Better Science Through Better Data 2017

This week I was pleased to grab a last minute ticket to the Better Science through Better Data conference by Scientific Data and Springer Nature. The conference was hosted at the Wellcome Collection (and partnered with the Wellcome Trust), a truly beautiful venue and accessible location.

The general aim of the day was to promote good practice in data sharing and management, with the theme of ‘open source’ running through each and every talk. The idea was that improving data sharing and management will lead to more reproducible, robust and useable data, which will ultimately improve the quality of research for everyone. However, data was not the only thing considered – online lab books and protocols to aid research reproducibility was also plugged. 

"open science leads to more reproducible science and builds trust with public and patients"

Not only did the event promote open access, it also made sure to discuss the challenges and costs to researchers. Notably, Dr Esther Crawley (University of Bristol, keynote speaker), spoke about how her research into Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is being hindered by limitations in data sharing of patient samples, and Dr Aled Edwards (University of Toronto, keynote speaker), discussed how patenting leads to competitive science. He also shed light on the fact that open science leads to more reproducible science and builds trust with public and patients, reducing ‘redundant’ research along the way. Dr Kirstie Whitaker from the Alan Turing Institute (keynote speaker) also discussed an ever-prominent issue in science today – the bias of publications towards novel findings creating barriers to reproducibility. 

Panel discussion

What was great about this conference was that it mixed scientists from different areas of STEM, ranging from biomedical science, to engineering and astronomy (though, there was a slight skew towards the biological sciences), all of which have a common interest in open source data. In addition, there was also a focus towards publishing, meaning that many editors also joined and where able to give a different perspective to researchers about how ‘publishing culture’ should advance (i.e. greater use of supplementary materials, pre-prints etc). As a young researcher also, I was impressed by the speaker’s awareness of the struggles of new researchers and advice given to those doing a PhD. 

Although the conference was only a day, it was jam-packed with information and global speakers from a variety of fields; there were 4 key-note speeches and a series of 13 lightening talks. The aim of the lightening talks were to showcase how researchers were using open data using novel tools. The day was rounded off by a truly insightful and varied panel discussion answering questions from the audience (note: three out of four of the panelists, and the chair, was a woman in STEM!). 

Further promoting ‘open access’, the event was live tweeted (#scidata17), and streamed live on Facebook; there was really no way you could miss it! For anyone interested in data handling and sharing, do try to get a ticket for next year (its free!). I thoroughly enjoyed the day and would 100% recommend!