Fellow-Programm Freies Wissen - Zwischenbericht

This is the mid-term report of the project opening data science by Simon David Hirsbrunner.

I. Infos zum eigenen Forschungsvorhaben (max. 3000 Zeichen)

A. Status Quo

In our digital age, it becomes crucial for researchers in the social sciences and the humanities to be able to reflect on the power of algorithms, big data, and information platforms; being it in relation to social media data breaches, algorithmic recommendation schemes, or predictive policing regimes. But how to gain access and better understanding of such digital phenomena, processes, artifacts, social worlds? Building on my PhD project investigating the making and use of algorithmic prediction in climate impact research (scenarios of sea level rise, drought, migration, etc.) I would like to share, discuss and further develop strategies and methodologies for research access in ‘digital research’ – here referring to the research subjects (e.g. algorithms, developers, start-ups, supercomputers), but also to the methods used to investigate them (e.g. quantitative social media analysis, but also analogue methods such as participant observation).

Opening Data Science aims at triggering a debate challenging notions of “openness” and “access” in the digital era. It strives for the operationalization of inventive methods, identifying research access points, fostering data literacy and opportunities for data critique within the social sciences, the humanities and beyond. The following activities had been proposed to achieve these goals:

- Conduct a series of informal discussions with researchers in order to assess needs and potential strategies to achieve more openness with regard of the use of digital methods in social sciences and humanities.
- Gather literature on digital methods and make the bibliography available for interested researchers.
- Gather interested researchers in a meetup or workshop in order to discuss bottlenecks, experiences and possible strategies for more openness in the work with digital methods.
- Building on the meetup outcome, publish how-to information on digital methods in an online fieldguide.

B. Fortschritt

A number of informal meetings have been held with researchers from the social sciences, humanities, and computer science. That way, it was possible to get a clearer idea of possible users of the project outputs, their needs and challenges. In general, feedback from researchers showed that thematic focus, activities. target groups and outputs within the project have to become more concrete to be useful. For example, challenges of people working on the digital transformation using qualitative methods such as ethnography and hermeneutics are very different from those faced by people using digital methods to do their research. The informal interviews showed that their is less overlap of these two potential target audiences than originally imagined. Only few people actually work with mixed methods approaches and identify with both qualitative and quantitative digital methods, mostly within the very small community of Science & Technology Studies (STS). Even the terms initially used such as "digital methods", "digital research", "digital ethnography", are not clear for everybody and would require articulation and explanation work to make sense for the potential audience. The same issue ("community terminology") appeared in the course of gathering and sharing literature on digital research. The list of literature gathered through Zotero, made available through Zotero Online and shared via Zotpress (available here) may appear meaning- and useful for a relatively small audience of STS researchers.

As a result of the exploratory phase, the focus of the project has been sharpened and some of the project activities were adapted to achieve a meaningful and realistic output within the scope of the program. Instead of cumbersome, open-ended community building, it was decided to conduct an concrete case study using digital methods together with a co-fellow (Moritz Schubotz), assess openness in this context and document the results in a publication in open access.
Nevertheless, the overarching question of the project stays the same: how can we make data science more open?

In our collaborative project, we aim at
- making a large body of knowledge openly available via Wikidata; namely the complete bibliographic information of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) library;
- experimenting with the wikidata query service as an open tool for data analysis;
- reflecting on the experienced challenges and strategies to create open information;
- engaging with and creating value for according communities (WikiCite + climate impact researchers).

So far, I have negotiated the hand-over of the bibliographic data from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research to us, started the data clearing process. Together with Moritz Schubotz, we have developed a workflow for the technical implementation of the project (see below).

C. Ausblick

Experimenting with the bibliographic dataset and the Wikidata environment may include the following activities:

Technical

- setting up a private Wikibase instance (e.g. Docker container or wmflabs);
- identify tools for data import (e.g. quickstatements), set up on private instance and engage in testing;
- Import PIK data to the instance;
- develop a Sparql endpoint in instance;
- set up Scholia on instance;
- experiment with citation analysis with Scholia standard tools.

Optional

- recommend further developments for Scholia (Sparql queries, visualization tools)
- enable access to data beyond the project period (assign DOI, propose different formats)
- integration of data and new Sparql queries into the productive system, while learning from the experiences with the private instance.

Communicational

- engage with relevant communities and stakeholders (Wikidata, Wikicite, climate researchers) to assess their needs;
- advertise the final output per social media;
- document the process and results in a publication (OA).

II. Zusammenarbeit mit Fellows sowie Mentorinnen und Mentoren (max. 3000 Zeichen)

A. Zusammenarbeit mit deiner Mentorin/deinem Mentor

The exchange with my mentor is important and helpful. So far, we have met several times in person and communicated per email. Moreover, a workshop organized by the mentor has introduced me to Wikidata and inspired the collaborative case study together with Moritz Schubotz. We are planning further common activities and collaborate with the home institution of the mentor.

B. Austausch mit anderen Fellows

Despite the heterogenous backgrounds, disciplines and projects, talking to my co-fellows is always inspiring.
In Berlin, we met several times casually after business hours. During one of these meetings, we brainstormed and established the collaborative experiment described above. To facilitate further peer-to-peer collaboration, I have set-up the open source collaboration tool Mattermost for the fellowship program together with Wikimedia GE's IT service. In addition to enabling communication, the tool may also be improve knowledge and project management within the fellow program, especially in the context of sustaining the knowledge transfer from one cohort of fellows to the next. For example, it will enable fellows to see what link collections (e.g. open source tools, open science initiatives, funding opportunities) has been elaborated before. Wikimedia project managers writing organizational emails may easily find and use templates from the last years.

III. Kommunikation und Vernetzung (max. 3000 Zeichen)

A. Kommunikationsaktivitäten mit Bezug zum Fellow-Programm

In our opinion, there is high, and not yet exploited potential in the interdisciplinary peer-to-peer collaboration among fellows of the programme. Acknowledging this, Moritz Schubotz and myself are planning to write a blog article together and address our experiences and the challenges of inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration within the digital age.
The blog article will then be further developed into an open access publication.

B. Weitergabe von Wissen

At Siegen university (my home institution), I have given a lecture on open bibliographic information (Zotero, Wikidata) in the Research Tech Lab (PhD seminar).

Together with Moritz Schubotz, I moderated a session on transdisciplinarity and digitality at a Wikimedia/Weizenbaum Institute workshop on Open Science.

Was hat dabei gut funktioniert? Wo gab es Barrieren/Hindernisse?

Open Science community is generally technology-friendly and -savy. Researchers from the social sciences and the humanities are sometimes not, and they are skeptical with regard to the synchronization of the open science and digitalization discourse (i.e. more digitalization means more openness).

Wo benötigst du künftig Unterstützung von Mentorinnen und Mentoren und/oder seitens Wikimedia (z. B. Materialien (Fellow-Programm Flyer oder Rollup Leihgabe) und/oder Social-Media Unterstützung zur Bewerbung eurer Aktivitäten?
I would be happy to receive social media support when publishing the output of the project (i.e. Wikidata dataset with climate research literature, etc.)

Haben sich neue Kontakte oder Austauschmöglichkeiten mit Vertreterinnen und Vertretern aus der Community für Offene Wissenschaft gebildet?
As a result of the research conducted through the Wikimedia fellowship, I have learned about the FAIRdata principles and movement, which I also had the chance to connect with open science researchers from the Weizenbaum Institute following the mutual workshop with Wikimedia.

Haben sich neue Kontakte oder Austauschmöglichkeiten mit Vertreterinnen oder Vertretern mit den Wikimedia-Communitys gebildet?.
While this was not planned from the beginning, my project will now connect closely with the Wikidata and WikiCite projects and communities.

IV. Förderung von Offener Wissenschaft (max. 4000 Zeichen)

A. Neue Initiativen zur Förderung Offener Wissenschaft

Together with Wikimedia fellow alumna Sarah-Mai Dang, we founded the working group Open Media Studies within the German Association for Media Studies (GfM). Working groups within the GfM are formal structures with a proper financial budget, several yearly meetings, a newslist, etc. They are the main vehicle of the association that gathers people around a topic or aspect of media studies. The aim of our group "Open Media Studies" is to raise awareness for, conceptualize and experiment with open science in media studies. This translates to a critical examination of scholarly practices, methods and approaches in the discipline and the development of best-practice examples. Starting from the disciplinary tradition of German media studies, the group may engage in transdisciplinary theoretical and science policy debates on openness and access in scholarship. Through public contributions in multiple media formats, the organization of symposia and workshops, we aim at a visible positioning of media studies within various academic fora, higher education policy making, and society as a whole.

Since its inaugural meeting, I act as a co-speaker of the group pushing forward its strategic positioning and communicating with its members.

B. Initiativen zur Förderung Offener Wissenschaften

The foundation of working groups on open science within academic disciplinary associations represents a good vehicle to translate the label "open science" into actual practice. As we have noticed within the work for the group, open science may mean different things in different disciplines and a concrete elaboration of open science practices is crucial to go beyond a mere discourse of openness. Especially in the social sciences and humanities, there is great potential in reflecting conceptually about 'openness'. From this perspective, many actions of "opening up" also include an element of "closing down" other possibilities of access; e.g. "just putting it online" for people without the infrastructures or skills to go online. In spring, the GfM working group will organize a workshop in Vienna to develop conceptualizations and reflect on practices of 'openness' in media studies.