Building a regional community through reproducible research: Advancing innovation through connectivity

Tatjana, Radenka and Blerjana

2022-03-17

Project partner organizations:

Please provide a description of your project. Explain what are its specific objectives and how it contributes to the overall objective of this Call. Make sure to explain what are the expected results of your project

In common with many communities, scientists can devote much of their attention to local economic, environmental and underlying social concerns. Establishing a more open research culture amongst regional researchers facilitates wider interactions and networking, with the potential to develop a more prolific and productive diffusion of innovation and growth. Collective behaviour, which can be magnified and scrutinised by the use of advancing technologies and innovations is a complex social phenomenon. One of the ways of mitigating the associated disinformation is by creating transparent data sources that ‘shine a light’ on the ‘big picture’ - in other words reproducible research (RR).

Adapting RR practice enables more effective knowledge sharing and ultimately promotes collaborative ways of working, particularly in regards to educational and scientific exchanges. Making research outputs freely accessible and usable inevitably engenders more awareness and prospective benefit in the public domain. Accordingly, now is the time to accelerate and coordinate change. However, this should be adjusted to align with the cultural diversity of the scientific enterprise and the interests of: scientists, their institutions, those that fund, publish, use their work and the public.

Replication is a fundamental principle of scientific research, but there is dismay among researchers that too few scientific studies can be replicated. Open inquiry is at the heart of scientific enterprise. Publication of scientific theories - and of the experimental and observational data on which they are based - permits others to identify errors, to support, reject or refine theories and to reuse data for further understanding and knowledge. Science’s powerful capacity for self-correction comes from this openness to scrutiny and challenge. In the past decade, amplified by the recent pandemic, there is an increasing demand from citizens, civic groups non-governmental organisations for greater scrutiny of the evidence that underpins scientific conclusions.

Conducting RR is not exceedingly difficult nor does it require exhaustive knowledge of complicated research tools and protocols. However, investment of time and expertise in learning and adopting the RR practice can be substantial.

Our main aim is to create and establish an open access, fully transparent research platform that can be accessed not just by active researchers but also business, NGO’s, civic authorities and communities at large. The platform will act as a foundation for future development in the form of education and training programmes with regional actors. It will provide scientists with a clear overview of existing responsible and reproducibility practices: promoting tools, as well as to give scientists the opportunity to revisit all training material when needed. In addition, by developing the platform as an open and reproducible resource we accompany each trainee to fine-tune the material for their own field of expertise and to train their peers and relevant actors.

Integrating reproducible practice into the standard scientific workflow has the potential to build an Open Regional Reproducible Research Community (ORRRC). RR skills development and knowledge sharing will be at the heart of the community facilitating collaboration not just between academic institutions, but between academia and regional industry, civic authorities and communities at large.

Describe the current context situation and the relevance for this project, and explain what you expect to be the change or impact that the project will make on the regional context?

Seven Western Balkans’ economies joined the European Union (EU) family in pursuing the EU Open Science Agenda at the Open Data and Access in Science meeting organised by the Regional Cooperation Council (RCC) on the margins of the International Open Data Conference (IODC) on October 2016.

Despite European policy-makers being front-runners in the wider framework of ‘Open Science’ little has been done on providing training opportunities for the researchers to learn the necessary tools and principles necessary for producing responsible and reproducible research. The IODC Working Group conducted a survey between March and May 2017 to assess the current situation in the Western Balkans and found that a majority of researchers were unaware of the concept of Open Science. It also revealed that the training opportunities for open access and open data were not widely offered, with 3 out of 4 researchers indicating that they had not participated in any open access or open data course despite the desire to do so. (https://wbc-rti.info/object/document/16441)

Amplified by the current Covid-19 pandemic, the world is facing enormous societal, ecological and economic challenges. There is a need to build back better, more open and socially just societies that are sustainable. Transparency and reproducibility are core elements to addressing societal need, in particular, those relating to specific cultural requirements and scientific research interpretation. To fully impact on scientific and corresponding innovation, research should be reproducible. This requires investment in methodologies, research management training and research management facilities in countries that are less R&I intensive.

Reproducible research enables more systematic and explicit ways to describe how the analysis or scientific modelling was arrived at. This is achieved by providing the data, the computer codes and a precise description of how the code was applied to the data. By creating an open access, fully transparent research platform that can be accessed not just by active researchers but also business, NGO’s, civic authorities and communities at large it is possible to engage with all regional actors. Apart from providing training material for adopting and practicing RR, the platform will act as a framework that foster and routinise the emerging research practices in a collaborative manner. This in turn instigates the development of a reproducible culture amongst regional researchers, supporting the integration of reproducible practice into the standard scientific workflow. This initiative has the potential to build a sustainable Open Regional Reproducible Research Community (ORRRC). RR skills development and knowledge sharing will be at the heart of the community, facilitating collaboration not just between academic institutions, but also between academia and regional industry, civic authorities and communities at large.

All illustrations: The Turing Way project illustration by Scriberia. Used under a CC-BY 4.0 licence. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.3332807.