just data collection or just working with data that is existing already and I think I think young linguistics students are getting more aware but it still very depends on where they're studying and what the focus is.

Interviewer: Yeah sure, yeah. I mean, that would be sort of the next question would be, you know. Which factors do you think contribute to this fairly low awareness and uptake of open science practices in linguistics that you're describing and what could be done to increase the uptake?

Interviewee 07: I don't know. I feel like because when I think about what I've done, obviously the most part I've done was at the other university. So when I think about it in general, that part overweighs. And when I think about how studying there is like, there's no not a lot of professors or teachers that encourage students to look at data. They just encourage students to just like get familiar with certain I don't know concepts and read a lot about what people have done before but they're not so straightforward in saying like okay so for your term paper you could maybe analyze data from this or that corpus. It's more just like oh yeah there's the option of using data from a corpus but it's not. They don't push you or they don't try to show you how important this actually is. Or maybe also collect own data and I feel like as I can only talk about CITY but I feel like also other classes I’ve taken where maybe it wasn't as obvious from the professor's side that they're interested in data. They always they always told us, so if you want to collect data, if you want to work with data, we can talk about that. So they were very more, they were more open to, to using data. Maybe it has something to do also with the, that the supervision becomes more complicated when you also have to look at the data. But I mean, the professors themselves, they also work with data. So they should know, they should work with data. And I know they also did at my other university. And so I don't know why they don't encourage it more. But I think that's a really big point. And I think that's really nice that in CITY there's a lot of people that see the importance of working with actual data and not just books.

Interviewer: Yeah, sometimes I personally have the feeling that open science advocates tend to preach to the choir or preach to the converted. So they talk among themselves and we're a little bubble, but we often, I have the feeling, don't reach out to other linguists that perhaps are not aware of these open science practices. What do you think we could do to reach out to more linguists?

Interviewee 07: Young linguists or so students?

Interviewer: You're welcome to focus on students of linguists.

Interviewee 07: Well what I really enjoy is I’ve been to the, I think you probably know about the StuTS. It's a student conference of language or linguistics and I’ve been there twice and I’m also planning to go there again and many other times because I think it's really interesting to just so for once, I love to, or I appreciate to hear about other students' research. And I think they're doing a really great job. So I've heard things that I was like, oh my God, and you did this for a term paper. Other people would do this for a BA or an MA thesis or anything. And just see how in Germany or elsewhere, in the German-speaking countries, so Austria and Switzerland also, how they just, how studies differ and how the focus differs from one to another university and institute and what interests young people like me kind of have. And I think that's really interesting. And I think also a talk about open science at a student conference like that changes a lot. And I've also heard other presentations and talks about topics that are very broad. So you don't really have to necessarily present a specific linguistic topic. It can be anything. I've also, last time I went, they had some workshops on working with R, working with Python. And I think that's really great so that it's kind of like you're invited by peers to work on something you don't know yet. And I think that's really something that can, I don't know, inspire a lot also. I always go home from the StuTS and I think about something I've heard or I don't know, I'm inspired to do maybe something similar or yeah, I think that is something that can be done. Also just workshops at universities, but I know that you're connecting this ReproducabiliTea series. And I think that's a really good idea and just the possibility to encourage students, but also maybe inform supervisors more about how important this is. This is also when they supervise their students to also encourage them again that this is important. And I think, yeah, it's just, how do you say? It's important to keep people educated or educate them on this. And I think, obviously, this is all kind of free time stuff. For now and I don't really urge anyone to like do free time stuff on it but if people are want to do it obviously that's fantastic and I think it really changes something. I think it really does.

Interviewer: Yeah It's interesting what you're saying about supervisors because this is very much a group that we're not managing to bring to ReproducibiliTea meetings. So it tends to be PhD students and postdocs and then a few students, but it really is very rare that a professor turns up.

Interviewee 07: Yeah. I don't know what, I mean, probably don't.

Interviewer: Unless we invite them to present, but then, you know, they're not coming in for the discussion. Yeah.

Interviewee 07: That's interesting though.

Interviewer: Yeah it's a bit problematic but it's the way it is yeah. Yeah that was actually my last question but is there anything else that you wanted to add on open science or open education for that matter in linguistics or in the humanities more broadly?

Interviewee 07: Um, can I ask a question?

Interviewer: Yes, sure.

Interviewee 07: So is this, is open science or open scholarship or whatever term we want to use, is that an own kind of subject or is it just a topic that goes into almost every subject or is it like one, one like that influences or is tied to all of the others?

Interviewer: I mean, I think most people would consider it a meta-science topic or meta-science discipline. So it's about science and about research. And so my understanding of the field is that open science really started off in social psychology, which is where the  replication crisis started. Disasters were first seen and so there are some branches of social psychology that are like really into like all studies have to be pre-registered and they're very diligent and sharing everything. But that doesn't mean that's everyone in social psychology by any means or in psychology and then in medicine because of like obviously all the ethical concerns and big money and so on they've implemented their own kinds of ways of doing open science and some of that has influenced what psychology is doing and vice versa. And then now like many disciplines are if not all I think to be well in the humanities not so many but in the hard sciences I would say all disciplines are now to some extent involved in open science practices and it's really in humanities that things are very slow still. Yeah I mean linguistics is kind of at the you know it's is it humanities as a science? We discussed that at the beginning. It's that very much in between depending on the kind of linguistics that you're doing.

Interviewee 07: That's true yeah. But I always I mean this is just a personal. I thought I always when talking about this is linguistics a science or not? I always think about because in my bachelor's, I did linguistics, language, and cultural studies. And I don't necessarily dislike the other two. I really think cultural studies is also tied. Obviously, if you do sociolinguistics, cultural studies is also tied to linguistics. But then I see a very big difference between language research and then literature research. There I see like a difference and that always makes me say that I think contrary to what other people say that linguistics is a science. Because I mean there are certainly there are niche subjects or like under or fields that you don't really collect data on because it's not possible. I mean you couldn't collect data on languages that are already dead or I don't know that have existed, or you wanna look at a language that has existed a certain amount of time ago, but if you look at current language developments or just, yeah, what is, yeah, current language development, developments I think collecting data is like a really important part. And then collecting data for me is always part of science. That's something you couldn't always really do with, literary studies or literature I don't know. It's always so I don't know. It doesn't really. I mean a book doesn't change over 20 years it's always the same book and then there are new books and developments. Yes but yeah not the kind of data collection that you would have with language. I feel like that's just in my head. I don't really. Yeah that's.

Interviewer: I mean it's interesting because we do have digital humanities where they work very quantitatively with historical documents and yeah literary works. So yeah are they I mean they're called digital humanities but are they a science? Are they a humanity? Yeah it's a difficult question. I’ll stop the recording there. Thank you ever so much. Thanks for taking the time.
