As part of the monthly meeting organised in Oxford by the OpenScience section of the OKFN, Vincent presented on thursday the 22th of May the group HackYourPhd.
The origin of the group, its ideals & aims were presented to a few Phd students (or DPhil as they call it in Oxford) in Biology and Mathematics including Jenny Molloy who coordinates the Okfn OpenScience group and organizes the meetings.
OKFN OpenScience welcomed HackYourPhD
For most, this meeting was the occasion to discover and discuss different aspects of openscience such as almetrics, open access, collaborative edition and to discuss about some aspects of their practice of science (publication, sharing information to peers… or not) and what could be changed. The initial plan of Celya (who kicked HackYourPhd) for another way to do a Phd was a pivot in the discussion and we analysed here proposal to crowdfund phds, use new technologies and social media to learn, do & share research., with sometimes the pessimistic from inside academia but generally enthusiastic.
(As I discussed with Celya a bit later, her fresh ideas from outside academia do seem to set the goal a bit higher than that we would do as researchers, which is a great material for discussions)
A little group of people who attended a data sharing conference nearby (shared topic!) and arrived a bit later (among which the founder of figshare) joined the meeting. After a rerush through the slides, the conversation restarted a bit more technical, informed and political – the other more militating side of Open Science.
HackYourPhD in London ?
The discussion continued in a nearby pub where we discussed on how action could be taken in London where Vincent is based. We shared contacts and links and ideas on how to bring together a community around London to organize similar events.
We will soon try to build up this community in London. If you know anyone that might be interested, don’t hesitate to share the word. Also share with us any thoughts you have on what we could do in London.
One great idea would be to try to export the open science training initiative to a gradschool of a London University. This training program aims to teach and initiate graduate students to the concepts and practice in OpenScience.
Another idea – again centered on graduate students – would be to write an open book giving some open science guidelines for Phd students.
The meeting was a success. It’s role to communicate and inform about openscience was fullfilled. It also enabled HackYourPhD and OKFN OpenScience to meet and discuss on how to merge our efforts in the future.
We will try to organize a skype/hangout meeting soon to discuss these ideas and move forward. If you are interested, send us your contact, comment, or stay tuned on the facebook page of HackyourPhD.
Slides of the presentation: http://prezi.com/4g5u8qip5pwb/hackyourphd/
Our “PhD-Hacker” : Vincent Adam
I lived most of my life in Paris and studied engineering in Nantes. I recently moved to London where I started a PhD in Computational Neuroscience. My thesis subject isn’t really decided yet, but I am interested in perceptual representations and started working on auditory perception. I do enjoy technology and to observe and understand how their most recent development do change various aspects of our lives. One aspect of my daily life is the practice of research and I’m really interested to see the recent positive evolutions in the field brought by technology (mostly tools to help people connect together and share). One of my little methodological contribution is trying to make apps for behavioral experiments with the long term aim of making it easy for non coders to develop their own experiments and get science out of the lab.