What is JDI Open?

We are an open science journal-club & peer-mentoring group at the UCL Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science. Our bi-weekly seminars provide the opportunity for students and staff at the department to learn about open science and discuss ideas to implement open science practices in their research.

Upcoming session

Previous sessions

11/5/21: An Introduction to UCL High Performance Computing: Learn about when and how to use the UCL HPC tools. The slides are available here and the recording can be watched here.
27/4/21: Conducting mini meta-analyses: You have properly heard about meta-analyses as a tool to summarise the whole (quantitative) literature. It is less known that mini meta-analyses within a multi-study paper (even with as little as two studies) can also be useful to develop sounder and more rigorous conclusions. The session will be based on Goh et al. (2016) paper and will include information for how to run your own ‘minis’ using a simple spreadsheet that was developed by the authors. The slides are available here and the recording is avaialble here.
9/3/21: Avoiding Questionable Research Practices: We will discuss the most common questionable research practices, their impact on data quality and replicability, as well as highlight open science practices that help us avoid QRPs. Slides are available here and the recording here.
16/2/21: Get to know the UCL Statement on Research Integrity: Find the Concordat to support research integrity here, UCL Statement on Research Integrity here, and UCL Transparancy Statement here. Slides are availble here.
26/1/21: Developing R packages: In this session, Patricio will give a tutorial on how to develop your own R packages. This is also relevant for those of you who use Python. The full tutorial is available here and the video here.
19/1/21: Transparant Data Visualisation: The session is inspired by the excellent book Calling Bullsh*t: The Art of Scepticism in a Data-Driven Word. We will talk about ducks, the principle of proportional ink and other guidance to produce transparent illustrations of (quantitative) data. Please contact Sandy to get access to the slides and recording.
8/12/20: Using GitHub to Create a Personal Website: You will learn how to create an easy personal website using Github, no prior knowledge required. We’ll also discuss why it’s important to have a personal website from an open science perspective. A recording of this session is available.
24/11/20: The practicalities of doing a replication: We discuss the benefits of doing replications and explore two key practical issues: how best to determine your sample size and how to judge the success of a replication. Find the recording here.
10/11/20: Code Sharing pt. 2: Learn all about README files, licenses, dependencies and compiling methods. Here is the recording.
27/10/20: Code Sharing pt.1 We discuss (our experiences with) code sharing and introduce the Code Check initiative. A recording of this session is available for those who missed it! Or check out the slides here.
13/10/20: A new term! We recap an ‘Intro to Open Science’ and share our experiences with OS practices.
3/2/20: Crowdsourcing online samples. Need a large number of study participants in a short amount of time? Crowdsourcing may be the solution. On websites such as Prolific Academic and MTurk, you can draw from a large population of potential participants. We discuss implications of this method for open science, as well as ethical considerations. We provide practical tips and lessons drawn from conducting large-scale crowdsourcing studies. Slides.
20/1/20: Open Science for Qualitative Research. We discuss open science practices for researchers who use qualitative methods. While the open science community has long been dominated by quantitative researchers, the application of open science in qualitatives studies is now actively discussed. We will share key insights from these debates and introduce practical suggestions for pre-registrations and data sharing for qualitative research. Check out the slides for useful resources and further reading!
9/12/19: Replication Case Study. A special session with Tanja-Marie Hansen, a last-year PhD-student at the Center for War Studies, University of Southern Denmark. Tanja-Marie discusses replicating a study based on ISIS Twitter data: she will takes you through the journey from ‘original publication’ to ‘replication’, including her experiences with engaging with the authors of the original paper, and share how she (unintentionally) realized the value and importance of open science. Slides
25/11/19: Introduction to Bayesian statistics. An introduction to the rationale behind Bayesian statistics + how to “do” Bayesian in JASP and R. This should be especially interesting for everyone who is only familiar with the frequentist, null-hypothesis-testing approach.
11/11/19: Writing replicable methods. How to write methods sections that facilitate replication and, possibly, enhance study reproducibility. Slides and recording.
28/10/19: Responsible bibliometrics and the DORA declaration. We discuss journal impact factors and the problems associated with them, as well as the DORA declaration, why it is relevant, and how it is implemented at UCL. Slides here.
14/10/19: ‘New statistics’. We discuss what some refer to as the ‘new statistics’ - effect size and confidence intervals - and debunk common myths about p-values. This session is especially useful for anyone who applies quantitative methods and follows the null-hypothesis-significance testing approach. Slides and recording.
30/9/19: Open peer review. We talk about the role of open science in the peer review process. We discuss four ways to make the peer review process more transperant and, ideally, improve its quality. Download slides here.
10/6/19: Registered reports. a publishing format that is increasingly popular and accepted in different journals. Registered reports change the incentives of publishing such that papers are accepted before the study is conducted and results are known. If you wonder how this can work, come along. We used slides by Chris Chambers.
23/5/19: Special: UCL Open Science Day. We spoke about why and how we set up JDI Open during the UCL Open Science Day session ‘building open science communities’. We discussed successes and challenges we have encountered, specifically within a highly cross-disciplinary department that deals with sensitive data on a daily basis. Slides.
13/5/19 Data sharing: Sharing data is one of the more contentious open science practices, in particular in the field of Crime Science. We will discuss why it is useful to make your data accessible and, importantly, how this can be done in line with ethics and data protection regulation. Slides and recording.
29/4/19 Crowd-sourcing Science, an exciting opportunity to advance research by combining data collection and analyses efforts across multiple labs and research groups. After highlighting the advantages, we will present examples of crowdsourced projects and share our own experiences as a participant in ‘massive open research projects’. The aim is to inspire some of you to either initiate or take part in similar programmes. Slides.
11/3/19 Doing meta-science: We will speak about the science of doing science, with a particular emphasis on its role in the open science movement. You will hear about influential studies that help us understand how science is done and how scientific procedures can be improved. We will also share a study on open science practices within the field of terrorism studies. Ultimately, we hope to encourage some of you to consider meta-science research in your field. Slides
25/2/19 Responsible use of bibliometrics. The increasing attention on metrics for measuring and assessing research has led to more attention on the fundamental question of whether or not these metrics actually tell us anything useful. From the h-index to the impact factor, many of the most commonly used bibliometrics are misleading or easily misinterpreted, and over-dependence on them can even encourage bad research practices. This talk outlines the push for “responsible metrics”, the work being done at UCL to support this, and what it might mean for the development of Open Science. Slides.
28/1/19 Open Education. A talk from UCL libraries on Open Education: a UCL initiative that promotes sharing education outputs. Website & slides.
14/1/19 P-values & power. We start the session with the question ‘what is the p-value?’ and explore how type-I and type-II errors influence statistical analysis. We then introduce confidence intervals as well as power analyses as tools to improve your ability to draw statistical inferences.
10/12/18 Sharing code, sharing data. We present tools and strategies for sharing code and data, and discuss how you can address potential limitations to sharing (i.e., identifiable, personal data). Recording and slides.
26/11/18 Open Access Publishing: Opportunities and Challenges. Invited speakers from UCL Library Open Access Team discuss Plan S and (UCL) opportunities for OA publishing. Slides.
12/11/18: Open Science for your career. We explore the role of open science in hiring and promotion, developments in the job market more broadly, as well as practical ways to highlight your open science practices in your CV. Slides here.
29/10/18 How-to: preregistrations. Readings here and here, slides and recording.
15/10/18 Introduction to Open Science. Check out the slides and reading.

Resources

Curious about open science? Too lazy too read? Check out our “no-reading reading list” which contains lots of great videos and podcasts to ease you into the open science movement.