2024-02-05

Open-notebook science

Today I’m starting something that I’ve been daydreaming about for years. Feeling like I should be doing for years. Today I’m making my work notes public.

During my PhD I got into the open science movement, and I’ve been increasingly radical in thinking that science should be done publicly. Sure there’s some arguments for why not everything should be done in public, but I’m increasingly of the opinion that it should be public by default.

But this isn’t going to be a blockbuster. This isn’t going to bring joy to your email inboxes. Please don’t like and subscribe. This is going to be boring. There’s going to be typos. Did you see how I used the word “increasingly” twice in the last paragraph? The writing is going to be shit. I’m going to swear. This is my digital garden, not yours.

I’m currently preparing a course on digital note taking for DRA and that has got me thinking about what I think the future of scientific practice should look like. As part of that course I want to show off what open notebook science looks like. I’d wanted to start doing open notebook science previously, but you have to pick your projects (/battles) - changes in collective practice can only move so fast.

But right now, I’m “funemployed” (consciously taking time off) and so I’m freeeee in a way that I haven’t been in many years - I can write what I want and share when I want. And so as a little practice in making my daydreams reality, and putting my money energy where my mouth is, I’ll be making my “work” notebook public going forwards.

But what is “work”? That’s blurry. I’ll be loosely ringfencing it as colour science and meta-science, but as good folks have taught me (eg 1 and 2) we are holistic humans, and all need to be acting towards a sustainable and more equitable future, and so expect it to get blurry.

I’ll be limiting content to mainly solo work, until I’ve had conversations with collaborators, but I’m not going to be rushing into those conversations. If you’re reading this collaborators, hi 😘

Welcome to the journey. Welcome to this little experiment of mine. If you’ve read this far, you’ve read this far. 🎶

It will be at: dannygarside.co.uk/open-notebook.

This post is published under a CC BY 4.0 licence.