Open Voices: Interview with AGAPE - introductory course to open science for early career researchers
In this Open Voices conversation, we are talking to members of the AGAPE team who have just won the ENLIGHT Open Science Award for their project!
The AGAPE project is an autonomous Early Career Researcher (ECRs) led open science resource and community developed for open science enthusiasts, with a specific focus on ECRs. They initially met during the "Opening Doors" programme (funded by the Horizon 2020 EU programme for Research and Innovation). Through the various activities of the Opening Doors programme, participants had the opportunity to get to know one another and explore a shared passion for Open Science. The collaborative nature of the program allowed to work together, exchange ideas, and witness the positive impact of their collective efforts. Inspired by their experiences and the meaningful collaborations fostered during the Opening Doors program, participants were motivated to continue their teamwork and pursue Open Science activities after graduating. It was from this inspiration that the AGAPE was born.
If you want to know more about the background here is the link to an article the Opening Doors team published about AGAPE. Below we hear from AGAPE members Aswathi Surendram (University of Galway, Aswathi is also an ENLIGHT Open Science Ambassador), Cassandra Murphy (Maynooth University) and Nina Trubanová (University College Dublin) about their passion for Open Science which led to them winning the ENLIGHT Open Science Award.
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| AGAPE logo |
Hardy: Welcome Aswathi, Cassie and Nina! To start with, can you briefly introduce yourself please.
Nina: Hello! I am in my third year of PhD at UCD. I study variability in hemp. In AGAPE, I mostly took on the role of a project manager but like everyone else I work on various tasks as and when needed.
Aswathi: I am in my fourth year of my PhD in the School of Psychology here at the University of Galway, and my research is focused on developing and evaluating behavioural change intervention to improve farm safety. Like Nina and Cassie, I am an active member of the AGAPE team and mostly work on the technical part of the project.
Cassie: I am a PhD researcher in my third year at Maynooth University looking specifically at human nature relationships and the profiles that people gain. In AGAPE I am very much involved in the communication and marketing.
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| Zoom interview with the AGAPE team |
Hardy: Before we talk about AGAPE, I would like to ask you where your interest in Open Science comes from?
Nina: I heard about Open Science, mostly about Open Data before, when I was doing various online courses and because I work with publicly available sequencing data. The first time we all met was at the Opening Doors course which was focusing on industry, collaboration, Open Science and career planning. I was very shocked about the current state of openness when practicing science. So that's why I got more involved in Open Science.
Aswathi: My interest comes from my experience with Open Source technologies at college and at work. We always used such software, and I was part of Open Source communities. So naturally, when I came to university, I started looking into the Open aspects of research. I think one of the first events I attended here on campus was an Open Scholarship event organised by the Library.
Cassie: Open Science came up for me in my PhD. I am part of a Horizon funded project, and it is one of the requirements to publish openly. But before that I was always frustrated with paywalls. Even this week I've been fighting with a paywall! I never understood why we are putting so much work into research and then not share it with everybody? Similarly with science communication. For example, in my project, we are funded by the public, European Union funding, which is taxpayers’ money. Why are we not making it digestible for those people who paid for it? I wanted to make sure that I understood what the best way was to communicate my research and make it accessible to as many people as possible.
Hardy: You are all early career researchers. How much did you hear or learn about Open Science in your graduate training or from your supervisors?
Cassie: It was mainly at the beginning. It was my supervisor who told me about Open Science and directed me towards different resources. But I wouldn't say I learned everything, and it was down to me to learn more. I've yet to meet an “expert” in Open Science. Nobody knows everything, and it's a constant learning experience. I probably learned a quarter of what I know now. The most of what I've learned about Open Science was probably from Aswathi and Nina and from everybody else who was involved in AGAPE.
Nina: Before I started my PhD, I spent quite a few years in industry. During my PhD I haven't learned anything about open practices, to be honest. I did that at the course where the AGAPE team met. Open Science is not at all in the curriculum. I think PIs are too busy to be involved in teaching Open Science, at least in my field. All learning happened from peers or looking for relevant information by myself.
Then we joined the mentoring program in the Open Life Science initiative, and I joined this community to develop my own practice and to learn from experience of others. This was the biggest and most valuable step for me.
Aswathi: Like Cassie, I started looking into Open Science when I repeatedly hit paywalls during my literature reviews, and it was not making any sense to me. Then I started looking into other alternatives. That's how I came across Open Science. Once I showed interest, my supervisor also started giving me more information about Open practices. But most of what I learned is through our own initiative and interaction with other Open Science practitioners.
Hardy: Moving to your project, how did AGAPE come about and what is the idea behind it?
Nina: In the Opening Doors course, one of the tasks we were supposed to work on was related to Open Science, and this was supposed to be an individual task. But instead of, for example, trying to write my own data management plan or to pre-register my study I thought it would be more useful to create a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) to make digestible what we learned about Open Science for other PhD students and early career researchers. A lot of others felt the same way, so that's why we all joined, and we created this course. It is an introductory course not meant to cover everything and it has a lot of relevant links to other resources. The whole area of Open Science is vast and a little intimidating. Many people might give up at the very start, just because they don't know what to do. That's when we concluded that it might be more useful to start a community for developing this new introductory course. It has two functions: to provide information, and to start practicing what you learned with your peers who might have a similar experience.
We know that, for example, NORF are working on implementing Open Science into the curriculum. We understand the situation might be very different in a few years, and then we would focus more on helping other peers to practice Open Science.
Aswathi: Nina summed it up very well. I just want to just add that during the lockdown I was looking for an opportunity to collaborate. That's how I accidentally came across the Opening Doors programme, and joining was one of the best decisions I have taken in the last four years! Opening Doors played a huge part in bringing us all together, because it encouraged us to meet, interact, and work with all the participants of the workshop. When Nina came up with the proposal for the MOOC, it was easy to say yes. I had already worked with Nina and Cassie during Opening Doors and the collaboration created a space in the midst of all this stress and anxiety related to PhD studies and Covid where we contributed to something that is close to our heart. And it was not very stressful compared to my PhD [laughs].
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| AGAPE member Aswathi Surendram |
Hardy: Cassie, as the marketing person of AGAPE, can I ask you who is the course really for? For example, is it for all disciplines? Who is your target group?
Cassie: The very brief answer is everybody, anybody who has an interest in Open Science or feels that it would be beneficial to them. Obviously, the main target group at the moment for us is fellow PhD students or early career researchers. But as we started developing it more, we realized that we need a broader catchment. This course is open to supervisors as well if they feel that they need a little extra push around Open Science. It doesn't even have to be academia. If you're doing research in industry, Open Science is just as beneficial.
Hardy: Nina, you mentioned that Open Science can be a bit intimidating because the scope is vast. How is the course structured?
Nina: The way we approached it was that everyone who wanted to write a chapter of the course volunteered to write on one of the topics they were interested in. For example, in the first three chapters, we cover Open Data, Open Access and Open Software. Individual PhD students picked the topics that are most important to them. We come from different backgrounds, from humanities to STEM subjects and we covered the main aspects that we wanted to include. Of course, it would be great in future to expand and update the course content. We are not claiming we are the best course for everyone and would like to point to other resources that are maybe more academically structured. We wanted our course to be accessible to our peers and a little different, not too academic.
It was an amazing experience to create this MOOC, because we really enjoyed working together. That's another added value. We are now trying to start and expand this practicing community because it can be a lot of fun, not just hard work. You feel that you belong to a community.
Aswathi: The favourite aspect of designing the course for me is that at the end of each chapter we have activities, so it is not just about learning the theory. It also has easier activities that you can include in your day to day PhD work. It's not something you have to spend a lot of time on.
Hardy: One more question on the course itself. Did you use Open technology to construct the website or other Open approaches?
Aswathi: I think we made it more difficult for us by choosing Open Source technologies but that was one of the things that we decided very early on. We wanted to make sure all our resources are Open Source, and we will make them available for everyone. Our project is hosted on GitHub. The repositories are publicly accessible, and all the code that we used is hosted on GitHub. If anyone wants to use any of these tools, we are happy to share it. When we joined the Open Life Science programme (OLS), one of the main objectives we had was to make it more user friendly, replicable and transparent. The mentoring that was part of the OLS programme also helped us to create our How To guide and all the documentation so everything is accessible.
Hardy: How do you see the legacy of what you've done? Are you finished and will AGAPE live on, or is this now in the hands of others to develop if they want? And did you get any funding?
Nina: We are still working on the project, for example, the recording of podcasts that are not finished yet. Our project was not funded at all. We all worked on it in our own time and for free. We felt this is the right way. Of course, we hope the project will keep on living after we finish our PhDs because there is still opportunity to grow. Yes, we feel this will be our legacy to future generations. Eventually, we really hope that Open Science will become a default setting.
Aswathi: I think Open Science is constantly growing and is never finished! When we started the MOOC, we thought let's just finish this part. Then something else comes up, then another addition and so on. I don't see it getting “finished” any time soon.
Cassie: I believe it will live beyond our PhDs and postdocs. Our goal is that it would become self-sufficient, that there are enough members who eventually will take over and continue. It is a community that continues to grow for as long as possible.
Nina: We have so many ideas what else it could include!
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| AGAPE member Cassie Murphy |
Hardy: One reason why we're talking today is because that AGAPE won the ENLIGHT Open Science Award. Congratulations! What does that kind of recognition mean for the project and for you as contributors?
Aswathi: This is our first award for our project. It's really important! We started it as a small project, independently, without any major support. We received guidance from individuals, but we are not backed by organisations or funders. Getting that acknowledgment from a network like ENLIGHT validates our work and help us to connect with all these European universities.
Cassie: I think it's extremely important. It feels like we've been doing it for a long time, but in reality, the project is still quite new. To be recognized shows just how important and how needed this initiative is. We're extremely grateful, even on a personal level. After all the work that we put in, it's nice to be recognised.
Hardy: You mentioned the need for Open Science. What else could universities do to support early career researchers in their Open Science journey?
Nina: I think there is a huge discussion about incentivizing Open Science, for example from the governments. But not much seems to happen on the institutional level. Providing incentives, to allow time for practicing Open Science will be the first step. Then we will see what works best and in what field, because there is never one universal answer to everything.
Cassie: All PhD students have been going through progression recently and writing up reports and reviews, but Open Science is never mentioned even for PhDs by publication. We need to encourage students to publish their work openly which seems like more work, but in reality it is not.
Aswathi: Last week I was attending this conference called SBM and I had an interesting conversation with a medical PhD student who is working on an implementation science project. Her poster presentation was on how she consolidated various implementation frameworks and constructs into an Excel sheet. During the event, many of us exchanged emails with her to access the file, as we had all experienced similar struggles in understanding different frameworks. I am pretty sure a lot of researchers are doing this kind of work, spending significant time on similar challenges. Yet, if it weren't for opportunities like conferences, these resources would likely remain on her department's hard disks. This is just one small example of how open repositories and encouraging open sharing can create a collaborative environment and make the best use of resources and save time and effort on similar tasks. Universities can play a crucial role in establishing and promoting these repositories for research and resources.
Also, creating this kind of collaborative environment helps to use our transferable skills and knowledge across disciplines and projects., whether it’s your statistical, analytical, or your programming skills. It helps with interdisciplinary collaboration and generates a healthy work environment in general.
Hardy: That relates already to my final question. What have you learned from being engaged in AGAPE and more generally from Open Science?
Aswathi: Especially as an international scholar our project created a safe space to work in and collaborate together. The second aspect are the skills I used. Before my PhD I worked in IT related jobs. AGAPE was the perfect opportunity for me to build upon those skills. It helped me to reconnect with my digital background. The Opening Doors programme connected us in the team and with other Open Science initiatives like Open Life Science. First, I considered our project as a personal, you know, fun project. But then I realised there is more to it and there are a lot of career opportunities here. Our community also provides a support system. If you have any questions, you just have to ask and one of your colleagues will know the answer. This is an interdisciplinary group where there is so much knowledge!
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| AGAPE member Nina Trubanová |
Nina: For me, the most important message was that I am not alone. That there are many other people who believe that science should be done the way I see it. We are willing to use our free time to change the world! That's what I like about it the most.
Cassie: Touching on what Nina said there I think there are researchers who want to do their science openly they just don't know how to or where to start. I've often found that if I reach out to a researcher who has their paper behind a paywall, they're very willing to share it with you. Open needs to become the norm!
Hardy: Aswathi, Cassie, Nina, thanks for talking to me!
About AGAPE & Aswathi, Cassie and Nina
Find out more about AGAPE on their website: https://agape-openscience.github.io/AgapeOpenscienceMOOC/
You can get in contact with AGAPE on social media: Facebook AGAPE Open-Science, Twitter @AGAPEOpenSci, Instagram AGAPE Open Science, or on LinkedIn AGAPE Open Science.
We talked to AGAPE team members:
- Aswathi Surendram is a final year PhD student in the School of Psychology at the University of Galway. Aswathi is passionate about psychology, behaviour change and open science.
- Cassie Murphy is a third year Environmental Psychology PhD at Maynooth University, with an interest in human-nature relationships for wellbeing. Cassie is passionate about Open Science and helping people communicate their research to wider audiences.
- Nina Trubanová is a third-year PhD student at the University College Dublin (UCD) School of Biology and Environmental Science. She enjoys participating in collaborative projects with other academics or industry partners which reflect her interest in innovation and sustainability. Nina is passionate about and actively involved in the open science movement.
