Something we think about a lot at Mozilla is understanding how different people use and experience the web. Much of this conversation has recently centered around examining what skills and knowledge people need to have in order to successfully use the web to its fullest potential in their jobs and lives, for their own purposes; these skills compose something we call the Web Literacy Map (2.0, if you’ve been following this work previously).

Open science is made possible in large part by the web, and is largely the combination of a number of practices that only began to become feasible with the web’s creation. Without the enormous power that an open web gives us to publish, consume and exchange information as independent researchers and individuals, open science would be very difficult to imagine (carrier pigeon APIs? Mail order pull requests?); open source, open data and open access publishing simply would not be feasible.

But, every community uses and experiences the web differently; what the scientific community wants and gets out of the web is different than any other. Our colleagues would like your help to understand how the open research movement uses the web, and what Web Literacy means to you. We’ll be holding a one-hour live focus group with volunteers from the open science community to discuss Web Literacy, and we’d be delighted if you would participate.

For a preview of what to expect, have a look at the existing Web Literacy Map; how would you interpret each element in terms of your own work? Or, to turn it around, what do you think doing open science on the web requires in terms of:

• Reading. What sort of skills do researchers need to be able to consume information (of any kind) on the web?
• Writing. What skills do researchers need to be able to create content that can be consumed on the web that is useful to other researchers, and the public more broadly?
• Participating. What skills do researchers need to be able to successfully collaborate on science on the web?

If you’d like to participate in a one-hour conversation on these ideas, please get in touch this week. By helping us understand what you want from the open web, you’ll help us build programs, education and events that make the open web what open science needs it to be.