What Open Science Framework and Impactstory mean to these scientists' careers

by Stacy Konkiel

This article was originally posted on the Impactstory blog.

Yesterday, we announced three winners in the Center for Open Science’s random drawing to win a year’s subscription to Impactstory for users that connected their Impactstory profile to their Open Science Framework (OSF) profile: Leonardo Candela (OSF, Impactstory), Rebecca Dore (OSF, Impactstory), and Calvin Lai (OSF, Impactstory). Congrats, all!

We know our users would be interested to hear from other researchers practicing Open Science, especially how and why they use the tools they use. So, we emailed our winners who graciously agreed to share their experiences using the OSF (a platform that supports project management with collaborators and project sharing with the public) and Impactstory (a webapp that helps researchers discover and share the impacts of all their research outputs). Read on!

What's your research focus?

Leonardo: I’m a computer science researcher. My research interests include Data Infrastructures, Virtual Research Environments, Data Publication, Open Science, Digital Library Management Systems and Architectures, Digital Libraries Models, Distributed Information Retrieval, and Grid and Cloud Computing.

Rebecca: I am a PhD student in Developmental Psychology. Broadly, my research focuses on children’s experiences in pretense, fiction and fantasy. How do children understand these experiences? How might these experiences affect children's behaviors, beliefs and abilities?

Calvin: I'm a doctoral student in Social Psychology studying how to change unconscious or automatic biases. In their most insidious forms, unconscious biases lead to discrepancies between what people value (e.g., egalitarianism) and how people act (e.g., discriminating based on race). My interest is in understanding how to change these unconscious thoughts so that they're aligned with our conscious values and behavior.

How do you use the Open Science Framework in the course of your research?

Leonardo: Rather than an end user of the system for supporting my research tasks, I’m interested in analysing and comparing the facilities offered by such an environment and the concept of Virtual Research Environments.

Rebecca: At this stage, I use the OSF to keep all of the information about my various projects in one place and to easily make that information available to my collaborators--it is much more efficient to stay organized than constantly exchanging and keeping track of emails. I use the wiki feature to keep notes on what decisions were made and when and store files with drafts of materials and writing related to each project. Version control of everything is very convenient.

Calvin: For me, the Open Science Framework (OSF) encompasses all aspects of the research process - from study inception to publication. I use the OSF as a staging ground in the early stages for plotting out potential study designs and analysis plans. I will then register my study shortly before data collection to gain the advantage of pre-registered confirmatory testing. After data collection, I will often refer back to the OSF as a reminder of what I did and as a guide for analyses and manuscript-writing. Finally, after publication, I use the OSF as a repository for public access to my data and study materials.

What's your favorite Impactstory feature? Why?

Leonardo: I really appreciate the effort Impactstory is posing on collecting metrics on the impact my research products have on the web. I like its integration with ORCID and the recently supported “Key profile metrics” since it gives a nice overview of a researcher impact.

Rebecca: I had never heard of ImpactStory before this promotion, and it has been really neat to start testing out. It took me 2 minutes to copy my publication DOIs into the system, and I got really useful information that shows the reach of my work that I hadn't considered before, for example shares on Twitter and where the reach of each article falls relative to other psychology publications. I'm on the job market this year and can see this being potentially useful as supplementary information on my CV.

Calvin: Citation metrics can only tell us so much about the reach of a particular publication. For me, Impactstory's alternative metrics have been important for figuring out where else my publications are having impact across the internet. It has been particularly valuable for pointing out connections that my research is making that I wasn't aware of before.

Thanks to all our users who participated in the drawing by connecting their OSF and Impactstory profiles! Both of our organizations are proud and excited to be working to support the needs of researchers practicing Open Science, and thereby changing science for the better.

To learn more about our open source non-profits, visit the Impactstory and Open Science Framework websites.