Every Muppets fan knows that Christmas is all about being revisited by people you’ve previously encountered. So from 25th December to 5th January we’ll be sharing our 12 Days of DSmas. Check back daily as we share a Speaker Series chat each and every day. Happy Holidays from the Digital Science Thought Leadership Team!

Merry Dr Chris Van Tulleken-mas! We chatted with Chris online about research integrity, impact, openness, and investigative research. Catch his interview here, and don’t forget to watch his Xmas Lectures on BBC for The Royal Institution this year!

Chris on Spotify

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Professor Dame Athene Donald joined our Speaker Series line-up in February after her Speaker Series Live talk at the Ri in London, UK. Here she is talking about why we need to empower women in STEM from the ground up.

Athene on Spotify

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It’s time to go to Berlin, Germany and catch Matyas Kovacs at the Falling Walls Summit. Matyas shared his thoughts on communication and innovation to impact all of society with science.

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As a Nobel laureate and former president of The Royal Society, Professor Venki Ramakrishnan has long played a role in shaping a more innovative, inclusive and impactful research culture, which we chatted about during his live Speaker Series lecture at the Ri. We went to Cambridge, UK to hear his thoughts on curiosity, competition and collaboration.

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As Chief Publishing Officer at PLOS, Niamh provides business leadership for the entire PLOS portfolio to advance PLOS’s vision and mission. In this episode Niamh talks about the evolving landscape of scientific research and the push towards open science, including her journey from the early days of advocating for public access to research, to tackling current challenges like making science more inclusive and accessible.

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Building communities is hard, but Alice Meadows has worked hard to make it look effortless. Here she is in Boston, MA, USA, telling us about the power of persistent identifiers.

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It’s New Year’s Eve, and a time to reflect on the past and make plans for the months ahead. When we visited the Max Planck Institute in Berlin, Germany, we added to the echoes of amazing research conversations resonating around their iconic library when we chatted about the history, philosophy and future of research with Dr Maria Avxentevskaya and Dr Ben Johnson.

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Happy New Year! We caught up with pro-skater Rodney Mullen at his home in Los Angeles, USA to hear his thoughts on why we need diverse minds to innovate in all walks – and ollies – of life. And, since it’s the new year and you’re probably feeling a little “sleep deprived”, you can also follow this up with his live Speaker Series lecture at the Ri.

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If you’ve been eating as much cheese as this author, dearest gentle reader, you too will be experiencing a fascinatingly slippery grasp on reality – which brings us to Day 9’s featured speaker. “Is Maths Real?” was the question that Dr Eugenia Cheng posed in her live Speaker Series lecture at the Ri. I caught up with her ahead of her lecture in the iconic Faraday lecture theatre in London, UK to talk about why we need to break down barriers of knowledge in research, and reunite STEM and the humanities for impactful change.

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Dr Gilbert De Gregorio leads the Frontiers Planet Prize. I caught up with him in Berlin, Germany, to talk about why we need more inclusive competitions to catalyse innovation that impacts our global society.

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2024 was a wild ride for global politics, and research is not immune to its changes. I caught up with Professor Jenny Reardon in Cambridge, UK, to learn more about how we can work with politics, and not against it, to provide solutions for everyone across the world, and where red tape remains to be overcome.

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Our final Speaker Series guest of 2024 was Dr Danny Hillis. We visited the Applied Invention offices in Cambridge, MA, USA, where innovator, inventor, and Imagineer Danny shared his thoughts on how we can use novel technology to combat novel challenges in mis- and disinformation and make the most meaningful impact from data.

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Jenny has a research background in genomics, however she moved into examining the social issues raised by this area of research. In our chat she recalls being optimistic around the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and how this new field of science was a beacon of hope for bringing people of all backgrounds together through commonality. Tempted by the opportunity to combine her love for science, politics and justice, Jenny almost worked on the Human Genome Diversity Project – a project that intended on representing genetic variation across populations. Though the purpose of the project was to showcase how people across the world share fundamental similarities, the project sadly ended up being described as a so-called “vampire project”, sucking the blood of indigenous peoples in the name of research instead of working towards their continued survival.

This project and others like it inspired Jenny to make space for scientists that want to do good in the world without inadvertently contributing to the existing extractive nature of some areas of research, however this is tricky when the entire endeavour of research is more complicated. Current research culture is based on an archaic way of exploring thoughts and ideas, the framework of which was crafted by a fairly homogeneous group of wealthy people who shared similar thoughts and lived experiences hundreds of years ago. These reinforced the informal ways in which power was being distributed across the research profession. What place does that framework hold in today’s research ecosystem? I asked Jenny whether it is time for a research revolution. Naturally she also thinks we should be grabbing our flags and flocking to the barricades. She argues that if we don’t address the politics of research, we are at risk of research being deemed to be an untrustworthy pursuit. She discusses the concept of macropolitics vs micropolitics, reminding us that while we should absolutely be concerned by how the Donald Trump and others will impact research, we should also consider the impact of our own actions have on research culture and whether we are contributing to upholding aspects of a culture that are not conducive to inclusive and impactful research.

Jenny recommends that we stop “othering” the politicisation problem and take a level of individual responsibility and accountability. Most people go into research with idealistic interests, but research is an institution and we must be honest about the fact that, while many research transformations have led to better ways of doing work, there is still a lot to do to unpick the imbalanced power relationships that persist in the scientific method. Reflecting on her own experiences, and resonating with those we have heard from across the research community, Jenny finds it challenging that we don’t equip early career researchers with the tools to navigate the social aspects of the research space. If you are lucky, you may end up in a research group that passes down pearls of wisdom around the bunsen burner, much like our ancestors shared survival tactics around the campfire. However this level of support is not universal, and very much comes down to the luck of the draw. This results in many people feeling that they do not belong in research, and leaving to pursue other paths of interest. Their loss is felt in the absence of their ideas as we innovate to overcome the huge challenges we face as a global society. It also takes a lot of learning, listening and empathy to ensure that the ways we do this are free of racism, colonialism, and other factors that fly in the face of inclusion of all.

Scientists aren’t to blame for this. We work in a culture where very few scientific researchers are trained in social and political issues. If they had a better understanding of these, they have a better chance of doing good in the world through their research. Part of the challenges we need to overcome centres around the value we place on these aspects of research. Much like public engagement and science communication, an awareness of the social and political space is not valued in the same way as other research activities and outputs. By changing the way in which we reward successful research and looking beyond simply publications and grants won to include such skills, we will move another step forward in making research more robust and more inclusive. By changing how we value participation in these activities, we go beyond seeing ethics and the social justice of our research as tick box exercises and move towards understanding how they make the research we conduct better for more groups in society. This is why Jenny and her team focus more on justice than ethics, a term that is now associated with mandatory online courses and workshops that instil fear in researchers instead of empowerment. Justice is about a world where more people are included and their needs and aspirations are being addressed. It is a fundamental facet of the work we do as researchers.

Jenny goes on to talk about how this is a journey that social scientists need to take too. For a long time social science has been presented as a space of purity and neutrality, free of politics, but research is riddled with the politicisation of science, so this is an impossible claim to make and we need to be honest in recognising that, especially as we talk about the differential distribution of power and access to resources. Who is able to ask questions about our world, who can participate in this discourse, and who is really represented? If we continue to present a world in which we claim that research is apolitical, we risk further eroding trust in research.

However we need a massive culture change and global buy-in to move the needle. We need a deeper appreciation for how social issues are impacted by science. Jenny believes that the best research will reflect this more considered way of working. It will be more inclusive, more impactful, and ultimately more trustworthy. Until we change this culture, we aren’t doing the most innovative research as we are simply not making the most of the wealth of ideas out there.

When we talk about science and social justice, conversations about inequitable access to research information spring to mind. However there is also the issue of inequitable access to the production of knowledge too. Red tape and financial hurdles make overcoming these barriers challenging, and working across funding councils based in different continents is almost impossible. How can we solve global challenges when these barriers to impactful collaboration exist? Funding must be available to benefit our entire planet, and not just for the countries from which that funding originates. Overcoming these challenges requires time and resource to build communities and work together to iron out processes that work for everyone. Jenny’s work includes investigating how we can build truly global networks, working out who will fund them, and how we can ensure that funding sources are trusted. She believes that we need a shift in how funders measure their impact and return on investment. Funders need to park their local or national agendas and think bigger and more collaboratively to enable a democratic ethos of how funding is distributed.

So what does this all have to do with politics, and why does the outcome of today’s election matter for research, to the USA and to the world? Where there is politics, there is policy, and this impacts everyone. Policy makers are one tool we have to fundamentally change the culture of how we do research. When we look back at the UK’s own open research journey, the impact of national funding mandates and research assessment exercises have had on the adoption of open science principles. In the USA under the Biden administration, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) created an Office of Science in Society that focuses on the societal impact of research. Headed up by the amazing Alondra Nelson who is trained in science and technology studies and cultural studies, the Office is one way in which policy makers and other stakeholders can think deeply on this issue, and look at research policy through a DEIA lens to determine whether it is truly serving everyone in society, or whether we are still leaving some people out of the discourse.

Whatever the outcome of today’s election, its impact will be felt across the world, from the allocation of funding to the way in which we measure research success and impact. Through Jenny’s work and that of her research centre, while we may have overlooked the inclusion of everyone in the impact of research for a long time, we have an opportunity to take stock and collectively contribute to a more inclusive, trustworthy and impactful research culture.

You can watch the full interview with Jenny on our YouTube channel, and check out our Speaker Series playlist on YouTube which includes chats with some of our previous speakers, as well as our TL;DR Shorts playlist with short, snappy insights from a range of experts on the topics that matter to the research community.

With thanks to Huw James from Science Story Lab for filming and co-producing this interview. Filmed at the Møller Institute, Churchill College at the University of Cambridge in July 2024.

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However, our second Speaker Series Live lecturer of 2024 – mathematician, concert pianist, and author Dr Eugenia Cheng – is on a mission to change that perception of the subject she loves and showcase the joy, creativity and wonder of maths, and how it underpins our everyday lives, from the food we eat to the entertainment we consume. I caught up with Eugenia ahead of her talk at the Ri in June 2024 in the spectacular Faraday Lecture Theatre to talk about the creativity, wonder and relatability of maths, and how we can all engage with it in ways that bring us joy.

^{*or math, if you’re American and your letter S went to celebrate Labor Day along with your letter U – and, apparently, the skirt-portion of my dress. Always big-chair-test your summer sartorial choices, friends. Even my 100mm Crossfliketas couldn’t brace me in that massive chair so my dress stayed in place, and my only back-up outfit was supplied by the Time Variance Authority, so let’s all agree to just let it go and never mention it again, kthxbye}

Not just a mathematician

If you’ve come across Eugenia’s work, you like me will know that she is far from being “just a mathematician” – Eugenia uses her maths knowledge and her educational experience to teach maths at an art school in Chicago, as well as write books and deliver many public speaking engagements. She is also a musician, pianist, composer, and artist. She also somehow still still finds time to conduct research in category theory – the most abstract part of mathematics that focuses on finding patterns within maths and across concepts and situations. Brilliantly, a little like mathsception, “the thing that explains category theory is category theory” – or the “deepest point of explanation” as Eugenia puts it. Her explanation for her topic reminded me of xkcd 435 (and not 438 as I said in the interview, sorry xkcd fans, mea culpa), whereby her area of expertise really is the most fundamental of fundamental understanding.

Unearthing the foundations of knowledge

As humans Eugenia thinks that we understand things better if we understand them more deeply. This depth of knowledge enables us to make more connections, so that we can unite a broader range of things – much like in research where connections across subject areas strengthen the research we can do and the problems we can help overcome. In maths this requires a less linear way of thinking. Eugenia says it is all about creativity and also practice. However this is something we often attribute to being a natural characteristic. Eugenia reminds us that it is not just nature, as aspects of nurture definitely play a role too too, mostly through practicing new ways of thinking and doing. Practice really does make perfect, whether it is thinking in a different way for research, or whether it is learning transferrable skills in cooking that help you experiment with other things.

This is important when we think about problem solving. We spend a lot of time focusing on very practical solutions to solving problems, but sometimes the ability to think differently and more creatively allows us to make connections that can lead to better solutions. Maths enables people to think more philosophically and in a less application-driven way, which Eugenia describes as “illuminating”. Eugenia uses a lot of artistic vocabulary to describe maths which comes from the creativity required to think in such an abstract way. Creativity is about having ideas, and those ideas come from imagination. Maths is built on logic, but fresh ideas don’t come from that same space. Eugenia feels that maths education leaves this important part out, and I agree. Practicals in school science classes are more like demos than experiments. Eugenia would love to see a world in which we can reflect and reward more creativity and innovation in these subjects.

Communicating maths to the masses

Eugenia reflect on what a privilege it is to be able to engage with a range of audiences of all ages and interest levels. Although she has received criticism from many in the past, who have commented on what a “waste of expertise” it is for her to share her love of maths with young children, she believes that there is nothing more important to change perceptions. Discussing how challenging it must be to communicate across such a range of demographics, she says that analogy is the key to storytelling and allowing engagement with a range of complex concepts. She also reflects on the concept of practicing as a way of strengthening communication skills, and always listening, and adaptively responding to people’s reactions.

Eugenia is frustrated that the fear or dislike of maths is so widespread – though this is something that continues to motivate Eugenia. She feels that we need to be better at remembering what education is trying to achieve – and maths education in particular. If we are all working towards different goals it is hard to achieve any of them if we employ conflicting methods. Eugenia believes that teaching people how to think and how to learn is more transferable than learning how to carry out specific tasks that we always hear about when people ask why they need to learn how to do simultaneous equations, for example. She argues that maths doesn’t always have to be “useful” – it can be, and should also be, fun!

Eugenia makes a great comparison between learning and physical fitness, describing maths as the “cure strength” of learning. Maths is effective the abs and glutes of your mind. When your maths is strong through practice and training, you are in a stronger position to access other ways of thinking and making connections. A good level of confidence in maths shouldn’t be relegated to helping you calculating a grocery bill or solving an unrealistic maths problems that inexplicably always seems to involve large quantities of fruit.

Removing the red tape

Eugenia believes that one way to make maths more realistic could be to make it – and other subjects – less siloed. We talk about the unrealistic siloes of the sciences, reflecting on what a shame it is that physics couldn’t be more interesting at A Level** because it had to be entirely decoupled from maths A Level, but Eugenia believes that we should expand this way of thinking to include the arts and humanities, as well as financial understanding, marketing, and business. She is a great advocate for more project-based teaching to give people more holistic and realistic experiences of how the everyday world works. In undertaking such projects that mimic situations we encounter in every day life, learners can gain a more realistic appreciation of how everything in life involves a range of subjects and skills.

However, moving to such a different way of teaching and learning requires big change and global buy-in. How can we achieve this? Eugenia is realistic in that perhaps it is a big dream to have, but every Disney fan knows that dreams can come true. However, while wishing on a star may not get us very far, perhaps showcasing the value and impact in this new way of teaching and learning, as well as investing in changes by better funding education and make it less bureaucratic could lead to novel design in educational curricula. If anyone can advocate for change in this area, I feel that Eugenia is the person to do it.

**^{Hi, physics fans! We’d like to remind viewers and readers that these opinions are purely subjective to the chemist and the mathematician you see before you. We know that physics is just fine, but if you’d like to complain, please join the queue behind our CEO, who I’m sure will be first in line to defend this most noble of subjects…}

You can watch my interview with Eugenia on our YouTube channel, catch up on Eugenia’s Speaker Series talk on the Ri’s YouTube channel, and find all of Eugenia’s books in your favourite bookstore. You can also check out our Speaker Series playlist on YouTube which includes chats with some of our previous speakers, as well as our TL;DR Shorts playlist with short, snappy insights from a range of experts on the topics that matter to the research community.

With thanks to Eugenia for sharing her time with us, Huw James from Science Story Lab for filming and co-producing this interview, and the Royal Institution for hosting us in their beautiful Faraday Lecture Theatre ahead of Eugenia’s talk.

The post The reality of maths – meet Dr Eugenia Cheng appeared first on Digital Science.

To Rodney, skateboarding was a little like a series of puzzles – in his mind skate tricks were mathematical challenges, ready to be worked out, deconstructed and built back better. Transfers of balance and force and transitions of energy made sense to him, as someone who had honed their interest in and talent for engineering through kits like Erector Sets, in many ways a precursor to Lego. Rodney picked up skateboarding easily and nurtured his natural talent but he knew from an early age that to progress, he would have to think outside the box and “veer off into my own direction”, as he put it. He succeeded and then some, turning pro at the age of 14 and then also going on to use this drive to do things distinctly differently in a career in engineering.

Skateboarding is science, art, athleticism, and innovation borne from a desire to not settle for the status quo. Rodney believes that the spirit of scientists is the same as that of skateboarders – both groups are always asking what they can do to take things in a new direction.

Invention and innovation

Esther Dyson said in a recent TL;DR Short that as a research community, it is possible that we would benefit from looking back at knowledge that has already been created to see whether it can be further developed, rather than constantly creating new knowledge. Rodney agrees with this, stating that invention only really becomes innovation when it is adopted by the community that benefits from its development. This is true of one of his most well-known skate tricks, the Flat Ground Ollie, a gateway to many other tricks as it allows the board to be lifted into the air so the skater can land on a range of surfaces.

Rodney first performed this trick in 1982 and, although it was received with some interest, it was not until skating started to evolve away from skate parks and pools to the streets that the move was needed, to fully embrace the opportunities to skate in a range of different and novel ways. Rodney says that, like in research, you cannot predict what will have relevance later down the line. We can never know what knowledge that has already been created will come in handy when faced with a new set of future challenges.

This notion of innovation over invention is obvious when we look at the history of skateboarding. The evolution of skateboards – their size, shape, and the composition of their components – has been driven by the needs of the skateboarding community, with flat boards changing to double kicks, for example. This isn’t however for a lack of interest from a range of commercial entities. The recent skateboard exhibit at the Design Museum showcased how different skating eras were defined by new materials and new designs, but that their development was supported by but not led by chemical and manufacturing companies. Many companies tried to create things that they thought the skate community wanted to further develop the sport, but they didn’t always translate into adoption by the community as these organisations weren’t fully in tune with the community’s needs. Coproduction and cultural understanding were key for commercial success.

One perfect example, and one that Rodney himself has experience working within, is the polyurethane space. Skaters need durable wheels that also possess a fine balance between elasticity and rigidity. Rodney himself says that you can peruse the full catalogue of PU molecules, analyse their bonding, and predict what MIGHT work, but it is only by creating prototypes and having skaters use them that you will know whether you have hit the sweet spot or not. Innovators need to have a feel for the needs of the community they are trying to serve, which is why multiple skill sets are needed in all areas of research and development.

Community engagement for innovation

In last week’s TL;DR Short, Courtney Hohne talked about empowering communities to engage in innovation. There are many examples of initiatives that have seen the benefits of creating platforms for engagement to catalyse creativity from the skating community. Rodney cites the Smithsonian’s Innoskate as one example of a programme that nurtures and supports scientific developments from non-traditional scientists. By bringing together a range of lived experiences shaped by different environments and histories, groups of people can better solve problems and most impactfully innovate. Fresh perspectives on existing challenges are good and, just like in research, we need a range of people in the room.

However, we are often constrained by the frameworks within which we measure success. Reflecting on his career in skateboarding, Rodney says that contests can be good, but they can also be constrictive in their nature. There are many parallels with research here. Frameworks for measuring success can help researchers, institutions and other groups and organisations understand how they are progressing, but these frameworks should not stifle productivity and creativity. They also need to be open, flexible and inclusive enough to bring together a range of cultural experiences, to create the most useful and meaningful developments.

Failing to succeed

Failure needs a rebrand. Referring to skateboarding but also using it as an analogy, Rodney says that the best thing he can teach any new skater is how to fall well. Falling and getting back up again is a skill that needs to be developed, whether on wheels or in a lab. In research, this can mean trying, failing, and trying again to achieve anything from the perfect synthetic method to the ideal characteristics of a material. Rodney believes that learning to fail is freeing, and can unlock a sense of confidence in trying to do things differently.

He feels that this also holds true in business however he argues that failing faster, a method that is so often celebrated in tech, isn’t always the best way to innovate. Failing safely is key – there is a fine line between taking enough of a risk, and not being so irresponsible that you lose it all. Building resilience through failure is a crucial strength to drive more innovation but it is not an experience anyone willingly wants to go through, especially in a world where it is implied that we must succeed in everything we do. Here at Digital Science we ran a ‘#FailTales’ campaign back in 2019 where we encouraged the research community to share their failures, in an attempt to destigmatise this important step in the journey to success. While there was a lot of encouragement and interest, we actually, erm, failed at the campaign, as when push came to shove, very few people were willing to share their own personal stories of failure, for fear of coming across as vulnerable or incompetent. Luckily MIT had better luck with their MIT FAIL! initiative that Rodney was involved with. Whether it is sharing negative results or sharing stories about times things didn’t go to plan, it is important to have an awareness of these things from a research perspective, as we could save so many resources by helping each other out.

As an engineer, Rodney has created a range of inventions for the skate community. Some of these worked brilliantly and were adopted by the community, but others failed to quite make it off the ground. The community’s loss was my gain, however, as Rodney shared with me some of the material science successes and failures that he has seen as he built a board. It is clear that with his in-depth knowledge of materials chemistry combined with his knowledge of the sport he knows how to create something entirely unique and perfectly tailored to its user – in this case, me. With its magnesium trucks and hollow kingpin, light but strong bamboo deck perfect for variable British weather conditions, and extremely rare bearings, plus a range of other personal touches, the resultant board is not only a thing of beauty, meaning and love, but it is also ideal for a small, keen baby-skater with half-decent balance and terrible ankles that require a good amount of stability. That we were able to take our boards out to test it together was a huge honour. That the board required no tweaks shows what a difference an engineer with lived experience of the object they are creating can make entirely off the fly.

The future of skateboarding science

“All new tech is really old tech”, as Rodney says, but innovative variations on existing inventions are important. Many filed patents are never used, so can we consider this mark of invention as indicative also of innovation and impact? Rodney argues that perhaps rather than making big step changes, we can consider small tweaks to what we already know, as they could lead to many more developments. He would also like to see us taking inspiration from adjacent cultures and communities. As he says, a simple “refactoring of ideas” can explode, creating ripples that reach far into the outskirts of culture, from the music we listen to to the way we dress.

Bringing together a range of experiences allows people to approach problems from new perspectives, and bring fresh approaches to overcoming existing challenges. Rodney hopes that we will not be constrained or limited by metrics of success that can often support homogeneity in the demographics of people included as this can hamper progress, in both skateboarding and in science. He hopes that we continue to work towards a culture and framework that is open and flexible enough to embrace outsiders and create a sense of belonging for a range of people and minds.

Catch Rodney Mullen at the Royal Institition in September as part of our Speaker Series Live programme of events and stay tuned for more science of skateboarding content in the coming weeks.

You can also check out our Speaker Series playlist on YouTube which includes chats with some of our previous speakers, as well as our TL;DR Shorts playlist with short, snappy insights from a range of experts on the topics that matter to the research community.

With thanks to Huw James from Science Story Lab for filming and co-producing this interview. Thanks also to Rodney and Lori for welcoming us into their home in Los Angeles to film this episode.

The post Science and skateboarding – meet Rodney Mullen appeared first on Digital Science.

In this chat, Alice tells us about research infrastructure, persistent identifiers (PIDs), why metadata matters, and what she would like to see from the future of information management in the research community, ahead of the first-ever PIDFest, a conference that focuses on persistent identifiers for research information and infrastructure, taking place at the National Library of Technology in Prague, Czechia next week. If Alice’s interview inspires you to learn more or engage with some of the topics scheduled for discussion, you can still register to attend virtually.

The importance of community engagement

Alice talks about the importance of building research solutions with the community in mind. Whether it is a new standard or a brand new process, consulting with researchers and future users of a new standard or process, understanding their needs, and trying to meet them as well as possible means that they feel seen, heard, and involved, and have a certain sense of buy-in to making the solution’s adoption within the research ecosystem a reality. As Alice says, if you don’t bring communities along the journey with you, it will be much harder to succeed.

In order to better support different segments and groups within research to further develop ways in which research can be made more open, inclusive, collaborative and impactful, Alice and three other friends from across the research landscape came together to form the MoreBrains Cooperative. A consultancy working across all segments of research, the research-related Avengers at MoreBrains are academic librarian Josh Brown, technical product wizard and former Digital Science colleague Phil Jones, academic publisher and data scientist Fiona Murphy, and Alice, a community engagement professional who has helped transform research by engaging with the research community to help support the adoption of new and better ways of doing research. MoreBrains’s values of community engagement and involvement even extend to their cooperative status.

PIDs and metadata

Given their name, persistent identifiers (or PIDs) in research information may not always be as well known or indeed as persistent as we would like them to be. As a former academic myself, I often admit that I did not know much about the world of PIDs until moving to Digital Science and peeking behind the curtain. Yet I was far from alone in that lack of understanding. PIDs allow researchers to claim work as their own, tie it to their institution, and share that work with citeable credit. One way that community engagement can help encourage the adoption of systems and processes that lead to greater findability of research information is through building confidence in the use of new systems and helping people understand the value of getting involved. For example, by spending a little time carefully selecting your keywords and fields of research when publishing a paper, you can increase the chances of people finding that paper and building on your work, allowing your research to reach its fullest potential as a contribution to the ever-growing corpus of knowledge.

But it doesn’t just stop with PIDs for researchers, institutions, equipment, etc. as in order to be a good data citizen and put information into the system that is useful for ourselves and others, we must understand the value of metadata. Good information about information leads to data that can be easily navigated, while also adding context for users of that information, whether it is a published paper, a geological sample, or a particular microscope.

Take, for example, a well-curated digital music library. It would be easy to throw all of your music into the library and not care about preserving information that would help disambiguate one artist from others with similar names, or assign a song to an album, or even label the genre of music. If this info-about-info, or metadata, hasn’t initially been included with songs, it can be a daunting task to manually add it for every individual song, and so this process can be overlooked. In musical terms, a lack of rich and accurate metadata could mean searching for Taylor Swift’s It’s Nice To Have A Friend from the album Lover (Taylor’s Version) and being presented with James Taylor’s You’ve Got A Friend from the album Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon. While both songs are great, the lack of metadata prevents the user from finding exactly what they want, when they want it, from the sea of information they can access. If that metadata had been included from the moment those songs entered the digital environment, they would already be disambiguated from one another. In the same way, if researchers can add detailed metadata to the research information they put into the system, they are contributing to a community built on good data citizenship and can hope to find research information within the system that is just as easy to discover too.

Why metadata matters

Good metadata helps researchers find information relevant to them. It also helps to make connections between otherwise disparate pieces of research information. As Alice says in our chat, a lot of good research relies on making connections between information that already exists, and building on the shoulders of giants, as the saying goes. Research information is being produced at an unprecedented rate, and keeping on top of it all is an uphill battle. This means that we need systems that allow us to quickly recall the most relevant and reliable research information. Metadata powers this.

Good metadata can also break down silos of knowledge by making connections across fields of research by linking observations and effects that are appropriately labelled with the right metadata. This allows researchers to discover information from complementary fields of research that they may not yet know they were missing out on. This becomes particularly useful in our urgent quest for sustainable solutions to our looming global challenges.

PIDs and trust in Open Research

One challenge we have discussed at length here at TL;DR and within the community is the need to ensure robustness and integrity in the research we build on, especially in a more open research culture. Openness is important in the world of research information too. PIDs and the metadata used to describe them must be openly accessible. Creating a culture of good open metadata can go a long way towards addressing our research integrity needs, as metadata can reveal whether research information, research affiliations, and so on, have been checked so that the user can better determine whether or not that piece of research can it be trusted.

In this way, metadata and persistent identifiers offer another way of demonstrating the provenance of research. This is particularly important as we build new research technologies on this information. In order to build strong solutions, we must ensure that the information we build these with is trustworthy.

PIDs also help researchers get acknowledgement and credit for the work people they doing. One way that we support this at Digital Science is to help researchers secure DOIs or digital object identifiers, perhaps the best known PID for researchers, when they share their work on figshare, which can be cited by other researchers. This can go some way to shaking up the types of research people are able to get recognition for.

We’re all In this together

Given Alice’s community-minded values, it is perhaps no surprise that one of her hopes for the future of research infrastructure is a more joined-up approach. Alice explains that if there is no overarching organisation wrangling researchers’ infrastructure needs, everyone does their own thing with little to no support, and the entire landscape can become more fragmented. However, we all know that the best research is done collaboratively and collectively. If solutions can be created that help as many people as possible, and outcomes and impact can be shared across groups, the community can use these best practices and the standards that arise from bringing the community together, so that everyone can collectively benefit from them, and use them to make bigger and faster developments in research.

However, not everyone has equal access to such support. Engaging with research infrastructure, training, and investment, all require a lot of resources, and not all organisations and institutions have the same availability of expertise, time and money. It is important to engage with and include the entire global research community in these conversations.

We also need to consider the sustainability of information. We don’t want to lose information and knowledge, especially when we don’t know when it could be useful in future. However, through strong two-way community engagement, there is an opportunity to be more inclusive and create frameworks around research information that will ensure sustainable access to this knowledge for future researchers.

Through Alice’s previous work and now with her team at MoreBrains, Alice continues to champion community engagement with research infrastructure and showcase the value of this vital piece of the research puzzle that enables so much research and development to be built on the knowledge that already exists. Watch the full interview on our YouTube channel.

Check out our Speaker Series playlist on YouTube which includes chats with some of our previous speakers, as well as our TL;DR Shorts playlist with short, snappy insights from a range of experts on the topics that matter to the research community.

With thanks to Huw James from Science Story Lab for filming and co-producing this interview. Thanks also to Alice for her time and for the excellent coffee.

The post The power of persistent identifiers – meet Alice Meadows appeared first on Digital Science.

The recent announcement of the Barcelona Declaration has once again put the focus firmly on the importance of open research – a development that Digital Science has welcomed. Academic publishers are among those making progress on the open research journey.

As Chief Publishing Officer at PLOS, Niamh provides business leadership for the entire PLOS portfolio, ensuring that all outputs have a strong value proposition and advance PLOS’s vision and mission. A pivotal figure in academic publishing, Niamh talks with Dr Suze Kundu about the evolving landscape of scientific research and the push towards open science, including her journey from the early days of advocating for public access to research, to tackling current challenges like making science more inclusive and accessible.

Academic adjacent research roles

Though Niamh and Suze both started their careers as chemists, they are just two of the many thousands of people who have followed career paths that have taken them out of academic research and into academic-adjacent roles. Such roles are vital in supporting and enabling research to exist as we know it. However, Niamh and Suze are also just two people of many more thousands who knew very little about the existence of this range of alternative academic careers that are crucial to supporting the research ecosystem before moving on to such roles.

Niamh tells us how important it is for researchers to be exposed to this range of different careers at the graduate level. Without good people who understand the challenges and opportunities of all segments of the profession, the whole endeavour of research could be under threat. Niamh also discusses the persistent systemic barriers that hinder equal participation in science and other research. This includes the disparities in accessing research information, which particularly affects those outside of major academic institutions.

Addressing systemic barriers

The academic publishing industry isn’t very diverse. Progress in achieving better societal representation is very slow. It used to be the case that there were very few women in leadership roles, however this is changing, and that progress should be acknowledged and celebrated. Inequality is a systemic issue, and access to a career in research is still very skewed, not least in socio-economic terms – there are many financial barriers to navigate when pursuing a career in research.

Niamh calls for a shift in academic publishing to reflect a more diverse workforce and audience, emphasising that representation matters not just at the board level but in every aspect of academic engagement. Niamh shares one particularly persistent sentiment that she often heard from members of the community: “There is nobody like me. I don’t see myself on your board, therefore I feel that my research isn’t welcome.” It is hard to recruit into and retain people in a profession that upholds a culture within which they feel they don’t belong.

Whilst Niamh acknowledges that societal representation and diversity has improved within the research profession during her career, the systemic barriers to entry for curious minds around the globe mean that we still have a long way to go, not only in improving the scope of career paths available, but also for individuals from different backgrounds to enter and thrive within the research and academic publishing industries. Niamh makes the point that although we have seen better representation for underserved populations at the top of the academic publishing career hierarchy, there still seems to be a limit as to how much diversity is too much diversity in some pockets of our community.

Advocating for Open Access

Niamh embarked on her career driven by the belief that publicly funded research should be accessible to all. Her efforts in the early days of PLOS were not just about providing access to research information, but also about maintaining the quality and integrity of scientific experiments, setting a precedent that would challenge the status quo of academic publishing. Niamh reflects on how the dissemination of academic content has moved from an open model, to a more restricted publishing model over time.

PLOS has been a leader in trying to pull us back to an open model, but has encountered the uneasiness in cultural change in academia. Niamh believes that the incentive system really does stifle those who want to drive change in research practices. Niamh sees the inertia within the established systems of scholarly publishing as a significant challenge. The reluctance to abandon old practices is pervasive, and she stresses the importance of creating incentives for adopting new, open methods of publishing and research evaluation – whilst not forgetting the importance of local contexts in understanding and removing barriers to open science. This is a change that she believes would significantly democratise science, making it a more intuitive and accessible venture for everyone.

The future of Open Research

Niamh sees technology as a crucial ally in advancing open research. She wants to see us move away from the “version of record” concept to a more dynamic and updated format of scholarly communication. The culture within which we work does not lead researchers to work in a way that is collaborative. Open research and technology can help move us further, faster. We often try to use technology to duplicate the analogue version we have, but it also limits us in how we think research should be disseminated. We should look at how we version and release knowledge to the world. Technology has done so much already. It will do so much more. Niamh believes that the changes needed to drive technological change are societal. Business models and incentive systems need to be tweaked and redirected.

Through her leadership and insight, Dr Niamh O’Connor continues to champion the transformation of scientific research into a more open, equitable, and community-focused endeavour. Her commitment to breaking down barriers and envisioning a more inclusive future provides a hopeful outlook for the next generation of scientists and researchers. She reminds us not to lose faith, as change is happening, albeit a little more slowly than we would like to see and feel. However, as long as the academic publishing industry has leaders like Niamh, there is a lot to be hopeful for.

Check out our Speaker Series playlist on YouTube which includes chats with some of our previous speakers, as well as our TL;DR Shorts playlist with short, snappy insights from a range of experts on the topics that matter to the research community.

With thanks to Huw James from Science Story Lab for filming and co-producing this interview. Thanks also to our hosts, Locke at East Side Gallery, Berlin, Germany, and to Niamh for her time.

The post Catalysing change, embracing open research – meet Dr Niamh O’Connor appeared first on Digital Science.

What is the Falling Walls Science Summit?

In his own words, Falling Walls is “an international platform for connecting science with society, industry, business, innovation” – but that barely scratches the surface. Since 2009, on the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the event that started by bringing together the most renowned researchers has expanded and facilitated collaborations between researchers, artists, start-ups, funders, policymakers, and science communicators from a range of subjects and places. In asking the community which walls will be the next to fall in science and society, Falling Walls has built a strong reputation for spotting emerging leaders from across the globe. Matyas had been living in Berlin on-and-off before joining Falling Walls, and his excitement for the event gave him the final push he needed to officially relocate there.

Matyas used to work full-time as Head of Strategy and Global Affairs at the Falling Walls Foundation in the late 2010s. Coinciding with the onset of the pandemic, he switched to an advisory role working directly for the Chair of the Board of the foundation, so that he could have more time and space to start his own purpose-driven venture; futurehain.

Engineering engagement

During our conversation, Matyas and I chatted about how conversations and presentations at Falling Walls foreshadow the emerging themes of science and society. This is partly thanks to the way the three-day Science Summit is designed. The three strands of activity – Lab, Engage, and Venture – always leave you with a sense of “FOMO” or “fear of missing out” which naturally encourages the curious minds in attendance to float around the different strands, soaking in as much new information as possible and forging collaborations during corridor conversations, during which common themes start to emerge.

The presentations and pitches in each strand are the culmination of many months of work, with groups and individuals proposing their pitches and surviving several rounds of challenges to take to the stage in Berlin in November and potentially even win the Falling Walls prize for Breakthrough of the Year. Like Falling Walls, we understand that competitions can play a valuable role in uncovering and showcasing new ideas and people, and just last week we announced the winners of our latest round of Catalyst Grant funding.

Falling Walls also provides a platform for discussion on how to tackle the most pressing topics, bringing together high-level decision-makers, industry experts, representatives from science, research and technology, and even policymakers and politicians for roundtable conversations. Matyas believes that by bringing together stakeholders with diverse perspectives to discuss global challenges, we can better understand how to overcome them and create solutions that positively impact as much of our global society as possible. Falling Walls is putting in a lot of effort to better understand its impact, but it is not easy.

Creating futurehain

Matyas’s newest venture, futurehain, which he has co-founded with Felix Rundel, former Executive Director of Falling Walls, shares much of its DNA with Falling Walls in its quest to make research more robust, visible, transparent, open and collaborative. futurehain is a strategy agency and creative studio at the intersection of science and society. The company is dedicated to making science more impactful and more visible, from launching new initiatives and building ecosystems to creating engaging forms of communication. This is particularly important, especially in a year such as 2024 when so many aspects of global politics are in potential flux and public engagement with research is so important.

On the importance of understanding the interface between science and society

Matyas believes that we are at a critical moment in time when it comes to the interfaces of science and society, policy and politics. He believes that democracy is in decline across the world, that we must all work towards ensuring that science is built on more sharing and caring ways of tackling our global challenges, and that the way we do research must be seen as a global systemic issue. Through his work at Falling Walls and with the creation of futurehain, Matyas hopes to give space for meaningful conversations and exchanges, especially to those who are not in as privileged a position to have their voices heard as loudly as others, and to share best practices across the world.

“Science doesn’t exist in a vacuum” – and we must maintain continuous awareness of how research is being done and who it is being done for, to make science as impactful as possible.

You can watch my interview with Matyas on our YouTube channel, and check out our Speaker Series playlist on YouTube which includes chats with some of our previous speakers, as well as our TL;DR Shorts playlist with short, snappy insights from a range of experts on the topics that matter to the research community.

With thanks to Huw James from Science Story Lab for filming and co-producing this interview.

The post Breaking walls and building communities – meet Matyas Kovacs appeared first on Digital Science.

Digital Science, a technology company serving stakeholders across the research ecosystem, is pleased to announce the return of its long-running Speaker Series, creating a platform for engagement between leading thinkers, their research and the scientifically curious general public.

The 2023 series kicks off with “Ultra-processed people: The harsh reality of ultra-processed food” by Dr Chris van Tulleken – 7:00pm BST Tuesday 19 September, at The Royal Institution, London.

Dr Chris van Tulleken is an award-winning broadcaster, practising NHS doctor and leading academic, and author of Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn’t Food .. and Why Can’t We Stop?

Established in 2011 and held annually, Digital Science’s Speaker Series began as an initiative to hear from thought leaders and experts from various fields, to engage, educate, and inspire the company’s teams.

The 2023 series will be the first since the COVID-19 pandemic began, and builds on Digital Science’s new TL;DR initiative, which is focusing on wider community engagement through forward-thinking debate.

“The aim of our revitalized Speaker Series is to create a connection between researchers undertaking cutting-edge work and members of the public, on issues that matter to us all,” says Digital Science’s Director of Researcher and Community Engagement, Dr Suze Kundu.

“Chris van Tulleken is perfect for the return of the Speaker Series, as his research and advocacy impact the health and wellbeing of so many.

“We hope to generate a conversational platform where ideas can be shared and debated, leading to a greater understanding among the public of the value of research and what it means to their lives,” Dr Kundu says.

The 2023 Speaker Series continues with “Not Just for the Boys” by Dame Athene Donald – 7:00pm GMT Thursday 16 November 2023, at The Royal Institution, London.

Dame Athene Donald is Professor Emerita in Experimental Physics and Master of Churchill College, University of Cambridge. An expert in soft matter physics and physics at the interface with biology, she was the University of Cambridge’s first Gender Equality Champion and is the author of Not Just for the Boys: Why We Need More Women in Science.

The continuation of the Speaker Series follows on from the revival of another popular Digital Science event, FuturePub, which has now been held successfully this year in both London and San Francisco. In FuturePub, speakers from within the research and tech communities discuss ways in which technology is helping to make research and the communication of that research better.

“The Digital Science Speaker Series and FuturePub each have a different focus but they also complement each other – they’re both about having conversations with our communities, and helping those at the cutting edge show how their work can make an impact,” says Dr John Hammersley, Vice-President Researcher and Community Engagement with Digital Science, Founder of Overleaf and the original instigator of the FuturePub events.

“Digital Science is proudly playing its role in bringing these communities together.”

More about the Digital Science Speaker Series

About Digital Science

Digital Science is an AI-focused technology company providing innovative solutions to complex challenges faced by researchers, universities, funders, industry and publishers. We work in partnership to advance global research for the benefit of society. Through our brands – Altmetric, Dimensions, Figshare, ReadCube, Symplectic, IFI CLAIMS Patent Services, Overleaf, Writefull, OntoChem, Scismic and metaphacts – we believe when we solve problems together, we drive progress for all. Visit www.digital-science.com and follow @digitalsci on Twitter/X or on LinkedIn.

Media contact

David Ellis, Press, PR & Social Manager, Digital Science: Mobile +61 447 783 023, d.ellis@digital-science.com

The post Digital Science relaunches speaker series with food for thought appeared first on Digital Science.