Proposal Summary

NASA ROSES F.14 Transform to Open Science Training(NNH22ZDA001N-TOPST)

Building a framework for ScienceCore Carpentry from a Marine Sciences Lab

Many research articles conclude by saying, “this methodology may be used in other systems”. The articles may be published in open access journals along with data and code, but does that equate to open-source science? Open-source science is transparent, accessible, reproducible, and inclusive. For any given article, how long would it take not only to reproduce the results but to use that knowledge to make new discoveries? The reader must fully understand the science and methodology, acquire the data, run the code, and complete the analysis.

In an undergraduate lab, students analyze a scientific topic then make calculations. The science is explained clearly, and computational tasks are simplified by using small, prepared datasets and a limited but fundamental set of coding techniques. If a researcher can present the science behind their article in the context of a marine sciences lab, then the science is accessible.

The lab used a small, prepared dataset, but the original data is required to reproduce the article. Getting satellite data can be a challenge, and the process used to prepare the data is rarely documented. The lab simplifies coding tasks, but the full analysis is complex, using custom code that ran on local resources within a custom environment. How can anyone reproduce those results, let alone use the techniques for other systems?

We will retrace the steps that would be needed to reproduce the results from two articles, one in physical oceanography and one in biogeochemistry. In the process, we will create an open-source computational component to a marine sciences lab, an interactive, online course that lowers the learning curve for using satellite data, and a recipe for transforming a traditional workflow into an open one. The recipe will be tested by issuing a challenge to reproduce the workflow, adapt the workflow for other systems, discover new science, and publish the results.

While the products created will be research specific, our methodology may be employed for any research topic in any discipline.