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Open Science for Physicists, Lecture 3: Big Collaborations

  • Last updated: 04 09 2024
  • Lecturer: Dr. Niels Martens (guest), @SanliFaez, @erikvansebille, @thinderer

Contributors:

  • Erik van Sebille @erikvansebille
  • Hosein Nemati
  • Tanja Hinderer @thinderer

Development goal

To recognize the increasingly important role of large collaborations in contemporary physics and gain insight into their credit structures as well as the roles, responsibilities and interactions of scientists within them.

Motivation:

Large-scale and often international collaborations are playing an increasingly important role in the contemporary research landscape in physics, as the high-end technologies and facilities required to address the driving questions require large investments and expertise. This offers unique scientific opportunities but the coordination of a large number of scientists within a collaboration while retaining individual independence also comes with a number of challenges that will be discussed. In the assignment, the credit structures in different collaborations will be examined, with particular focus on ways in which junior scientist can gain visibility within such large consortia.

Vision of outcome

  • Course participants appreciate the need for and the benefits of large collaborations for many driving questions in modern science.
  • Course participants have critically reflected on challenges faced by large collaborations and choices to be made in their structure, organization, and membership.
  • Course participants have investigated examples of working within large collaborations, in particular the credit structures and ways to promote junior researchers.

Embedding/community

This lecture focuses on large national as well as international collaborations. Many of the large collaborations involve interdisciplinary components, both within physics and with engineering and industry. See https://bigscience.nl/about for a concerted effort in NL to foster synergies between physics and technology in large collaborations.

Methods/exercises

  • In preparation for this lecture, course participants are asked to listen to the podcast and answer the quiz questions
  • In the tutorial groups, we watch the first of the two-part video lecture series by Dr Niels Martens on the epistemology of scientific collaborations. This lecture Lecture 1 of the set discusses examples of 'big science' projects such as CERN and the Next Generation Event Horizon Telescope. Lecture 2, which is left for students to watch on their own, focuses on ways to manage the large number of co-authors that are involved in these projects and policies for giving appropriate credit.
  • Course participants work in small teams on the assignment described below, where they investigate the implementation of open science principles and credit structure of a large collaboration. They prepare a short presentation to their peers.
  • The teams present their findings to the group and participate in a final discussion on the topic of large collaborations, for which Dr. Niels Martens will also join.

Evaluation

  • Students answer the quiz about the podcast and participate in the discussion of the material covered.
  • In the tutorial groups, students watch the video lecture on big collaborations by Dr. Niels Martens and participate in the discussion of the material.
  • Students work in small teams to investigate an example of the credit structure, promotion of junior researchers, and open science principles within an example of a large collaboration.
  • Students give a short presentation of their findings to the group, receive peer feedback, and hear from the others on different examples.

Assignment description

Students work in small teams to investigate the credit structure of one of the large collaborations from the list below, which they will be assigned. They prepare a short presentation using the template. The investigation and presentation covers the following points:

  1. A brief introduction to the collaboration, its scientific aims, when it was established, and its membership.
  2. An assessment of how credit structures are implemented and how junior researchers can grow within this big collaboration and gain visibility in the field.
  3. The open science principles embraced by the collaboration

List of example collaborations to investigate:

Information Sources / Bibliography