Project Report: The Turing Way Guide to Ethical Research

# Project Report: The Turing Way Guide to Ethical Research ###### tags: `OLS-2` **Project team**: Ismael Kherroubi Garcia; Laura Carter; Sophia Batchelor **Mentors**: Anjali Mazumdar; Jez Cope ## Project background  We wanted to work on this project because as a group, we felt strongly that contributions to science and contributions to society should not be discrete and separate: scientific development impacts on society, and society influences how science is done. As a result, we want to work to break down these conceptual and practical barriers, to facilitate public involvement in science, and to ensure that science benefits society: including work to support and facilitate data scientists - working in life science and beyond - to incorporate an ethical framework throughout the research process. We were all aware of the Turing Way project: supported by the existing team at the Alan Turing Institute and the Turing Way community, we wanted to build the Guide to Ethical Research both as a useful research tool in itself, and as the foundation for a supportive open science community. ## Expectations from this program  We wanted to: * Develop our collaboration skills (which is why we submitted as a team) * Learn how to scope and create a community-driven project * Learn how to reach out and recruit new contributors to a community project * Develop and strengthen our own understanding of ethics in data science ## Goals set at the beginning of the project  We wanted to achieve the following objectives: * An initial draft of the Guide to Ethical Research * Support more contributors to work on the Guide to Ethical Research By the end of the project, we hoped to have: * An initial version of the book open for contributions by the wider Turing Way contributor communities * Other contributors to the Turing Way are aware of the Guide to Ethical Research and are able to contribute: we’d like to have a roadmap to discover potential contributors in place * Mentees are able to lead further work on the Guide and on ethical data science research And we set concrete objectives: * Have 10 contributors to the Ethics Book * Stream 2 content creation sessions on Twitch ## Key understanding and accomplishments  We have an **active slack channel** in the Turing Way workspace, which currently has 17 participants. During the Book Dash in November, **eight** people worked on Ethics Book chapters. All three of us now have a **much better understanding** of the Turing Way as a project and where the Ethics Book fits in: as well as supporting new contributors in the Book Dash and beyond, we can also present the project to other potential contributors and members of the Turing Way community. Ismael and Laura also have a much stronger grasp of **github** as a tool! Sadly, technical difficulties frustrated our attempts at Twitch streaming :white_frowning_face: but it was fun to try! ## The main goals achieved in this project  We all now have direct experience of supporting more contributors to the Turing Way, and can continue to serve as ambassadors for the project. We don't yet have a full draft of the book, but we have several well-fleshed out draft chapters, and several more extensive outlines! We feel pleased with the material we have developed and the scaffolding we have put in place for future collaborators. ### The initial steps  A lot of our work in the early weeks of the programme was on fitting our ideas into the existing framework set up for the Turing Way. While we all had some familiarity with the project, we spent a lot of time making sure that we were not duplicating existing efforts, or creating gaps. We also spent some time talking to potential contributors, both about what they wanted to bring to the project, and what barriers they felt were currently stopping them. And probably the most important early step that we took as a team was Sophia extensively training Ismael and Laura in how to use github as a tool! ### What elements helped you get there?  We benefited a lot from having dedicated OLS-2 time to onboard ourselves to the Turing Way project and also to the technical tools: Open Canvas and roadmap. The support from the rest of the OLS-2 cohort in getting used to new tools and ways of working were also invaluable! The Book Dash in November helped us not only create content for the book, but also onboard more contributors in real time. ## Next steps ### Our immediate next step is to…  * Keep writing the chapters-in-progress! * Keep attending Turing Way coworking and collaboration cafes to support new and existing contributors. * Submit an application to the Software Sustainability Institute Collaborators' Workshop, to recruit more contributors. ### Longer term goals  - Mainstream ethics into future Book Dash events - Dedicated ethics Book Dash (we are considering doing this in partnership with another organisation: Laura is part of DataKindUK who might be interested) - Consider presenting the Ethics Book at other conferences: RightsCon, FAccT...? ### Staying connected  - The three of us will continue working in different ways on building this community - Slack, coworking hours and future bookdash events will help us continue shaping the development of the guide, even if it is through short thought-provoking chats! ### Special mentions and acknowledgements  Thanks to our lovely and encouraging mentors Jez and Anjali! We also appreciated community-building and networking advice from experts Aleks Nenadic, Hannah Hurst, Katharina Lauer and Mateusz Kuzak, who all kindly joined one of our mentor calls. And to the rest of the OLS-2 cohort for encouragement and kindness! ## Five-minute presentation #### At the beginning, there was... * A ready-made community and code of conduct provided by the The Turing Way * A tool daunting for Laura and Ismael called GitHub! #### And then we worked! * On reaching out and discovering new potential contributors, * Learning exciting tools like Open Canvas and the roadmap, * Building new relationships and * Sophia patiently teaching Laura and Ismael GitHub! #### And we finally * Onboarded new contributors to the Ethics Guide * Set out new directions for further developments of the guide, such as a chapter on activism * Built exciting relationships through which we will be able to continue developing the guide defines what synthetic biology is | Aspects | Content | Delivery | | -------- |:------- | -------- | | Positive | defines what synthetic biology is | Very clear even for lay people! | | Negative | Shift to slide two and talk of open access | I found the information hard to follow -- like, there were jumps between ideas (might happen because it is easy for you and hard for me!) | Feedback for Laura: * Avoid fillers * What did we appreciate specifically about OLS for this project - lessons we learned, workshops that we particularly appreciated * Slides might be useful but not too much text * talk about the contributions of mentors * also about things we appreciated - the introspective parts in particular, Laura has some ideas about things to do with this * add something about how people can join us! *