Workshop On Open Workflows - 2nd. Edition

5-6 Sept. 2014, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

WooW-II is a two-day workshop on open workflows for quantitative social scientists. Despite its recognized relevance, relative complexity and wide interest, virtually no training is provided on workflow design and choice of appropriate tools. Students and researchers in the social sciences receive no guidance as to why or how they should adopt habits that favor the open science principles in their research activity. In this workshop, we will cover the main ideas behind a well-designed workflow with openness, transparency and reproducibility in mind, and will provide an introductory, hands-on, overview of a set of free tools that have been designed with such values in mind.

Content

The structure of the workshop is organized in two main blocks. Firstly, we present basic concepts such as Open Science, transparency and reproducibility. We then stress the relevance of paying attention to the way science is carried out and connects it to the choice of tools that allow such values to be seamlessly embraced in the day-to-day practice of quantitative research in social science. These somewhat abstract ideas are made operative through the concept of the workflow, as the vehicle to embody these principles in daily practice.

The second, longer, part of the workshop includes a hands-on overview of specific tools that have been designed with Open Science principles in mind and that hence provide the ingredients of a well-thought open workflow. This is delivered alternating presentation time with demo time, allowing participants to get a real taste of what using the tools implies and see live their advantages. In this respect, they are very much advised to bring their laptops to follow along on their own.

The goal of the second part is not to get to every detail of each tool and package, but to give a gentle introduction, to provide further material and to place them in the appropriate context. Important emphasis will be put on how they contribute to building a coherent open workflow and how they relate to other tools. The main areas we will review are:

At the end of the workshop, participants will be able to reproduce a paper of their own and make it available in an open form applying the concepts and tools introduced.

Logistics

The workshop will be held on September 5th.-6th., 2014 (entire Friday and morning of Saturday) at the VU University in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Detailed information on the venue and how to access it will be provided as the event approaches.

Participants need to bring their own laptop to be able to follow the hands-on sessions.

The workshop is free of charge. This includes materials, venue and meals. Travel and accomodation costs are not included and should be covered by the participants.

If you would like to register, please send an email to Dani Arribas-Bel (d.arribas-bel@bham.ac.uk) or Thomas De Graaff (t.de.graaff@vu.nl) before August 1st.

Materials

This website, as well as all the material included and used at the workshop, are hosted as an open GitHub repository in this url. This means you can clone it and access not only the entire website and materials but also the revision history tracked using git. Participants should bring their own laptop to follow along the hands-on sessions.

Organizers and sponsor

The workshop was inspired by a previous edition (WooW) and conceived by Dani Arribas-Bel from the University of Birmingham in the UK and Thomas De Graaff from the VU University Amsterdam in The Netherlands.

The workshop is kindly supported by the EU FOSTER project.

FOSTER