Scott Edmunds

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<img
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srcset="http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/2021-OAW-02-1600x491-Eng-1024x315.png 1024w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/2021-OAW-02-1600x491-Eng-300x92.png 300w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/2021-OAW-02-1600x491-Eng-768x236.png 768w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/2021-OAW-02-1600x491-Eng-1536x472.png 1536w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/2021-OAW-02-1600x491-Eng.png 1601w"
sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" width="768" height="236"
alt="Open Access Week 2021" />
<figcaption>Banner from Open Access Week 2021, source;
www.openaccessweek.org</figcaption>
</figure>

This week is [International Open Access
Week](http://www.openaccessweek.org/), and with the
[theme](http://www.openaccessweek.org/profiles/blogs/opening-knowledge-and-building-structural-equity-this-week-beyond)
"It Matters How We Open Knowledge: Building Structural Equity". This
aims at highlighting the individual and collective action required
alongside the decisions, actions, and investments in knowledge sharing
to ensure that equity is foundational. Beyond just open licensing of
content (of which is foundational in what we do) there are many other
barriers that we've been trying hard to break to enable more equitable
and open science for all. Since we've launched we worked hard to open
science in many ways, from a technological perspective through many of
the novel editorial practices and integrations we've implemented, to
helping educate and amplify the voices of people working to open
science. Be that through our efforts in [community
genomics](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/community-genomes-gigatv/)
and citizen science projects (see [Bauhinia
Genome](http://bauhiniagenome.hk/)) or publishing reviews, commentaries
and guest blogs from open science practitioners.

This Open Access Week seems a good time to look back over these efforts,
and here is a list of 10 of our favourite *GigaScience* papers providing
examples of barriers we've tried to help break for more open science.  

**1. The inclusivity barrier**  
One rare positive of the COVID-19 pandemic has been the potential of
increasing inclusivity of attendance at academic conferences. Yet, the
mere existence of online conferences is no guarantee that everyone can
attend and participate meaningfully. We recently published a
collaboratively written Review from [Open Science Special Interest Group
of the
OHBM](https://www.humanbrainmapping.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3712)
identifying practices that purposefully encourage a diverse community to
attend, participate in, and lead online conferences.

Levitis et al. Centering inclusivity in the design of online
conferences---An OHBM--Open Science perspective, *GigaScience*, 2021,
**10**:8
doi:[10.1093/gigascience/giab051](https://doi.org/10.1093/gigascience/giab051)

**2. The lab barrier**  
You no longer need to be based in a wealthy research laboratory, or have
any laboratory at all, to do cutting edge genomics research. Back in
2018 we published our first example of a study taking DNA sequencing and
genomics to a completely new place: *in situ* genome sequencing in the
jungle. See the [DNA Day
blog](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/dnaday2018/) covering this
\#jungleomics.

Pomerantz A et al. Real-time DNA barcoding in a rainforest using
nanopore sequencing: opportunities for rapid biodiversity assessments
and local capacity building. *Gigascience*. 2018, **7**:4.
doi:[10.1093/gigascience/giy033](http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/gigascience/giy033).

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aktiviere JavaScript, falls es in deinem Browser deaktiviert sein
sollte.
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**3. The participation barrier**  
In the data driven era, not only in research but in our day-to-day
lives, people are creating more and more personal digitized data that
enables human-participant research in social sciences and personalized
medicine. In 2019 [we
published](https://doi.org/10.1093/gigascience/giz076) an open call from
Open Humans for contributors to their community-based platform for
participant led research from the social sciences to precision medicine
(see the [Q&A for
more](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/open-humans-qa/)).

Greshake Tzovaras B, et al. Open Humans: A platform for
participant-centered research and personal data exploration.
*GigaScience*. 2019.
doi:[10.1093/gigascience/giz076](https://doi.org/10.1093/gigascience/giz076)

**4. The transparency barrier**  
One of the most distinctive open science policies carried out by
*GigaScience* since our launch is our open, named peer review and we
have an [editorial](https://doi.org/10.1186/2047-217X-2-1) discussing
the benefits of this policy.

Edmunds SC, Peering into peer-review at *GigaScience*, *GigaScience*,
2:1, 2013,
doi:[10.1186/2047-217X-2-1](https://doi.org/10.1186/2047-217X-2-1)

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large">
<img
src="http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/alessandro-fazari-Ngo5FrmF97o-unsplash2.jpg"
class="wp-image-4203" loading="lazy" decoding="async"
srcset="http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/alessandro-fazari-Ngo5FrmF97o-unsplash2.jpg 640w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/alessandro-fazari-Ngo5FrmF97o-unsplash2-300x194.jpg 300w"
sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" width="640" height="413" />
</figure>

**5. The "Data not Available" barrier**  
Publishing sensitive medical data is no longer a barrier to transparent
open peer review, our first example of precious Controlled Access
medical data peer reviewed by named reviewers proving an example of how
'data not available' is no longer justifiable in many of these cases, at
least from the perspective of journals that like ourselves have broken
the "transparency barrier" (see above).

Gabriel AAG et al. A molecular map of lung neuroendocrine neoplasms.
*Gigascience*. 2020 9:11.
doi:[10.1093/gigascience/giaa112](http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/gigascience/giaa112).

**6. The reproducibility barrier**  
*GigaScience* has always been trying to push the boundaries of how we
disseminate reproducible research, and to adapt to the challenges of
dealing with experiments become more data-intensive. [In 2017 we
published our first
example](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/data-intensive-software-publishing-sailing-the-code-ocean-qa-with-ruibang-luo/)
showcasing the Code Ocean reproducible research platform that wraps and
encapsulates the data, code, and computation environment in a "Compute
Capsule" that can be interacted with through their platform for testing
and then running via your cloud computing provider if it is of interest.

Luo R, Schatz MC, Salzberg SL. 16GT: a fast and sensitive variant caller
using a 16-genotype probabilistic model. *GigaScience* 2017.
doi:[10.1093/gigascience/gix045](http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/gigascience/gix045)

**7. The collaboration barrier**  
Since our launch, on top of software papers we have seen more and more
complex tools utilizing machine learning approaches. To help with
reproducibility with machine learning-based tools, we recently published
a paper [integrating
Gigantum](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/gigantum-joins-giga-reproducibility-machine-learning-toolkit/),
an open source web application that aims for better collaboration,
sharing and making reproducible data science research even easier.
Working these tools into the review and publication process potentially
makes it easier to assess replicability and utility. With a slightly
different and more distributed approach to Code Ocean, via a DOI users
can run the published tool anywhere (laptop, GPU, on premises
infrastructures, and Public Cloud) -- eliminating problems that can
arise when collaborating via multiple infrastructures and contexts are
involved.

Vieira DV, et al, Driftage: a multi-agent system framework for concept
drift detection, *GigaScience*, **10**:6, 2021,
doi:[10.1093/gigascience/giab030](https://doi.org/10.1093/gigascience/giab030).

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<figcaption><em>GigaScience</em>, like our sister GigaByte journal has
experimented with a number of platforms for publishing software in a
more reproducible manner.</figcaption>
</figure>

**8. The "certified reproducibility" barrier**  
While we've worked on methods to make the increasingly complicated
computational research we publish easier to interact with and use, we've
also look at ways of improving their peer-review. Last year we published
the [first published
example](https://doi.org/10.1093/gigascience/giaa026) demonstrating a
new way of peer reviewing software articles: presenting a
[CODECHECK](https://codecheck.org.uk/) certificate. These independently
time-stamped runs are awarded a "certificate of reproducible
computation" and increase availability, discovery and reproducibility of
crucial artifacts for computational sciences.

Piccolo SR. et al., ShinyLearner: A containerized benchmarking tool for
machine-learning classification of tabular data, *GigaScience*,
**9**:40, 2020,
doi:[10.1093/gigascience/giaa026](https://doi.org/10.1093/gigascience/giaa026)

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized">
<img
src="http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/CodeCheck2020-1024x726.png"
class="wp-image-4204" loading="lazy" decoding="async"
srcset="http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/CodeCheck2020-1024x726.png 1024w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/CodeCheck2020-300x213.png 300w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/CodeCheck2020-768x545.png 768w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/CodeCheck2020.png 1368w"
sizes="(max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px" width="512" height="363" />
</figure>

**9. The methodological comprehension barrier**  
Not just focusing on computation methods easier to scruitinise and
reuse, in 2016 we published [our first
examples](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/reproducible-research-resources-researching-parasites/)
where complicated "wet lab" methods for extracting DNA from tiny
parasites where broken down step-by-step and hosted in open access
repository of scientific methods and collaborative protocol-centered
platform protocols.io. Since then, with our team working with authors to
input their methods we have gathered a large collection of protocols in
our [protocols.io
workspace](https://www.protocols.io/workspaces/gigascience-press).

Mofiz E. et al., Genomic resources and draft reference assemblies of the
human and porcine scabies mites, *Sarcoptes scabiei* var. hominis and
var. suis. *GigaScience*. **5**:23. 2016.
doi:[10.1186/s13742-016-0129-](http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13742-016-0129-2)

**10. The third dimension barrier**  
To ease access to our published three-dimensional datasets and models we
have gone beyond just describing the data collection and findings by
providing downloadable, interactive files of everything in these study.
For interested citizen scientists out there, we've been doing things
like providing new interactive web-based viewers, video clips and 3D
printable file formats. In 2019 [we published our first
paper](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/sketchfab-3d-fossil-seabed/)
showcasing *GigaScience*'s complete integration with the Sketchfab 3D
viewer, which enabling readers to interact with the 3D fossils in the
paper and even view them via virtual reality headsets. Making our
published research far more accessible and interesting to the general
public.

Reid M, et al. A micro X-ray computed tomography dataset of fossil
echinoderms in an ancient obrution bed: a robust method for taphonomic
and palaeoecologic analyses. *Gigascience*. 2019 **8**:3.
doi:[10.1093/gigascience/giy156](http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/gigascience/giy156)

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The post [Open Access Week 2021: GigaScience's 10 Examples of
Open](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/gigascience-open-access-week-2021/){rel="nofollow"}
appeared first on
[GigaBlog](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog){rel="nofollow"}.


This week is International Open Access Week, and with the theme “It Matters How We Open Knowledge: Building Structural Equity”. This aims at highlighting the individual and collective action required alongside the decisions, actions, and investments in knowledge sharing to ensure that equity is foundational.

Open Access Week 2021: GigaScience’s 10 Examples of Open

Hans Zauner

**The year is almost over and it's time to review the highlights of
*GigaScience*'s 2017.**

::: {#attachment_2231 .wp-caption .alignright style="width: 310px"}
![](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/reindeer-300x199.jpg){.size-medium
.wp-image-2231 loading="lazy" decoding="async"
aria-describedby="caption-attachment-2231" width="300" height="199"
srcset="http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/reindeer-300x199.jpg 300w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/reindeer-768x511.jpg 768w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/reindeer-1024x681.jpg 1024w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/reindeer.jpg 1280w"
sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px"}

["Draft genome of the reindeer (Rangifer
tarandus)"](https://doi.org/10.1093/gigascience/gix102)  
Foto: [Alexandre
Buisse](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Rangifer_tarandus#/media/File:20070818-0001-strolling_reindeer.jpg)
CC-BY-SA 3.0
:::

2017 was as special year for *GigaScience*: a year of many firsts and we
celebrated our 5th birthday! An occasion to look back -- and forward, as
we did in our [anniversary
editorial](https://academic.oup.com/gigascience/article/6/9/1/4004834).
We marked the completion of our first five years in Prague, at ISMB, the
same meeting where *GigaScience* first came to life in 2012. Czech beer,
cake and our amazing guests (mainly recruited ad hoc from the BOSC
track), all coming together on a summer evening in a corner pub in
Prague: those were the ingredients for a [truly memorable birthday
party](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/bohemian-bashfully-baroque-birthdays-and-bingo-in-prague/).
Thanks again to all our guests for a special evening. We hope to see you
all again in 2022 for our 10th birthday party, wherever that will take
place!

Apart from celebrating, we also were one of the sponsors of the BOSC
track at ISMB, and were happy to witness that the Open Science movement
is in excellent health.

> Thanks to all the brilliant people who came and celebrated our 5th
> birthday at
> [\#ISMBECCB](https://twitter.com/hashtag/ISMBECCB?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)
> tonight [pic.twitter.com/4MOMfAWfIe](https://t.co/4MOMfAWfIe)
>
> --- GigaScience (@GigaScience) [July 23,
> 2017](https://twitter.com/GigaScience/status/889266228455460865?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)

## **Going forward with OUP**

2017 was the first year with our new publisher, Oxford University Press.
During the transition, quite a lot of chores needed to be done behind
the scenes to continue the smooth running of the journal. We are looking
forward to further grow our radical open review, open data, open science
approach with our new publishing partner in 2018 and beyond.

## ***GigaScience* Competition and Prize Track**

::: {#attachment_2233 .wp-caption .alignright style="width: 235px"}
![](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/4190569720_4b2c376c6a_z-225x300.jpg){.size-medium
.wp-image-2233 loading="lazy" decoding="async"
aria-describedby="caption-attachment-2233" width="225" height="300"
srcset="http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/4190569720_4b2c376c6a_z-225x300.jpg 225w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/4190569720_4b2c376c6a_z.jpg 375w"
sizes="(max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px"}

["The first near-complete assembly of the hexaploid bread wheat genome,
Triticum aestivum](https://doi.org/10.1093/gigascience/gix097)"  
Foto: [D. Endresen CC-BY
2.0](https://www.flickr.com/photos/dag_endresen/4190569720)
:::

Another highly memorable event this year was the International
Conference on Genomics (ICG) meeting in Shenzhen in October. For the 7th
consecutive year we've attended our co-publisher BGI's annual meeting,
but this year we had a first: Our first ever [competition and prize
track](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/and-the-winner-is-our-icg12-prize-track-on-gigatv/),
to promote new, cutting edge research.

Six *GigaScience* authors were given free registration, accommodation
and travel to present their work. Among the strong contenders for the
prize was a  massively improved, [near complete wheat
genome](https://academic.oup.com/gigascience/article/6/11/1/4561661)
that made waves also beyond the wheat community. But as competitions go,
there could be only one winner, and the jury awarded the first prize to
Taras Oleksyk, who presented work on [the genome of a rather unique
mammal, *Solenodon
paradoxus*](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/07/18/164574)
from the island of Hispaniola. Watch Oleksyk's award-winning
presentation, and all the other talks of the prize track, on our
[Youtube
channel](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1Xt1XQMEYqhZ002Phrpn6A).

For the prize track we also experimented with real-time open peer
review. All reviews at *GigaScience* are open after publication, but for
the ICG event we went one step further, in collaboration with our
friends at [AcademicKarma](http://academickarma.org/). Reviews could be
followed and contributed in real time via [a special
page](http://academickarma.org/conference/icg12). Transparent peer
review is a topic we are particularly interested in, of course. As [our
contribution to Peer Review
Week](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/peerrevwk17-update-peer-review-week-goes-transparent-and-interactive/),
we co-hosted a webinar, discussing preprints and open peer review with
AcademicKarma.

## **Some favorite articles**

::: {#attachment_2039 .wp-caption .alignleft style="width: 310px"}
![: William H. Piel and Antónia
Monteiro](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/anynana-300x256.png){.wp-image-2039
.size-medium loading="lazy" decoding="async"
aria-describedby="caption-attachment-2039" width="300" height="256"
srcset="http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/anynana-300x256.png 300w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/anynana.png 554w"
sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px"}

["A high-coverage draft genome of the mycalesine butterfly Bicyclus
anynana."](https://doi.org/10.1093/gigascience/gix035)   
foto credit: William H. Piel and Antónia Monteiro
:::

Only a subset of  articles could be presented within the timeframe of
the ICG prize track. Other highlights published last year once again
include some high quality genome assemblies. *GigaScience* continues to
be a favorite journal for advanced plant genomics, showcasing cutting
edge technology to improve assemblies; as evidenced not only by the new 
wheat assembly mentioned above, but also by a recent article on a
[ improved assembly of the wild strawberry
genome](https://academic.oup.com/gigascience/advance-article/doi/10.1093/gigascience/gix124/4739363?searchresult=1),
using a combination of optical maps and long reads.

In the animal department, we could not possibly write a mid-December
blog post without mentioning [the reindeer
genome](https://academic.oup.com/gigascience/article/6/12/1/4562806)
published recently, also [featured on
GigaBlog](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/a-christmas-gift-to-you-from-gigascience-scientists-have-unwrapped-the-reindeer-genome/).

Moving on to the insect world, we published [the genome of *Bicyclus
anynana*](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/the-genome-of-a-shape-shifting-butterfly/),
a charismatic butterfly and important model in evolution and ecology due
to its seasonal morphological varieties. The [data
note](https://doi.org/10.1093/gigascience/gix035) (with [supporting data
in GigaDB](http://dx.doi.org/10.5524/100280), as always) will help to
better understand this unusual developmental switch.

We also featured an arachnid species: * *The parasitic  *Tropilaelaps
mercedesae *threatens bee colonies in Asia, and the genome sequence,
[published in
*GigaScience*,](https://academic.oup.com/gigascience/article/6/3/1/3038223)
reveals some interesting features, including traces of horizontal gene
transfer from bacteria, as the authors explained in a [GigaBlog 
Q&A](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/getting-the-buzz-on-bee-parasites-author-qa-with-tatsuhiko-kadowaki/).

## **FAIR everything**

A certain four letter acronym was mentioned a lot wherever Open Science
was discussed in 2017, including BOSC and also the recent [FORCE
2017](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/force2017-in-berlin-changing-the-culture/)
meeting in Berlin:

***FAIR** -- **F**indable, **A**ccessible, **I**nteroperable,
**R**eproducible.* First drafted in 2015, there is wide agreement now
that these principles are a very good idea -- but how to
put [FAIR](https://www.force11.org/group/fairgroup/fairprinciples) into
practice? Javier Quilez and colleagues showed in a [didactical
*GigaScience*
commentary](https://academic.oup.com/gigascience/article/6/11/1/4557140)
how best practice can look like for a sequencing project (and what
errors are best avoided).

Our radical approach to openness and sharing would not have been
possible without the help of our reviewers, who agree to sign and
publish their reports and also take extra care that data and methods are
supporting the submissions. Thank you for your dedication and your
continued support!

Although we were quite busy in the first half of the year with the
transition to our new publisher OUP, we also introduced a few technical
novelties:

## **BioRxiv integration**

![](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Ipe-e1513672055322-168x300.jpg){.size-medium
.wp-image-2235 loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="168" height="300"
srcset="http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Ipe-e1513672055322-168x300.jpg 168w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Ipe-e1513672055322.jpg 387w"
sizes="(max-width: 168px) 100vw, 168px"}  
["Genome assembly of the Pink
Ipê" ](https://doi.org/10.1093/gigascience/gix125)

Not long ago posting unreviewed versions of research articles online was
seen as an avant-garde and slightly iffy thing to do as a biomedical
researcher, but preprints are becoming the new normal in the life
sciences. We always had supported preprints, we encourage our authors to
cite them and of course we never hold it against authors if they post a
preprint of their work prior to submitting to us.

To make it even easier to submit bioRxiv preprints, we now offer [a
shortcut connecting bioRxiv and
*GigaScience*](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/shortcut-from-biorxiv-to-gigascience/).

## Code Ocean

In addition to our  integration with bioRxiv, Publons and protocols.io,
we also [experimented with the code sharing platform Code
Ocean](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/data-intensive-software-publishing-sailing-the-code-ocean-qa-with-ruibang-luo).
Code Ocean takes reproducible code to a new level. Authors can upload
code and data in ten programming languages and Code Ocean provides an
interactive "Compute Capsule". They also assign a Digital Object
Identifier (DOI) to the algorithm, that allows the algorithm to be cited
in the reference sections of papers. See this paper by [Ruibang Luo and
colleagues](https://academic.oup.com/gigascience/article/6/7/1/3868354),
and the [Code Ocean entry cited
therein](https://codeocean.com/2017/06/08/16gt-colon-a-fast-and-sensitive-variant-caller-using-a-16-genotype-probabilistic-model/code), 
for an example how *GigaScience*-style open data publishing ties in with
Code Ocean's reproducible software capsules.

What do our authors think of this experiment? Ruibang Luo is as excited
as we are:

> "I think Code Ocean is awesome and I would like to use it for my
> future projects and I would like to recommend my colleagues."

##  RRIDs {#rrids}

Another software-related innovation you may have come across in the
methods sections of our papers are ["Research Resource Identifiers"
(RRIDS)](https://scicrunch.org/) we are encouraging our authors to
include.

The variety of software tools and databases used in life science
projects can get bewildering, and RRIDs are a handy way to keep track of
the tool zoo. Due to the standardized format, RRIDs mentioned in our
papers are machine-readable, allowing  for example annotation bots to
enhance and extract information automatically.

::: {#attachment_2234 .wp-caption .alignright style="width: 160px"}
![](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/882px-Limnoperna_fortunei-150x150.jpg){.wp-image-2234
.size-thumbnail loading="lazy" decoding="async"
aria-describedby="caption-attachment-2234" width="150" height="150"}

["A hybrid-hierarchical genome assembly strategy to sequence the
invasive golden mussel Limnoperna
fortunei."](https://doi.org/10.1093/gigascience/gix128)  
Foto:[Boltovskoy](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Limnoperna_fortunei.jpg)/
CC-BY-SA
:::

## Citizen Science at the UN in Nairobi

In November, our executive editor Scott Edmunds was on a diplomatic
mission in Nairobi, Kenya: Before the main UN Environment Assembly, a
Science-Policy-Business Forum on the Environment took place, and as part
of this policy forum Scott participated in [discussions around Citizen
Science](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/citizen-smith-goes-to-nairobi-taking-citizen-science-to-the-un/),
also representing  [Citizen Science Asia](http://citizenscience.asia).
The gathering has set aim at promoting citizen science across the globe
-- and we will continue to do our bit. Just now, we published the
[genome assembly of the golden mussel *Limnoperna
fortunei*](https://academic.oup.com/gigascience/advance-article/doi/10.1093/gigascience/gix128/4750781?searchresult=1),
an invasive species. Following a [Community Genomics
approach](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/community-genomes-from-the-peoples-parrot-to-crowdfernding/)
that we've been promoting since our [Puerto Rican "peoples" parrot
genome](https://doi.org/10.1186/2047-217X-1-14), the project was
supported in part by crowfunding and also an exercise in public
participation, [as first author Marcela Ulioano da Silva
explains](https://fellowsblog.ted.com/i-crowdfunded-my-phd-research-this-model-could-change-the-world-28a079b7a0af).

## We Love CUDDEL(s) and BYO Data & Workflow Parties {#we-love-cuddels-and-byo-data-workflow-parties}

Some of you may recall our BBSRC UK-China partnering award funded [BYO
Data](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/aint-no-party-like-a-bring-your-own-data-party/)
party in our Hong Kong office in 2014 and thanks to the [positive
outcome](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/gigametabolomics-strikes-byo-data-parties-thematic-series/),
last month we hosted another hackathon in Hong Kong made possible with a
second BBSRC grant that we've called [CUDDEL](http://cuddel.net/)
('China-UK Data Dissemination in Metabolomics'. This year the focus was
on reproducible metabolomics workflows, and 19 participants squeezed in
our office from the ISA Team at the Oxford e-Research Centre, the EBI,
the Universities of Birmingham, Manchester (Common Workflow Language),
The Sainsbury Laboratory, BGI and the University of Melbourne. The
Oxford e-Research Centre has already [blogged on
this](https://www.oerc.ox.ac.uk/news/professor-susanna-assunta-sansone-explores-open-data-hong-kong),
and follow [our blog](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/) to see how
things progress from this event.

## More hands on deck at GigaDB

And finally, very good news for our repository GigaDB: Our data curators
Chris and Jesse got much needed help to curate the growing volume of
data submitted to GigaDB. Please welcome our new data curators Mary Ann
Tuli and Chris Armit. The bigger *GigaScience* team is prepared for your
submissions and another exciting year of open science publishing.

We wish all our readers, authors, reviewers and editorial board members
a Happy New Year!

::: {#attachment_2242 .wp-caption .aligncenter style="width: 530px"}
![](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/dragonfish.jpeg){.wp-image-2242
.size-full loading="lazy" decoding="async"
aria-describedby="caption-attachment-2242" width="520" height="178"
srcset="http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/dragonfish.jpeg 520w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/dragonfish-300x103.jpeg 300w"
sizes="(max-width: 520px) 100vw, 520px"}

["Draft genome of the Antarctic dragonfish, Parachaenichthys
charcoti"](https://academic.oup.com/gigascience/article/6/8/1/4004833?searchresult=1)
:::

The post [... and a Happy New
Year](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/and-a-happy-new-year/){rel="nofollow"}
appeared first on
[GigaBlog](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog){rel="nofollow"}.


<strong>
 The year is almost over and it’s time to review the highlights of
 <em>
  GigaScience
 </em>
 ’s 2017.
</strong>
“Draft genome of the reindeer (Rangifer tarandus)”Foto: Alexandre Buisse CC-BY-SA 3.0  2017 was as special year for
<em>
 GigaScience
</em>
: a year of many firsts and we celebrated our 5th birthday! An occasion to look back – and forward, as we did in our anniversary editorial.

Rogue Scholar Posts

Open Access Week 2021: GigaScience’s 10 Examples of Open

… and a Happy New Year