Coming down from the recent FORCE11 Scholarly Communication Institute (FSCI) and FORCE2024 conference at UCLA has allowed reflection on some of the recurring themes from the two events. One of these was the issue of language appropriation in the open scholarship space. In the process of attempting to write some of these issues up, it became clear that this requires something of a wander down history lane.

Open data has been a topic widely discussed among researchers and research-supporting organizations over the last decade. Much progress has been made in data sharing, and we now have more datasets openly available than ever before.

Our community and tools rely on high-quality DOI metadata for building connections and obtaining efficiencies. However, the current model - where improvements to this metadata are limited to its creators or done within service-level silos - perpetuates a system of large-scale gaps, inefficiency, and disconnection. It doesn’t have to be this way.

I recently attended the FORCE2024 conference at UCLA. I'm a member of the board of directors of FORCE11, the parent organization for the conference, and the co-located FORCE11 Scholarly Communications Institute (FSCI), which I was not able to attend this year but have taught at in the past.

If you’re interested in big ecological datasets, natural history, and predictive cross-scale ecology (like we are) then you should check out the upcoming Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on Unifying Ecology Across Scales (July 28 – Aug 2) and the associated Gordon Research Seminar (GRS;

Many researchers are becoming more aware of the importance of reproducibility.Although reproducibility involves a diverse array of topics and tools, one rOpenSci package has gained considerable attention for enabling reproducible analysis pipelines in R: targets, by Will Landau. Why a targets workshop?

Research data and software rely heavily on the technical and social infrastructure to disseminate, cultivate, and coordinate projects, priorities, and activities. The groups that have stepped forward to support these activities are often segmented by aspects of their identity - facets like discipline, for-profit versus academic orientation, and others.

In November of 2022, the Research Software Alliance (ReSA) and the Netherlands eScience Center organized a two-day international workshop titled “The Future of Research Software.” In the workshop, funding organizations joined forces to explore how they could effectively contribute to making research software sustainable. The workshop had many participants from all continents and was a huge success.

Researchers, librarians, policy makers, and practitioners often complain about the scholarly publishing system, but the system also offers exciting opportunities to contribute to innovations in the way academic findings are disseminated and evaluated.

Three members of the rOpenSci team - Scott Chamberlain, Jenny Bryan, and Rich FitzJohn - as well as many community members will give talks at useR!2019. Many other package authors, maintainers, reviewers and unconf participants will be there too. Don’t hesitate to ask them about rOpenSci packages, software peer review, community, or just say hello if you’re looking for a friendly face. We’ve listed their talks for you.