Venue
The course will take place at Green Templeton College at the University of Oxford, UK.
Background
Transparency and reproducibility of research methods and results are important hallmarks of high-quality research in areas from biomedical to social and physical sciences. In the last few years, many novel, often web-based tools and technologies have emerged that allow for a comprehensive representation of the scientific process that goes far beyond descriptions of research methods and results as found in traditional journal articles. These novel tools and technologies have the potential to revolutionise the way research methods and results are communicated and facilitate research collaborations and sharing of research data in an unprecedented manner. However, using these novel tools and technologies in a qualified and responsible manner requires knowledge and skills that are not normally taught in undergraduate or graduate degrees. To close this gap, we offer a five-day summer school to guide early career researchers (PhD students and postdocs) towards an open, transparent, and reproducible research workflow. These topics will be embedded in a more general curriculum on research ethics and stakeholder involvement.
Program
The five-day summer school will consist of a series of lectures that cover the following topics:
- Preregistration and registered reports, biases in research
- Reproducible workflows
- Statistics and reproducibility
- Publishing, Open Data and Open Materials
- Meta-research
- Ethics of reproducible research
- Citizen science
The lectures will be complemented by interactive workshops that participants can choose based on their research interests. Workshops topics are very diverse and range from workshops aimed at specific research areas (e.g. neuroimaging or preclinical biomedical research) to more general workshops (e.g. introduction to R, Jupyter notebooks and python visualisation). Beyond the lectures and workshops, participants will work, under supervision of the lecturers, on plans for their own projects to increase reproducibility and openness in their current or upcoming research project.
Application
Interested participants should send a letter of motivation (300 words), a project outline (300 words) and a short CV (2-3 pages). The letter of motivation should contain a brief statement how the applicant has applied or intends to apply open research practices in their current work, if any other courses were attended, and what particular challenges were encountered in their work that this summer school addresses. The project outline should give a brief overview of future or recently started research projects, in which participants would like to apply open/ reproducible research practices. Applicants with projects in any area of empirical research are encouraged to apply. If applicants are accepted, we require a signed form from the applicant’s supervisor to show that they will support the use of transparent and reproducible practices in the applicant’s research project.
Applications should be in a single pdf and adhere to the file format: FIRSTNAME_LASTNAME_APPLICATIONSUMMERSCHOOL.pdf
Please send your application to: summerschool_berlinoxford@bihealth.de
The application deadline is July 15th 2019 at midday (GMT).
Participants will be notified by beginning of August.
Costs
The course is free to attend but participants will need to cover the cost of accommodation and travel. We have secured bed and breakfast accommodation with en-suite facilities at St Anne’s College for £92 per night for participants who require accommodation. We are able to support travel costs for a limited number of applicants with up to 500 Euro if applicants cannot cover the costs from their own funding:
Applicants who work in neuroscience research also have the opportunity to apply for bursaries from the British Neuroscience Association by 31 July 2019. For more information, please see BNA - Open-Research-Bursaries.
For participants from Charité - Universitätsmedizin, the QUEST Center for Transforming Biomedical Research will support travel and accommodation with up to 750 Euro for a limited number of participants. Please state in your letter of motivation if you would like to apply for funding.
The talks and material from last year are available here!