Our path to better science in less time using open data science tools

[wavingtowaves]

Title: Our path to better science in less time using open data science tools

Study Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-017-0160
Citation: @doi:10.1038/s41559-017-0160

Citation must follow the Manubot-style citation. Leave it in blank, if unsure.

Suggested keywords that help identify the relevance of this paper to Ecology and Evolution:

• Keyword 1 (replace me, copy and paste more than three if needed)
• Keyword 2 (replace me, copy and paste more than three if needed)
• Keyword 3 (replace me, copy and paste more than three if needed)

Which areas of expertise are particularly relevant to the paper?

• ecology and/or evolution;
• biostatistics;
• informatics and computational research;
• open science and reproducibility

Summary

• Outlines a collaborative workflow for research in ecology & evolution, including a short section (p5) on GitHub (in conjunction with R, RMarkdown, websites). The paper reflects on the authors’ experiences and is focused on process and collaboration.

Suggested questions to answer about each paper:

• What is the general main finding or takeaway of the paper?

Researchers are rarely trained in managing and "working effectively" with the large, complex and diverse data that we regularly confront during research.

• What does this paper suggest to improve the issue with reproducibility in science?

Authors emphasize that they used Git for version control, and GitHub was their main venue for the actual collaboration between stakeholders.

Authors of this paper typically use the Git's integration with Rstudio--which can make workflow a bit more streamline for those already comfortable with Rstudio.

They highlight that folders are no longer really difficult to sift through because they contain too many outdated files--version control keeps just one doc that we all work on, but saves snapshots of previous versions.

Any comments or notes?