Opening Influenza Research

With the generous support of Flu Lab, the Center for Open Science (COS) is launching a pilot Open Science Community Trainer Certification Program to advance open science adoption in the influenza research community. 

Open science allows research to be more transparent, rigorous, reproducible, and collaborative. However, practicing open science in daily research can be challenging, and often requires training and support for researchers and labs to implement new practices, learn new tools, and master unfamiliar techniques. Results from the Open Scholarship Survey show that most influenza researchers support open science practices but underestimate its support from their peers; they also indicate that barriers to performing open science include the lack of familiarity with open science practices, knowledge about existing tools, and understanding relevance within their field. To reduce the perception gap and overcome barriers, it is crucial to cultivate community-led activities to increase the visibility of open science behaviors, raise awareness, and build competency and support from within the community. 

Building on the momentum of the Opening Influenza Research Community Fellowship Program, the Certification Program will provide researchers who are open science early adopters in the flu community with skills, recognition, and support they need to raise awareness for open science and educate their peers and community members on how to practice open science in daily research. Successful candidates will receive training and mentoring on the open science curriculum developed by COS, hone their pedagogical skills, contribute to lesson development, and receive a Certificate of Completion issued by COS to recognize their training and contribution. 

Important Dates

Application Deadline: June 16, 2023 

Training Dates:

• Friday August 4, 2023
• Friday August 11, 2023
• Friday August 18, 2023
• Friday August 25, 2023

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For questions about the eligibility, application process, or the program in general, please contact flulab@cos.io.

Benefit and incentives of becoming a Certified Open Science Community Trainer:

1. Get trained by experts at COS. You will learn foundations of open science and how to practice open science throughout the research lifecycle.
2. Take advantage of training materials developed by COS and collaborators. These materials are easy to use and adapt by a trainer, are accompanied by instructor notes, and have assessment surveys that help to collect feedback and iteratively improve content and delivery.
3. Hone your skills on pedagogy and presentation. COS experts will provide guidance on how to best teach open science concepts and develop use cases.
4. Expand your network. You will have the opportunity to network with other like-minded researchers who want to make a difference in how research is done.
5. Boost your CV. As open science practices are increasingly required by funders and journals, earning the certification will help you stand out as an exemplar, enhance your CV, and gain more visibility.

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For questions about the eligibility, application process, or the program in general, please contact flulab@cos.io.

Early to mid-career researchers in influenza or adjacent academic disciplines such as virology, public health, epidemiology, and the biosciences, with a basic knowledge and experience practicing open science / open scholarship, are encouraged to apply. Examples of open science practices include sharing data, code, and materials, preregistering research, publishing preprints, performing replication studies, and reporting null results. Apply soon as space is limited.  

Application Deadline: June 16, 2023 

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For questions about the eligibility, application process, or the program in general, please contact flulab@cos.io.

Successful candidates who complete all the required tasks will receive a Certificate of Completion. To receive the certification, the following tasks must be completed within six months of the program start date (with possibility for extension):

• Take the training: Attend virtual open science training sessions led by COS open science experts. These training sessions include three to four hours of workshops and a one hour discussion-based pedagogy session. Training sessions will take place for four consecutive weeks.
  • Week 1: Program overview; Introduction to Open Science (1 hour)
  • Week 2: Data Management (1.5 hours)
  • Week 3: Research sharing (1.5 hours)
  • Week 4: Pedagogy group discussion (1 hour)
• Submit a demo: Submit a recorded 15-minute mock teaching session on one of the open science concepts learned from the workshop to demonstrate teaching competency. The recording will be reviewed by the COS training team.
• Deliver a session: Deliver at least one training session to their community. Examples might include a conference workshop, a departmental seminar, or a classroom lecture. Any new or adapted materials developed by participants shall be shared with a CC-BY license on OSF.
• Make a contribution: Make a contribution to further develop the open science training curriculum. The contribution can be large or small and may take many forms. Examples include but are not limited to:
  • Identify gaps or suggest improvements in existing training materials
  • Enrich existing training modules with disciplinary-specific content or use cases
  • Participate in developing new open science training modules 

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For questions about the eligibility, application process, or the program in general, please contact flulab@cos.io.

Preliminary research demonstrates that the influenza community sees value in preregistration and data sharing, the publication of null results, and replication studies. However, these same respondents believe that their peers hold disfavorable views regarding these same practices, demonstrating a mismatch between researchers’ perceptions and beliefs of open science practices in influenza research¹. These behaviors must be addressed and amended in all areas of research, and especially as they relate to findings that can dramatically improve public health and education.

The Center for Open Science (COS) and Flu Lab are collaborating to support the adoption of open science practices within the influenza research community, encourage the availability of all findings that contribute to the influenza body of knowledge, and bypass detrimental publishing incentives using four primary actions:

1. Creating an Open Science Fellowship for early- and mid-career researchers interested in pioneering a movement toward open science within the influenza research community. Please see the section below for additional information.
2. Creating a Steering Committee of leaders in the field who can direct activities and connect emerging interest groups around open research practices.
3. Using data gathered through surveying efforts to identify opportunities for messaging and begin conversations with editors, researchers, and funders about mismatches between desired and actual practice.
4. Fostering online community engagement and a resource hub for implementing these practices.

This project is working to create (1) a community of influenza researchers sharing knowledge and practices in open science, and, subsequently, (2) a body of research that is more credible, less affected by publication bias, and more verifiable through the increased adoption of open science practices.

With generous funding from Flu Lab, COS  is recruiting post-graduate, early- and mid-career influenza and public health researchers to learn about open science practices, apply them to their work, and promote open science within their communities.

Open Science Fellows will:

• Participate as part of a small cohort in three one-hour virtual training sessions on the fundamentals of open science (no prior knowledge needed)
• Learn how to implement open science practices and conduct more transparent, rigorous, and reproducible research
• Exchange ideas with other fellows in your cohort
• Repurpose training materials to share your open science knowledge and tools with others, and earn a $2,000 USD award

The Open Science fellowship will be divided into three cohorts. Members of each cohort will attend three one-hour training sessions covering the philosophy and motivation behind the open science movement as well as important facets of open science, including open data, materials, and code; reproducible analyses; preregistration and registered reports; and replication research. Fellows will also learn how to use the Open Science Framework (OSF) to implement open science practices in their own research.

Following the cohort sessions, fellows will have the opportunity to attend a one-on-one session with an open science expert to help them prepare for disseminating their new knowledge in a venue of their choice. This might involve presenting at a conference, giving a departmental talk, hosting a webinar, administering their own workshop, or giving a lecture. After submitting verification that they have engaged others in their community, either by sharing pictures, posters, slide decks, or other artifacts, fellows will be awarded $2,000 USD.

Cohorts will convene in the following months:

Cohort 1: November 2022
Cohort 2: January 2023
Cohort 3: February 2023

Sessions will be recorded for those who cannot attend due to scheduling conflicts although synchronous attendance is encouraged. For more information, please see the Eligibility and Awards tab or contact us at flulab@cos.io.

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¹The OSS is a standard, modular survey to assess open scholarship attitudes, perceptions, and behavior of researchers

In order to accommodate a variety of schedules and preferences, each cohort will follow a distinct meeting cadence. The first cohort will convene over the course of three weeks, with a single one-hour workshop session per week. The second will span one week, with one-hour sessions on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The third cohort will combine all of the workshop sessions into one single three-hour session. See below for the exact schedules, note that all times are EST:

 

 

Session One
The philosophy and motivation behind the open science movement

Session Two
Important facets of open science: data management, open materials and code, reproduction and replication, preregistration, registered reports, preprints

Session Three
How to use the Open Science Framework (OSF) to implement open science practices in your own research

The application period for the Fellowship is now closed.

Researchers whose work is related to influenza are eligible to participate in the Fellowship. Qualifying researchers’ specific discipline may be biomedical, behavioral, epidemiological, or interdisciplinary.

Fellows are eligible to receive financial awards from Flu Lab after (1) attending or reviewing the video recordings of all 3 workshop sessions presented to their cohort, (2) participating in a one-on-one session with a member of the COS team, and (3) within 4 months after the open science workshop sessions, verifying that they have shared their knowledge by submitting one or more of the following artifacts to the COS team:

Awards cannot be sent to countries where U.S. law prevents such transactions. Please see the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) FAQs for further details.