Hey folks, here's an opportunity to learn more about supporting open science/research through a 10-week programme of training and mentoring: The Open Life Science (OLS) program helps individuals and stakeholders in research to become Open Science ambassadors.
Applications are now open for cohort 6, closing on 7 July https://openlifesci.org/
I've been an Expert and Mentor for several previous cohorts and I can say from. the heart this is a lovely community to be part of.
just finished my (short) paper in #German: "Cat Content ist nicht für die Katz'". It's about the cat-related digital spaces and the different ways of online community building: virtual communities, communities of practise, light communitites, and affinity spaces. With examples. #cats #CatLinguistics #Linguistics
Open call for obsolete sounds! This project is really fascinating. They're requesting recordings of sounds from our environment, old tech, etc. that are no longer commonplace and then those will be reimagined by sound artists "to draw attention to the world’s disappearing soundscapes." https://citiesandmemory.com/2022/05/open-call-your-field-recordings-of-obsolete-sounds-wanted/
I'll wrap up my thread here, but leave a reminder: _planning_ and creating flexible data infrastructures and data champions is imperative. Millions have died, but with better information sharing we can create informed policy and put fewer people at risk.
The best time to plant that tree (appropriate pathogen data sharing infrastructure) was before the pandemic of course, but the next-best time to plant it is today. /End thread
Another thing. Pathogen spread is SO political! Multiple people from multiple countries told me about data that made the the government's grasp of the situation look bad that, ah, "disappeared". How can we follow the science if the governments are complicit in hiding information? /8
When a data scientist is modelling or explaining a spike or lull in pathogen spread, knowing the human mixing safety rules at the time is imperative! Ideally, laws would be machine-readible to feed automatically into computational models. /7
There's far more than I could possibly include in a tweet thread! One of the _most_ interesting findings I've had so far was that we need _temporal_ metadata, especially around geographical regions and mixing laws. I'll explain:
Lockdowns, masking, "no more than 6 in a group", etc. - usually it was possible to find out what rules were in place _today_, but it was MUCH harder to find out what the laws were, say, three months ago. BUT... /6
Digging into use barriers a little more, we note that they can include unreliable and untrustworthy data, disappearing or corrupt data, copy-pasting data from websites, PDFs, and even graphics (sob), and restrictive licence requirements.
Don't get me started on file formats! Apart from the notorious UK Excel bug https://bbc.co.uk/news/technology-54423988 - so so so many people talked about lack of compliance to data standards, hidden excel columns, downloading from databases and manually annotated files... /5
Barriers 1 - 4 are often experienced sequentially, but that 5th barrier, human throughput, is woven throughout the other 4. Many of the barriers are unsurprising - we know that data sharing could be better.
Accessing data may require friends in high places who can grant you access or expedite your request. You might not be able to afford to pay for data and need to apply for a grant first. Or just apply for access and hope the money appears?
/4
We take a very broad view what data is relevant here: it's not just infections, hospitalisations, death, and vaccines, but also genomes - virus genomes, patient genomes, mobility data, geographic regions, and even movement restrictions.
All in all we found five categories of barriers around pathogen-related data sharing. 1. Knowing data exists, 2. accessing that data, 3. using the data once accessed, 4. re-sharing your analyses, and 5. human throughput. /3
The study is a qualitative interview study with researchers, data scientists and software engineers, civic data specialists, medics, and pandemic modellers, talking about their experiences and barriers accessing, using, and sharing COVID-19 data.
As we all know, pandemics and epidemics present an urgency for knowledge not found in "peace" times - and every subsequent barrier means delayed response, missed waves, deaths, and long-term disabilities that could have been prevented. /2
NEW Preprint alert! Policymakers, medics, data analysts, industry IP lawyers, open research folks, this is one for you: COVID-19: An exploration of consecutive systemic barriers to pathogen-related data sharing during a pandemic.
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2205.12098
🧵 - boosts appreciated!
FOSS Rec? (Help Wanted)
Hello all!
I'm looking for a FOSS journaling application for my phone or computer. I would like for it to be able to use text, images, url links - but dates are not necessary.
I'm having trouble finding much on FDroid.
If this helps the inquiry, I'm looking for something to catalogue my house plants in and put down information like their name, watering, light, soil, photo, etc.
Let me know if you have anything in mind!
Is here something like the #MECFS awareness bubble from the birdsite? I really would like more of this topic in my timelines, it‘s important. For the affected and ignored peeps and because of the links to #Longcovid
I like vegetables and open science 🏳️🌈🇳🇿🇮🇱🇬🇧🇪🇺