John Borghi: Neuroimaging as a case study in research data management | Part 2: On practicing what we preach

"A few weeks ago I described the results of a project investigating the data management practices of neuroimaging researchers. The main goal of this work is to help inform efforts to address rigor and reproducibility in both the brain imaging (neuroimaging) and academic library communities. But, as we were developing our materials, a second goal emerged- practice what we preach and actually apply the open science methods and tools we in the library community have been recommending to researchers....

A few more thoughts on working openly. More than once over the course of this project I joked to myself, my collaborator, or really to anyone that would listen that “This would probably be easier or quicker if we could just do it the old way.”. However, now that we’re at a point where we’ve submitted our paper (to an open access journal, of course), it’s been useful to look back on what it has been like to use these different open science methods and tools. My main takeaways are that there are a lot of ways to work openly and that what works for one researcher may not necessarily work for another. Most of the work I’ve done as a postdoc has been about meeting researchers where they are and this process has reinforced my desire to do so when talking about open science, even when the researcher in question is myself.

Like our study participants, who largely reported that their data management practices are motived and limited by immediate practical concerns, a lot of our decisions about open which open science methods and tools to apply were heavily influenced by the need to keep our project moving forward. As much as I may have wanted to, I couldn’t pause everything to completely change how I analyze data or write papers. We committed ourselves to working openly, but we also wanted to make sure we had something to show for ourselves."