Empowering researchers in reproducible, ethical, inclusive and collaborative science

Slides from Kirstie's talk at EMBO PopGEn on 24 March 2022

Abstract: Although reproducible research is necessary to ensure that scientific work can be trusted, it requires skills in data management, library sciences, software development, and data ethics considerations: skills that are not widely taught or expected of academic researchers. Beyond these skills lie the structural and incentive barriers to working open. The Turing Way aims to provide a safe space for data scientists in academia, industry, government and the third sector to practice these skills and build open source materials covering version control, analysis testing, collaborating in distributed groups, open and transparent communication skills, and effective management of diverse research projects. All attendees will leave Kirstie's presentation understanding the many dimensions of openness and how they can participate in an inclusive, supportive, kind and inspiring open source ecosystem as they seek to improve research culture, making it "open for all".

Bio: Kirstie Whitaker leads the Tools, Practices and Systems Research Programme at The Alan Turing Institute (London, UK). The TPS community's mission is to invest in the people who sustain the open infrastructure ecosystem for data science. Kirstie is the lead developer of The Turing Way, an openly developed educational resource inspire, train and enable researchers and citizen scientists across government, industry, academia and third sector organisations to apply open source practices to their work. Kirstie is a passionate advocate for making science "open for all" by promoting equity and inclusion for people from diverse backgrounds, and by changing the academic incentive structure to reward collaborative working. She is the chair of the Turing Institute's Ethics Advisory Group, a Fulbright scholarship alumna and was a 2016/17 Mozilla Fellow for Science. Kirstie was named, with her collaborator Petra Vertes, as a 2016 Global Thinker by Foreign Policy magazine. You can follow her and her dog's adventures on Twitter @kirstie_j.

Useful links

• The book: https://the-turing-way.netlify.com
• Github repository: https://github.com/alan-turing-institute/the-turing-way 
• Slack: https://tinyurl.com/jointuringwayslack
• Online Collaboration Cafe outline and schedule: https://github.com/alan-turing-institute/the-turing-way/blob/master/project_management/online-collaboration-cafe.md
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/turingway
• Newsletter: https://tinyletter.com/TuringWay