Labor Equity in Open Science Lesson Plan - PDF
Labor Equity in Open Science Lesson Plan - Word
Labor Equity in Open Science - Presentation
Persona 1 Handout
Persona 2 Handout
Persona 3 Handout
Persona 4 Handout
Persona 5 Handout
Scenario 1 - Printable
Scenario 2 - Printable
Scenario 3 - Printable
Scenario 4 - Printable
Scenario 5 - Printable
Scenario 6 - Printable
Scenario 7 - Printable
Labor Equity in Open Science
Overview
Labor Equity in Open Science is an interactive lesson plan designed to introduce students to labor equity issues in open science practices. The lesson is designed for MLIS students, and assumes no prior knowledge. During the lesson, students are given a persona representing a researcher, encompassing various professional and personal identities. Students are then given multiple scenarios and asked to predict how their persona would respond and why. Through group discussion and personal reflection, students consider the ways that researchers in different positions engage with open science in different ways.
Labor Equity in Open Science - Lesson Plan
Lesson Plan
Labor Equity in Open Science
Summary
This lesson plan is an interactive, experiential learning activity for MLIS students with an interest in scholarly communication. This lesson gives students the opportunity to consider scholarly communication issues from an equity lens. Using personas and scenarios, students are invited to consider the ways that different people with different professional identities are affected by common open science activities. This personal exploration is supplemented by background readings, a guided group discussion, a personal reflection, and a short writing exercise that encourages students to consider how they can address inequity in their own work as information professionals.
Table of Contents
| Summary | Pg. 1 |
| Table of Contents | Pg. 1 |
| Learning Objectives | Pg. 2 |
| Lesson Overview | Pg. 3 |
| Pre-activity Reading Assignment | Pg. 4 |
| Personas | Pg. 5-7 |
| Scenarios | Pg. 8-9 |
| Discussion Activity | Pg. 10 |
| Post-Activity Assessment | Pg. 10 |
| Alternate Assignment | Pg. 11 |
| Photo Attribution | Pg. 12 |
Learning Objectives
- Students will be able to recognize common open science activities and best practices.
- Students will compare and contrast the barriers that different researchers face in following best practices in open science.
- Students will explain the ways that varying levels of privilege affect open science practice
- Students will develop a strategy for reducing barriers researchers face in following best practices in open science.
Lesson Overview
Pre-activity Reading Assignment
- 4 readings: two short web articles and 2 academic articles. These readings provide an introduction to open science for students who are new to the topic, and introduce the equity issues that they will evaluate during the in-class activity.
In-Class Activity (60 minutes)
- Can be completed in-person or virtually via synchronous learning tools.
Introduction (10 minutes)
- This is time for the instructor to introduce the activity, hand out materials, and answer any questions about the pre-activity readings. A short slide deck for this section is included in the instructional materials.
Individual Persona/Scenario Assignments (20 minutes)
- Provide each student with one persona and 3 scenarios. They will have 20 minutes to think through their scenarios. Students should determine what their persona’s actions will be in different scenarios and be prepared to explain their reasoning. Student handouts with persona and scenario details are included in the instructional materials.
Group Discussion (30 minutes)
- The class will have 30 minutes to come together as a group, share their experiences, and connect their individual persona assessments to wider trends and structural issues.
Post-Activity Assessment
- Students will be given two short writing assignments as homework. The first is a one-page reflection asking students to reflect on their persona, what barriers affected them, and how they relate to wider social justice issues. The second assignment asks students to identify one of these barriers and briefly conceive of a way they might reduce that barrier as librarians.
Instructor Guideline: We recommend displaying a timer for students during the individual persona/scenario assignment to ensure students stay on track and have enough time for the group discussion.
Pre-activity Reading Assignment
Instructor Guideline: Have students complete these readings before the in-class activity so they have background information on open science practices, barriers, and issues before applying that knowledge in the persona activity. All of the articles are freely available online.
de la Fuente, G. B. (n.d.). What is Open Science? Introduction. FOSTER Open Science. https://www.fosteropenscience.eu/content/what-open-science-introduction
Crotty, D. (2021, August 19). The curse of more, or, does anybody have any time left to do research? The Scholarly Kitchen. https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2021/08/19/the-curse-of-more-or-does-anybody-have-any-time-left-to-do-research/
Gownaris, N. J., Vermeir, K., Bittner, M.-I., Gunawardena, L., Kaur-Ghumaan, S., Lepenies, R., Ntsefong, G. N., & Zakari, I. S. (2022). Barriers to full participation in the open science life cycle among early career researchers. Data Science Journal, 21(1), 2. https://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2022-002
Instructor Guideline: Students can skip the “Survey Design and Results” section.
Olejiniczak, A., & Wilson, M. (2020). Who’s writing open access (OA) articles? Characteristics of OA authors at Ph.D.-granting institutions in the United States. Quantitative Science Studies, 1(5), 1429–1450. https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00091
Instructor Guideline: Students only need to read Section 1: Introduction, and Section 5: Discussion and Conclusions.
Personas
Instructor Guideline: Each student should be given one persona to work with for the instruction activity. Each student should be given a unique persona unless there are more students in the class than there are personas. Students with the same persona should be given different combinations of scenarios.
Persona 1
Jerry is a tenured professor in the chemistry department at a well-known, elite private university. He has already achieved tenure and teaches one class per semester. Conducting research is a significant part of his job description. His library has staff that helps him manage the publishing workflow, including assistance with data management plans, open lab notebooks, and uploading his research articles and data to the institutional repository on his behalf. His university has a fund dedicated to article processing charges when faculty publish open access.
STEM
Persona 2
Kate is an early-career researcher at a small, little-known private university. She is a new adjunct faculty member in the sustainability department, and will only have her position for two years. She has a full teaching load of 4 classes per semester and has no dedicated time for research in her job description. The library at her institution is small and has no dedicated staff or funding that can help her practice open science.
STEM
Persona 3
Thomas is a tenure-track professor in the geological science department at a large, comprehensive public university. He teaches 2 courses per semester, with the rest of his time dedicated to research. He is only one year away from his tenure review, and his employment will be terminated if he does not pass it. The library at this institution provides a variety of online guides and resources to support open science, but has limited staff for direct assistance. The university has agreements with a select few publishers to allow their authors to publish open access for free but provides no financial support for open access publication with other publishers.
STEM
Persona 4
Cath is a tenured professor in the english department at a large, comprehensive public university. They have already achieved tenure and teach one class per semester. Conducting research is a significant part of their job description. The library at this institution provides a variety of online guides and resources to support open science, but has limited staff for direct assistance. The university has agreements with a select few publishers to allow their authors to publish open access for free, but provides no financial support for open access publication with other publishers.
Humanities
Persona 5
Carl is an early-career researcher at a well-known, elite private university. He is a new adjunct faculty member in the philosophy department, and will only have his position for two years. He has a full teaching load of 4 classes per semester and has no dedicated time for research in his job description. His library has staff that helps him manage the publishing workflow. His university has a fund dedicated to author processing fees when faculty publish open access.
Humanities
Scenarios
Instructor Guideline: Each student should be given three scenarios. Note that some scenarios are labeled as being STEM- or humanities-specific. These scenarios should only be matched with personas in their same disciplines. If there is no label, the scenario applies to all personas.
Scenario 1
The institution your persona works for has adopted a new open access policy stating that all faculty at the institution are required to upload a copy of the final accepted version of their published articles to the institutional repository. The policy, while supported by the administration and the faculty, has no clear method of enforcement. Your persona has already had their work accepted by a prestigious journal that does not allow work published in the journal to be uploaded to a repository. What options do they have, and what will their next course of action be?
Scenario 2
The institution your persona works for has adopted a new open access policy stating that all faculty at the institution are required to upload a copy of the final accepted version of their published articles to the institutional repository. The policy, while supported by the administration and the faculty, has no clear method of enforcement. The researcher is finalizing their manuscript but has not yet submitted it to any journals. What options do they have, and what will their next course of action be?
Scenario 3
Your persona has secured grant funding for a major research project. As part of the grant requirements, they are required to publish their article open access immediately upon publication. What options do they have, and what actions might they take?
Scenario 4
Your persona is undertaking a major, high-profile, experimental research project. The head of their department is asking them to pre-register their experiment and keep an open lab notebook, to ensure the validity of the results in such high-profile research. What options do they have, and what actions might they take?
STEM only
Scenario 5
Your persona has secured grant funding for an exciting new project. One of the conditions of this grant funding is that they must make a research data management plan to be submitted to the grant agency and followed during the course of the research. In addition, they are required to make a version of the research publication open access, in any form, immediately upon publication of the article. What options do they have, and what actions might they take?
STEM only
Scenario 6
Your persona has received an email from a publisher that wants to publish their work. The publisher claims they will publish their article open access in less than a month, so long as they pay a $3000 publishing fee. In addition, the publisher has also invited them to sit on their editorial board! What might your persona do next, and why?
Scenario 7
Your persona is interested in open science but does not publish many articles as part of their research. They are in a monograph-heavy discipline, and aren't sure that open access has any relevance to their discipline. What options do they have, and what actions might they take?
Humanities only
Discussion Activity
Instructor Guideline: After working through their persona/scenario combinations, the class should come together as a group to discuss the systematic barriers that they noticed their personas working through. In particular, students should be encouraged to compare how their personas handled the same scenarios differently and start to think beyond their individual personas in order to consider the wider, structural barriers to open science practice.
Guiding Questions:
- Have students compare how two different personas handled the same scenario. Did the two personas handle the situation differently, and if so, why?
- If students came to different conclusions about the same persona/scenario combination, give them the opportunity to discuss their reasoning. There is not necessarily a correct answer!
- Have students briefly share the barriers their persona faced across their scenarios. What wider, structural issues emerge from that comparison?
Post-activity Assessment
Instructor Guideline: These short writing assignments are intended to be completed outside of class, following the in-class persona activity. This is the student’s opportunity to think individually and holistically about structural barriers, as well as begin to move from identifying barriers to eliminating them. This is also the best opportunity to collect work for a grade.
- Please write a one-page reflection that discusses the barriers (or lack thereof) that your persona faced in their scenarios. How did their barriers differ between scenarios? What was easy for them and what was hard? How do their identities, demographics, and professional status affect the barriers they face?
- Identify one common open science activity from the article “Barriers to full participation in the open science life cycle among early career researchers”, and then identify one significant barrier your persona faces in doing that activity. Briefly outline a strategy you could implement as a librarian for eliminating or reducing that barrier.
Alternate Assignment
Instructor Guideline: This is an alternate (or additional) assignment that incorporates an open pedagogy approach. This assignment explores the same themes as the primary assignment while also introducing students to the OER ecosystem and inviting them to contribute to this OER as a living resource. It can be used in place of the primary assignment for a class with an open pedagogy focus, or can be assigned in addition to the primary lesson to reinforce the main concepts while engaging students with a different instruction style. Note that while this assignment is designed for small groups, it can also be done individually for smaller class sizes.
Assignment Outline
The personas and scenarios in this lesson plan were chosen to highlight the major demographic and professional differences that affect open science practices, as well as to reflect the most common open science practices. Of course, the small number of personas does not fully capture the scope of professional or personal identity a researcher may have, and the small number of scenarios does not encompass all the situations and barriers researchers may face.
For this assignment, students should, in small groups, develop their own personas and scenarios. Each group should develop at least 2 personas and at least 2 scenarios, and consider the different lessons that could be learned if they are matched in different ways. Whenever possible, these personas and scenarios should be compatible with the existing personas and scenarios in the lesson plan.
In a brief, one-page, writing assignment, each group should briefly describe why they chose to develop the personas and scenarios that they did, with particular attention paid to how the additional content they developed contributes to the conversation around labor equity in open science.
Learning Objectives
- Students will identify researcher identities and open science practices not included in the original lesson plan.
- Students will design new personas and scenarios that match the gaps they identified and integrate them with the existing lesson plan.
- Students will justify why they chose to develop specific personas and scenarios, and explain their rationale.
Photo Attribution
Photographs used in this lesson plan are courtesy of:
Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash
"Open Science 우산" by eotls4387 is marked with CC BY 2.0.
Labor Equity in Open Science - Additional Resources
The files attaches in this section are additional resources to assist instructors in using the lesson plan. These include:
- A instructor presentation that goes over the main points of the reading and introduces the lesson
- Student handouts that give persona details and re-iterate the lesson instructions
- Printable scenario handouts that can be cut up and handed out for an in-person lesson
- A digital scenario handout to be distributed for virtual lessons