Continued Support with Major Award from Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

Mozilla

In 2013, we set out to build Mozilla’s first open science program with support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Over three years later, we’re pleased to announce a two-year award from the Sloan Foundation to further support that work in advancing openness, adoption and reproducibility in science.

We’ve come a long way over the course of the past few years, beginning with a program rooted in computational training, prototypes that made it possible to get a DOI for your code and redirect you to Open Access preprints when you hit a paywall. We dug into Code Review for scientists, and evolved a mentorship model. Our team grew, as did our ambitions, securing our second round of support from the Sloan Foundation to further extend open practice and open source in science, as well as support from other foundations such as the Helmsley Charitable Trust to ramp up our work in investing in community through Fellowships and peer-to-peer learning, and furthering training around openness, collaboration and contributorship worldwide.

UJaffna MozSprintToday, we have thousands of researchers in our network many of whom are recognized leaders in the area of open science.  We have trained thousands of researchers in technical skills (such as Python & R) and conceptual skills (such as data management and working openly).  We’ve provided a collaborative platform for development of 39 open source projects.  Our annual Global Sprint brings in hundreds of participants from all over the globe.  There are over 40 study groups around the world with community members leading hundreds of events in their local communities and regularly developing new curriculum.

We continue to push against the closed culture in research to strengthen the ecosystem supporting innovation, efficiency and reproducibility in science, and are happy to have continuing support from the Sloan Foundation, one of the leading funders in the open research and technology space.

Over the course of the next two years, we will:

  • Increase open source project and community management capacity through mentorship and training,
  • Catalyze innovation through in-person events, sprints, and mentorship, and
  • Build community engagement through mini-grants to incentivize participation.

Our goals are ambitious, but our strategies are pragmatic. We work to

  • Increase the availability and relevance of scientific discoveries for social impact,
  • Increase the visibility, adoption, and effectiveness of scientific software development and resource creation,
  • Foster transparency and collaborative development in the scientific enterprise, and
  • Cultivate a cohort of leaders who will continue to evangelize and model the best open science practice,

by helping researchers develop essential skills, capacities, and community to reap the full rewards of open practice.

Friendly Intro to GitHub Workshop

“Friendly Intro to GitHub” workshop hosted at University of British Columbia Library

What does this mean for you?

Keep your eyes open for more Working Open Workshops in 2017, led by a combination of Mozilla Science Lab staff, fellows and other community members and some new half-day workshops on collaborative project management and GitHub.  We’ll also be launching a small grants program ($2,500 to 5,000) to support innovation, mentorship and open education in the community.

Stay tuned for more in the coming months, and a big thanks to the Sloan Foundation for it’s ongoing support and leadership.

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