Abstract:

The Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative is a project that was born of frustration. We wanted to help senior leaders in our university to look beyond league tables and citation counts as indicators of the ‘quality’ and ‘value’ of research, start new conversations about what positive impacts of research look like, and why openness and diversity matter. By combining critical humanities perspectives with cloud based computing and data science expertise, we have been able to engage with publicly available data relating to global research communication at scale. 

As we have discovered, community investments in open metadata infrastructures like Crossref and Open Alex have led to a phase-change in what open data can now deliver. Questions about the impacts of making research open; the openness of research associated with particular topics, institutions, and regions; as well as the diversity of communities making and using expert knowledge can all be explored through entirely open data sets. 

However, few people are aware of what open data about scholarly communication can now deliver. Low awareness of the scale and diversity of open data sets is being compounded by anxiety about the ‘quality’ of the data used to support research evaluation and a lack of user-friendly tools for engaging with open data sets. As a result, commercial providers of bibliometric data continue to dominate the research evaluation space.

In this talk, I will introduce the work that the Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative is doing with open data; and ask what we can learn from other activist communities about strategies that work in the face of commercial monopolies and institutional limitations. What will it take to ensure that the people who care the most about how data is used and the stories it tells have access to open data and the tools to engage with it?

Speaker: Professor Lucy Montgomery leads the Innovation in Knowledge Communication research program at the Centre for Culture and Technology at Curtin University. She is also co-lead of the Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative: a major strategic research project exploring how big data can help universities to understand their performance as Open Knowledge Institutions. Montgomery’s research focuses on the ways in which open access and open knowledge are transforming landscapes of knowledge production, sharing and use, including in China. Her most recent, collaboratively authored, book Open Knowledge Institutions: Reinventing Universities is now open for community review MIT Press. Webpage: https://staffportal.curtin.edu.au/staff/profile/view/lucy-montgomery-99ab1b13/

Abstract: The use of preprints across different disciplines has grown rapidly over the last decade and many researchers are now using preprints to share their latest work with the community. Preprints enable faster dissemination of research findings compared to the traditional journal process, but they also make it possible for different communities to participate and innovate in science communication. In this talk, we will explore how the use of preprints has allowed different groups to initiate collaborations, share local knowledge and chart new and more open paths for the communication of scholarly work.

Speaker: Iratxe is Director of Strategic Initiatives & Community at ASAPbio where she works to drive initiatives that promote the productive use of preprints in the life sciences and greater transparency in peer review, including adoption of preprint review. Iratxe also manages the ASAPbio Community and the ASAPbio Fellows program. Prior to ASAPbio, Iratxe worked as an editor for different open-access journals and served as Deputy Editor-in-Chief at the journal PLOS ONE, where she was involved in editorial policy development and open science initiatives. Iratxe is also the Facilitation and Integrity Officer for the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), a member of the Board of Directors for the data repository Dryad and the peer review committee for the European Association of Science Editors (EASE), and has co-lead the FORCE11 Research Data Publishing Ethics Working Group.

Speaker: Dr Kanika Khanna is a postdoc at UC Berkeley where she is investigating the cellular basis of host-pathogen interactions. She studies the mechanism employed by bacterial secretion systems to spread from cell-to-cell during pathogenesis. She works on Burkholderia thailandensis which is unique in its ability to induce cell-cell fusion using a type VI secretion system that injects toxic effectors into host cells to hijack their cellular machinery. By combining different imaging modalities including live-cell imaging and in situ cryo-electron tomography, I hope to understand the structural and cellular mechanism of cell-cell fusion induced by B. thailandensis. She was a 2022 ASAPbio ambassador where she helped develop a competition to call for the use of preprints to share negative results with the community.

Abstract: Policies are an essential component of a functional society. They provide a framework within which individuals, organizations, and governments operate, allowing for coordination and cooperation towards common goals. However, the development and implementation of policies require a clear understanding of the specific context in which they will operate. In the case of Open Science, policies must consider the unique needs and challenges faced by academics, librarians and university administrators, as well as the broader social, political, and economic contexts in which they operate. In this keynote, I will examine some common obstacles people find when designing and implementing effective policies to promote Open Science, such as timing, resources available and politics. Through an examination of examples from Latin America and other countries’ policies, we can gain a deeper understanding of the factors that contribute to effective policy design and implementation.

Speaker: Dr. Soledad Quiroz-Valenzuela is a researcher in Open Science at Universidad Central de Chile. She was executive secretary of the Chilean Scientific Committee on Climate Change between 2020 and 2021. In September 2021 she was elected Vice-President for Policy of the International Network for Government Science Advice (INGSA) and is a member of the Latin American and Caribbean Science Diplomacy Network (DiploCientífica). She holds a PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Michigan State University (USA), and a Masters in Public Policy and Management from Carnegie Mellon University (USA). She has been a lecturer and researcher in science and technology policy, science advice and science diplomacy.

La Dra. Soledad Quiroz Valenzuela es investigadora en Ciencia Abierta en la Universidad Central de Chile. Fue secretaria ejecutiva del Comité Científico Asesor de Cambio Climático de Chile los años 2020 y 2021. En septiembre de 2021 fue elegida Vicepresidenta de Políticas de la International Network for Governmental Science Advice (INGSA) y es miembro de la Red de Diplomacia Científica de América Latina y el Caribe (DiploCientífica). Es Doctora en Bioquímica y Biología Molecular de la Michigan State University (EE.UU.), y Maestra en Políticas Públicas y Gestión de la Universidad Carnegie Mellon (EE.UU.). Ha sido docente e investigadora en política científica y tecnológica, asesoramiento científico y diplomacia científica.

Soledad Quiroz Valenzuela est chercheuse en sciences ouvertes à l’Université centrale du Chili. Elle a été secrétaire exécutive du comité consultatif scientifique chilien sur le changement climatique en 2020 et 2021. En septembre 2021, elle a été élue vice-présidente pour les politiques de l’International Network for Governmental Science Advice (INGSA) et est membre du réseau de diplomatie scientifique d’Amérique latine et des Caraïbes (DiploCientífica). Elle est titulaire d’un doctorat en biochimie et biologie moléculaire de l’université d’État du Michigan (États-Unis) et d’une maîtrise en politique et gestion publiques de l’université Carnegie Mellon (États-Unis). Elle a été maître de conférences et chercheuse en politique scientifique et technologique, en conseil scientifique et en diplomatie scientifique.

Abstract: Open access to shared information is essential for the development and evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) and AI-powered solutions needed to address the complex challenges facing the nation and the world. Data and information should be easy to find, access, and reuse. This talk will describe the open knowledge network (OKN)—an effort to develop an open information infrastructure based on an interconnected network of knowledge graphs that would serve as essential public-data infrastructure to facilitate integration of diverse information needed to develop solutions to a wide range of societal issues, from economic development to climate change to social equity.
Knowledge graphs are an important type of knowledge structure to enable data integration. They consist of nodes and edges — where nodes represent real-world entities (e.g., a city, a neighborhood, a court case, a gene, a chemical compound), and edges represent different types of relationships among nodes.

In February 2022, the National Science Foundation in partnership with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, launched an OKN Innovation Sprint, which harnessed the collective insights of roughly 150 experts from government, industry, academia, and nonprofit organizations to help build a roadmap for a Prototype OKN (Proto-OKN), based on specific use cases and various end-user perspectives. The findings from this Sprint are summarized in the OKN Roadmap Report. Creation of OKN is fundamentally a sociotechnical effort, that must consider human, social and organizational factors, than merely a technical effort. Deep engagement is necessary among domain knowledge experts and a host of other stakeholders including data owners, decision-makers, various end-user communities, tool builders, and knowledge representation experts.

The goals and objectives of OKN are in complete alignment with the objectives expressed in the Nelson Memo released in August 2022, which seeks to ensure free, immediate, and equitable access to federally funded research results and data. As stated in the memo, “When federally funded research is available to the public, it can improve lives, provide policymakers with important evidence with which to make critical decisions, accelerate the rates of discovery and translation, and drive more equitable outcomes across every sector of society.” The OKN would be a key component in providing access to such trustworthy information.

Speaker: Dr. Chaitanya Baru joined as Senior Advisor in NSF’s new Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP) Directorate in October 2022 after a 25-year career at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), University of California, San Diego. During that time he also served on assignment at NSF–first as Senior Advisor for Data Science in the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Directorate from 2014-2018, and then as Senior Advisor for the NSF Convergence Accelerator, from 2019-2021. While Senior Advisor for Data Science, he co-chaired the NSF Harnessing the Data Revolution Big Idea (HDR) and played a leadership role in the NSF BIGDATA program. He helped initiate the HDR Data Science Corps program, helped design the NSF Big Data Regional Innovations Hubs and TRIPODS programs, and supported a series of workshops on Translational Data Science. He was a lead organizer of the inter-agency Workshop on Open Knowledge Network, which led to establishment of Track A in the Convergence Accelerator on Open Knowledge Network (OKN). At SDSC, Dr. Baru’s work focused on R&D in data and knowledge systems, especially centered around translational and applied research issues in computer science and data science. His research collaborations have spanned a wide range of disciplines from neuroscience and behavioral medicine to geoscience, ecological science, anthropology, and others. Prior to joining SDSC, he was with the database R&D group at IBM and, before that, a member of the faculty in the EECS Department, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Baru has an ME and PhD in Electrical Engineering (Computer Engineering) from the University of Florida and a BTech in Electronics Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.