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* 
*  hi there!!
*  please add your name to the right ===>>>>> alison, jane
*  feel free to add suggestions to existing ideas, or add new ideas for specific 
   open science activities
*  feel free to email p2pu-community@googlegroups.com or jessy@jessykate.com
*  with questions
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P2PU Challenges, Groups and Badge Ideas related to Open Science

Shared descriptive element: 
The open science challenges are designed to support your involvement in contributing to and consuming scientific knowledge and basic research.

Start a research notebook (this should a super inspiring and exciting challenge)! 
(out of date! now on p2pu: http://p2pu.org/en/groups/open-research-start-a-research-notebook)

• create a place for notes, brainstorming, and jotting down ideas. digital or analog, or both! 
  • the format of your research notebook is very personal. there are infinitely many possibilities. what matters is that you choose a format and workflow that work for you. and to be honest, most of us are constantly updating and refining our workflow. so think about what will be useful and functional for you. but put just enough time into this to get moving.
  • examples: 
• make a list of topics that interest you
  • this is likely to be a living document, something you are constantly refining and adding to. if you're like most of us, it may have a lot of things on it. or, it might just have one or two things you'd like to explore. 
  • play around with mind mapping, sketching, diagramming, lists of lists, and any other online or offline technique that helps get things organized for you. 
• explore one of the idea in more detail
  • write a paragraph, record a short video (<-- love this idea!), draw some diagrams... whatever your process is. (and part of this is about creating room to figure out what your own process looks like). 
  • don't worry about being right
  • try to capture the essence of the idea, what grabs you about it, and what the interesting questions are. 
  • you can format it as something informal for yourself, something to post online, or something different altogether. sometimes these brainstorms can be a helpful reminder or inspiration for yourself, or a way to reach out to others and tell them what you're up to.
• reflect on your process
• you may want to take a look at some of the work happening around open notebook science and people posting their research notes online. 

Create a research reading list
now on p2pu: http://p2pu.org/en/groups/open-research-create-a-reading-list/

• you will do this many times in your life as a researcher! 
• pick one of your interest areas. 
• spend some time browsing and learning about journals, paper repositories, and other sources related to your interest. 
  • google scholar, looking at "all available options," and finding openly available copies of papers
  • google scholar citation count and count differences by platform/provider
  • google scholar bibtex/citation export
  • other impact assessment tools: readermeter, impact-factor
• create a place to collect your reading list - keep in mind you'll be working with pdfs, urls, books... 
• set up subscrptions, rss feeds, and other means of being notified of interesting new content. 
• There is a lot of information out there, and you can't read everything. Maintain a balance between adding everything to the list, while maintaining diversity and expanding your horizons. 
• Post a link to your reading list (suggest platforms/methods - mendeley, citeulike, wordpress or other blog software, delicious... We encourage you to make it publicaly accessible, but if it's not, then take a screenshot and share it in the comments. 

Reading research literature

• this can be both a group where people post things they've read, and a challenge. 
• references: 
  • "how to read a paper", in particular item 2, " Students' Resistance to the Time-on-Task Required for Deep Reading": http://derekbruff.org/blogs/tomprof/2012/01/19/tp-msg-1145-helping-difficult-students-read-difficult-texts/ 
  • 2 refs - getting oriented and the three pass method
  • qualitative vs quantitative papers
• think about setting aside a scheduled time to read papers/articles, or think about how else reading will fit into your schedule. 
• if you can, assemble a few people with similar interests who are willing to share readings, comments, and give feedback on yours. this could be in person, a new or dedicated group on p2pu, the Reading Research Literature group on p2pu (to be created :)), or anywhere else. It does help to be reading papers at the same time as other people, but it's not at all necessary. 
• read and comment on a paper in your selected field. everyone has their own style, but actively commenting while we read  keeps us more deeply engaged. write with pen, annotate a pdf, however you want to do it. post your methods and (a link to) the annotated pdf 
• post a summary of the article and/or the annotated pdf somewhere - on your blog, google plus, p2pu, twitter, etc. 
• repeat, at appropriate intervals, indefinitely. 

Develop and Refine a Hypothesis

• Formulate a hypothesis 
• make informal notes and arguments about why you think it has legs
• look through literature, blog posts, books, and any other potentially relevant material to understand if others have had the same or similar ideas to you. 
  • document the relevant work you find. digest it. understand it. 
• write up your hypothesis. it doesn't have to be an epic essay, just a couple of paragraphs clearly stating your idea and why you think it is so. 
  • for example (insert example)
• post it and get feedback from at least XX people (see also "identifying mentors" challenge) 
  • people you trust to be constructive but also challenge you
  • people who know something about the domain of your hypothesis
  • people who will take the time to give you substantive feedback. 
• consider posting your hypothesis online
• follow up on references and suggestions from others
  • track down additional references if needed
  • some feedback might extend or enhance your proposal
  • some feedback might shed light on its limitations. 
  • limitations do not mean you are wrong (or right!). 
    • it's important to understnad potential counfounding factors 
    • being able to cite these in any potential documentation shows maturity in your process. 
• give feedback to someone else's hypothesis

Design an Experiment

• time to test your hypothesis!
• warning! it is very customary to oscillate between developing hypotheses and designing experiments several times before nailing down something you want to carry all the way through. this is a crucial part of the scientific process. sometimes, there are clear hypotheses that seem compelling but no clear way to test them for years or decades. other times, developing the hypothesis into an experiment reveals flaws in our reasoning that send us back to the drawing board. 
• this will be somewhat general as different fields have slightly different needs
• spend some time searching for related work, and make sure what you're doing hasn't already been done. 
  • be clear about how your idea is different than the related work. 
  • often this helps to improve or refine the idea, or save you implementing something unnecessarily. 
• how can you express your hypothesis in a way that is falsifiable?
• identify some competiting hypotheses, including a naive or most "obvious" solution.
  • this is called your strawman or baseline; it's often what are you are comparing your work against. 
• be careful with correlation and causation 
• does data already exist, or do you need to generate new data?
• decide what you are measuring
• write out a step-by-step process for how to measure it
  • this should be reasonably detailed to begin, but will likely be a living document
  • try to flesh out parts that you think will be hard or that you are uncertain about 
• what are your needs - data? equipment? IRB review? manpower? a specific kind of work space? travel budget?
• what is your timeline?
• how will you get started?

Identify reviewers, advisors, and mentors for your open research project

• who will have the experience and time to give substantive feedback?
• who has the reputation to help endorse/spread the word about your work?
• who will challenge you? how might you engage potential detractors?
• how can you reward/thank them for helping you?

Develop a documentation plan 

• where will you post updates, data, code, challenges?
• how will you aim to make your work accessible, discoverable, repeatable, extensible?
• to what extent is it realistic for you to share your process? it doesn't have to be every sentence, line of code or meeting outcome, but in general it helps to try and be transparent at a level that facilitates feedback and engagement from a broader audience.
• this challenge is relevant to many steps of the research process- from conducting experiments to writing papers. 

Make your results, data, etc. available to others (this is where School of Open might relate)

• how will you ensure your work is accessible, discoverable, repeatable, extensible?
• is there sufficient documentation for others to repeat and/or validate your work?
• is it clearly listed in a way that those browsing relevant sites could find it?
• are there clear follow up questions that others might be able to pursue?
• open notebooks
• platforms and tools (CC licenses and public domain tools) to make your data and results available under

Reference Management (a whole separate challenge? or is that silly?)

• resources
• curation
• groups/lists
• storage - remote, hosted, local...
• capturing annotations
• bibliographic formats and formatting bibliographies 
• 
  

Write a Paper

• write up your experiment!
• do you want to submit your writeup to a publication? 
  • if so, identify one or more potential venues. what are their submission deadlines?
• other options for peer-review?
• include the relevant background references you found
• a traditional paper outline looks something like (can we even give somethig here that is general but still useful?)
  • .... blah...
  • maybe give examples from a few fields?
  • some latex and word document templates? html templates? what does PLoS One use?
• massage the format to what makes sense for your work, and/or what is required if you are submitting it to a venue with formatting guidelines
• insert and format your bibliography
• publishing the paper (this is where School of Open might relate - Open Access principles, all that, suggest open journals, conferences, platforms to publish and submit to)

Form a research group

• community is an integral part of conducting science. community keeps us honest, challenges us to be rigorous, gives us perspective, and supports us when work gets hard.
• it's not always possible to find others with shared interests, but always be on the lookout for them. Shared interests don't have to be in a traditional, single field. It might be enough to share an interest in methodology or a specific location, or you might share a field or a topic. 
• Being in a research group doesn't have to be a full time thing. It can be anywhere from an informal hobby to a job. 
• Give yourselves a name, hack together a logo, create a brand and identity around your group and its work. Put yourselves out there. Share your excitement!

Get funding 

• apply for a grant
• use a crowdfunding platform
• self-fund by calculating how much of your personal time you can afford to work on your research project, and then go for it. 
• get a consulting gig related to your research
• be accountable