The Future of Research Workflows: Challenges & Opportunities

Invited Panel Talk for the Society of Scholarly Publishing 41st Annual Meeting: "Shaping the New Status Quo: Global Perspectives in Scholarly Publishing" May 29-31, 2019. San Diego (CA)

Transcript

1. Matteo Cantiello 1,2 1 CCA, Flatiron Institute 2 Princeton University The Future of Research Workflows: Challenges & Opportunities
2. Theoretical Astrophysicist Stellarphysics.org Matteocantiello Kantyellow
3. I study the life and death of stars
4. I use computer simulations to explore processes that occur in stellar interiors stellarphysics.org
5. Astronomers are early adopters when it comes to research workflows
6. Astronomy has become a digital science + + … Examining 166 astronomical articles Allen et al. (2018) found 715 software instances. At least 285 unique codes (but likely many more)
7. Virtually every astronomical publication stands on at least a piece of software + + … Astronomy has become a digital science
8. Many (new) tools now enable easily versioning, sharing and deploying astronomical software. However…
9. Software is Often Not Shared In a sample of 166 articles “over 40% of the source code for the software used was not available for download” (Allen et al. 2018)
10. The Reproducibility “Paradox” As computational methods have proliferated, research has become less transparent, reproducible, and falsifiable because these methods have not been shared or made available along with the research they enable. (Allen et al. 2018, Baker 2016, Goble et al. 2016, Stodden et al. 2016, Marwick 2015, Shamir et al. 2013, Morin et al. 2012)
11. Very Similar Story for Data… “I spent most of my day trying to use a library to read tables out of a PDF, but in the end I did not succeed” - An undergrad student working on a project
12. Despite a culture of openness and sharing, current tools often do not allow to easily include data and code. A matter of both incentives and formats
13. But things are changing…
18. A look at the future…
19. A look at the future…
20. A look at the future…
21. A look at the future…
22. What Researchers Want • Easily collaborate • Easily share their results • Easily share their data / code • Achieve visibility / Get cited • Easily find / discover research • Reproduce other scientists results
23. What Researchers Need • Easy submission process • Better reviewing system • Reputable Journals ★ Easy collaboration + version control ★ Focus on content, not format ★ Easy way to share data & code ★ Preprinting ★ Easily accessible Repositories & Metrics New opportunities Traditional Publishers’ focus
24. Thanks! Stellarphysics.org Matteocantiello Kantyellow Stellarphysics.org Matteocantiello Kantyellow