Speaker
Description
Preparation & Communication:
The retreat organisers will set up a Mattermost channel for interaction with potential participants. Participants will also be able to post grant ideas in a template provided by the workshop leader in the Mattermost channel. (See the “Pre-work” section of the Timetable below for further details.)
Abstract
This session aims to contribute to the body of evidence around openness in the early stages of research [1, 2] with two hands-on activities: (1) in-person "sandpit" that will give people the opportunity to discuss ideas for grants related to open research; and (2) a variation on a "writer’s workshop" to improve work-in-progress [3].
References
[1] Horbach, Serge P. J. M;, Tijdink, Joeri K.; and Bouter Lex (2022) Research funders should be more transparent: a plea for open applications. R. Soc. Open Sci. 9220750
[2] Melvyn Smith. Spending six months on a failed grant bid is too much. Things must change. (February 7, 2024) Times Higher Education.
[3] Richard Gabriel. Writers Workshops and the work of making things.
Workshop timetable
| Pre-work
While it is not a requirement for participation, ideas about new and/or existing grants can be shared in Mattermost before the workshop. If there are any additional materials that you want to make available to participants to read, these should also be shared on Mattermost by Noon the day before, to give people enough reading time. Anyone can share previous grant applications, ask questions, and provide feedback for workshop planning on this channel as well. The channel will also include pointers to resources such as the OGrants database and RIO journal (places where openly-published grant proposals can be found). Throughout the Retreat, participants will be able to post grant ideas on a physical board onsite, and use dot voting to upvote favorites.
5 minutes | Introduction
We will walk through this itinerary and make sure that any questions about the workflow are addressed.
40 minutes | Part I: Sharing project ideas
We will break into smaller groups of 3 or more people to discuss project ideas. These ideas may have been generated in the retreat or they might be things you have “brought along” from your previous work. Some of them may have been shared and voted for on the dot-voting board; some may also have been written up for discussion in Part II. At this point, all ideas are still on the table. In this session, the small groups will collaborate to refine or (where applicable) combine these ideas.
10 minutes | Share back
Each small group will present back to everyone what they discussed, nominating one idea for further discussion in Part II. (If there are more than 3 ideas put forward, i.e., more than 3 small groups, we will vote and select the three top-rated ideas.)
5 minutes | Comfort break
1 hour | Part II: Writers workshop for ≈3 ideas
Using ideas nominated by the small groups, and supported by content previously shared on Mattermost (where applicable), we will spend 20 minutes on each of three different proposals. This will follow a structure of (5 minutes) a brief presentation — reading aloud or talking through the idea verbally; (5 minutes) discussing the strengths of the proposal; (5 minutes) discussing how it could be improved; (5 minutes) for any clarifying questions from the presenter.
Facilitator Bio: Joe Corneli is Open Research Project Manager and UKRN Local Network Lead at Oxford Brookes University. He is a core contributor to the Peeragogy project, which began in 2012, and which collects design patterns for effective peer learning and peer production.
