Establishing cross-community collaborations and promoting open research in data science
The Tools, Practices and Systems (TPS) programme at The Alan Turing Institute under the leadership of Dr. Kirstie Whitaker represents a cross-cutting set of initiatives which seek to build open source infrastructure that is accessible to all and to empower a global, decentralised network of people who connect data with domain experts.
Led by Dr. Malvika Sharan, TPS Senior Researcher for Open Research, TPS hosts a team of Community Managers funded by different projects at the Institute. All Community Managers are brought together as the Open Research Community Building team. Members from within the Turing programmes working in similar positions, as well as members from projects collaborating with TPS/The Turing Way outside the Turing, referred to as "collaborators in community roles" in this document, are also invited to join this team.
All members of this team also participate in The Turing Way -- an Open Source, Open Collaboration and Community-driven guide to data science, co-led by Kirstie (who is also the founder of the project) and Malvika. A part (~10%) of Community Managers' role involves engaging with and contributing to The Turing Way as core staff members of the project. Anyone interested in the work of this team from outside the Turing or non-collaborators is invited to collaborate with us on The Turing Way. For further questions and information, please get in touch with Malvika by emailing [email protected].
Members of the Open Research Community Building team are Community Managers and collaborators in community roles who invest in engaging, training and empowering a diverse group of members such as researchers, research engineers, programme/project management and the business side of the organisation. They foster diverse Communities of Practice within and outside the Turing through community building and engagement roles in their respective projects.
Through the active adoption of open research, reproducibility and collaborative approaches primarily drawn from The Turing Way, they contribute toward building interconnected systems of open source software, datasets, communities and processes. The overarching mission is to make research open, reproducible, ethical, equitable and effective across the national and international data science ecosystem for commercial and public interest technologies alike.
Community building is a process of enabling members in our communities to move from the position of spectators or users to developers and leaders in the project. Community managers and collaborators in community roles identify and build meaningful pathways for everyone to gain access to the skills and resources they need to participate in the community. Among other project-specific and technical responsibilities, community managers take care of background work needed to make tangible and visible work of their communities effective. These background works involve approaches for collaboration, maintenance, acknowledgement and capturing the impact of community members' work. As the word 'background' suggests, working in a community space often stays hidden and hence, can feel unsupported. This is especially challenging when community managers don't have access to an appropriate support system or opportunities to exchange best practices with other community developers.
The Open Research Community Building team at The Alan Turing Institute provides a space for connection, support and skill-building for the community managers and collaborators in community roles working in participatory and community-oriented projects.
This image was created by Scriberia for The Turing Way community and is used under CC-BY 4.0 licence. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.5706310
The Turing community managers join the Tools, Practices and Systems (TPS) Research Programme's Open Research Community Building project.
They are assigned to specific projects where they collaborate closely with others and identify where they can surface implicit knowledge and make information explicitly available so that everyone who wants to can participate. As a team, we ensure that the research that happens at the Institute is created to be maintained, sustained, remixed and reused.
This image was created by Scriberia for The Turing Way community and is used under CC-BY 4.0 licence. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.5706310
Please note, that this team is constituted of the Turing staff members who have dedicated responsibilities towards different projects within the organisation, often on behalf of the TPS research programme. Members from the community or participatory projects currently collaborating with TPS or The Turing Way are very welcome to join this team. All resources created by them in their projects will be shared using open science and FAIR (Findable, Accesible, Interoperable, Reusable) practices, while following the principle of "as open as possible, as closed as necessary", especially when working with sensitive data. Practices and case studies learned from their work with be included in The Turing Way.
New Community Managers at the Turing and collaborators in community positions will be onboarded in Open Research Community Building team by the project lead and added as a contributor to this project repository. Please create an issue for your induction (if not already created by the project lead).
If you are not already collaborating with TPS, but are interested in community management, please contact Malvika Sharan who can invite you to internal training for her team members. You are, of course, encouraged to join The Turing Way that she co-leads alongside Kirstie Whitaker.
- Malvika Sharan, TPS Senior Researcher - Open Research
- Anne Lee Steele, Community Manager; The Turing Way
- Arron Lacey, Senior Community Manager; Early Detection of Neurodegenerative Diseases (EDoN)
- Eirini Zormpa, Community Manager; AI for Multiple Long Term Conditions Research Support Facility (AIM RSF) - Open Collaboration
- Emma Karoune, Senior Community Manager; Turing-RSS Health Data Lab and DECOVID
- Sophia Batchelor, Community Manager; AI for Multiple Long Term Conditions Research Support Facility (AIM RSF) - PPIE
- Vicky Hellon, Community Manager; Turing-Roche Strategic Partnership
- Ayesha Dunk, AI and Data Science Educators Programme, The Alan Turing Institute
- Claudia Fischer, Research Assistant; Turing Commons, The Alan Turing Institute
- Sarah Gibson, JupyterHub Community Development Lead, 2i2c and JupyterHub
If you are interested in joining this team, please reach out to Malvika Sharan ([email protected]).
- Achintya Rao, Community Manager; AI for Science and Government Research Programme
- Maintain respect, empathy and integrity in the team and the communities we build.
- Prioritise diversity, equity and inclusion in all our work.
- Share knowledge about the scientific communities you coordinate and the issue you are seeking to address.
- Actively create and identify future opportunities to enable collaboration and integration of open research practices to co-create additional knowledge.
- Provide access to resources that empower and enable each other to discover, display and directly use their knowledge and skills.
- Contribute to the ongoing professional development of team members by maximising opportunities for collaborative work, their careers, and open research at large.
- Create a safe and non-judgemental environment to engage each other, celebrate successes, admit errors and draw learnings from our mistakes.
- Be willing to work through conflicts to resolution.
- Ensure that transparent reporting practices and effective communications become a regular and ongoing component of our community-building process.
- Collaborate with individuals and institutions beyond the team that expand and extend our mission for open research and community building.
To realise these principles, build shared perspectives that underpin these guiding principles (taken from Bassler, A. et al., "Developing Effective Citizen Engagement: A How-to Guide for Community Leaders." Center for Rural Pennsylvania, 2008.):
- Change is a fundamental part of growth and effective change must come from within individuals and groups.
- Community engagement/growth starts by first changing ourselves, our attitudes, language and the way we view the world around us.
- Communities are most successful when true partnerships exist and power or control is delegated and vested effectively within the community.
- Code of Conduct: Please familiarise yourself with the Code of Conduct, and enforcement procedure to help us create a welcoming and safe space for everyone who contributes to the team and this project repository.
- Project Management: Please find details about how we manage the Open Research Community Building team.
- Ways of Working: This document describes the structure and organisation of the Open Research Community Building Team, clarifying expectations and support structure to help enable your work. The Turing members should also check the Governance to understand the organisation's structure and policies that apply to them.
All members of the Open Research Community Building team should take time to learn details in The Turing Way core documents. All community managers are onboarded as the core staff members of The Turing Way as part of their time is allocated to TPS and The Turing Way.
Their engagement with The Turing Way project and community should help them understand how they can:
- enable reproducibility, open communication and ethical research in their projects and Communities of Practice they build.
- identify people, projects and resources that are crucial for the development, maintenance and sustainability of their projects.
- interconnect their work with other projects and communities in the wider landscape of data science and open research.
- facilitate openness, collaboration and transparent reporting, even when not all components of their projects can be made public.
- find support for their community work and in exchange support others' work, especially when it is closely aligned with their projects.
- enhance their technical understanding required in their work and share them more widely via The Turing Way (chapters, tutorials, templates or events).
- Sharan, Malvika, & Mehonic, Aida. (2022, July 21). Community Managers and Research Application Managers at the Tools, Practices and Systems Programme at The Alan Turing Institute. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6878124
- The Turing Way Handbook: https://the-turing-way.netlify.app/welcome, GitHub repository: https://github.com/alan-turing-institute/the-turing-way
All content in this repository is openly licensed with a CC BY 4.0, which means you're free to use the materials and remix them so long as you credit the source. More on CC BY 4.0 license can be found at Creative Commons.
Our project management documentation and processes are partially derived from "Whitaker Lab Project Management" by Dr Kirstie Whitaker and the Whitaker Lab repository used under CC BY 4.0.