How are you doing with Open Science?

We've put together a little checklist which we hope applies to most people working in academia. This list is a work in progress and is by no means exhaustive - if you have any ideas for other things we could add please contact Helen Kettle, our Open Science Champion. Thank you!

Please count up how many of the items below apply to you:

• Where appropriate, I always submit my code with my journal articles
• I engage with those who seek to use my work to facilitate future research in the area
• I document my code and include examples for new users
• I archive data/model runs that go with journal papers (e.g. on figshare, zenodo etc) to ensure my work is reproducible
• I try to use defined, reproducible work flows e.g. that reproduce outputs from the associated paper
• I submit my journal papers to a pre-print archive
• I place all my current projects on GitLab/GitHub
• I write unit tests for my code where appropriate
• I try to make my work easily accessible online, e.g. shiny apps, web interface, streamlit
• I try to release my work as software packages where appropriate

How did you do? If you got:

Over 8 – well done - you are doing great! Keep up the good work and let us know if we should add more to this list

Between 5 and 7 – not bad! You are making a good start. Have a look and see where you might up your score for next time

Between 2 and 4 – you are hitting some goals but there are some opportunities for improvement – think about what can you do that most easily fits into your work and has the least overhead

Less than 1 – well, the good news is you have plenty of opportunity to get your score up! Have a think about which of the things on the list are the most readily achievable. If you are at BioSS and struggling to find any then have a chat with the open science team or set up a meeting with your line manager. If most of the list above are not appropriate to your line of work then don’t worry - you are off the hook!