Learning and Activity Patterns in OSS Communities and their Impact on Software Quality

This paper presents a framework to identify and analyse learning and activity patterns that characterise participation and collaboration of individuals in Open Source Software (OSS) communities.  It first describes how participants’ activities enable and drive a learning process that occurs in individual participants as well as in the OSS project community as a whole. It then explores how to identify and analyse learning patterns at both individual level and community level. The objective of such analysis is to determine the impact of these patterns on the quality of the OSS product and define a descriptive approach to quality that is concerned less with standards than with the facts of OSS peer-review and peer-production

Peer-to-Peer Knowledge Management: Overcoming Bottlenecks and Improving Information Quality

Access to current, complete and relevant knowledge is a key competitive differentiator in the present economic market space. But most knowledge management today only shifts the traditional, expert-based KM processes onto electronic media. This paper discusses a paradigm shift from an expert-centric to a peer-to-peer approach to knowledge creation and management. Leveraging the lowered transaction costs provided by Internet technology, methods and tools of collaboration that have been invented and refined by the Open Source and Free Software community over the last two decades are now being adopted by early movers in the Knowledge Management space. This new approach, based on a peer-to-peer approach and open collaboration, has shown the potential to revolutionize the way knowledge is created, developed and managed. We outline the characteristics of the two opposing paradigms and present ways in which the peer-to-peer knowledge management approach is already being successfully used in practice today. We address how the quality of information is kept high without a traditional review/quality-check role by using a revision control system and distributing the task to all interested practitioners. Finally, we discuss four key challenges for introducing the new paradigm within companies

The tension between academic knowledge production and online peer production

Peer-reviewedOnline mass collaboration projects, such as Wikipedia and those designed for developing open source software programs, are remarkable examples of hybrid spaces where knowledge and information are co-produced by a wide variety of social actors. They share many features with traditional scientific practices: peer review mechanisms, a commitment for open publication of results, a meritocratic culture, etc. Nevertheless, there are also important differences: in online peer production peer review is often open and post-publication; the distinction between experts and lay people does not play a priori a crucial role ¿ amateur contributions are welcome; not only results are published but the process of production ¿ and thus intermediate results and procedures - is also open, etc. Though the present movement towards open science and open research pleads for importing some of these features to the realm of science and academia, it is not clear whether both cultures and ways of knowledge production are fully compatible. We try to address this issue through an empirical study on university lecturers¿ uses and perceptions of Wikipedia. The ¿free collaborative encyclopedia¿ is known to be one of the widest used resources by university students, but there are no systematic studies on how lectures and researchers use and perceive this source of information - though they seem to share a more skeptical view. We will present the preliminary results of a set on interviews to professors in different departments of our own university, as a first qualitative stage of a longer on-going research project.Projectes de col·laboració en línia de comunicació, com la Viquipèdia, i els dissenyats pel desenvolupament de programari de programes de codi obert, són exemples notables d'espais híbrids on el coneixement i la informació són co-produïdes per una àmplia varietat d'actors socials.Proyectos de colaboración en línea de comunicación, como Wikipedia y los diseñados para el desarrollo de software de programas de código abierto, son ejemplos notables de espacios híbridos donde el conocimiento y la información son co-producidas por una amplia variedad de actores sociales

Opening Science

This is the non-edited version of Chapter 3. Baykoucheva, S. (2022c). 3 - Opening science. In S. Baykoucheva (Ed.), Driving Science Information Discovery in the Digital Age (pp. 45-65). Chandos Publishing. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-823723-6.00006-9Advances in technology have triggered the emergence of a new generation of science communication forms that are based on Open Science (OS), an umbrella for different movements whose goal is to promote transparency, reusability and connectivity of research. It provides the infrastructure (platforms, tools and services) to make scientific information freely available. OS can mean many different things—open access to publications, open research data, open peer review, open citations, open-source software, open collaboration, open notebooks, open educational resources, open books, and citizen science. This chapter focusses on the movements promoting (1) Open access to publications, (2) Open peer review, (3) Open research data, and (4) Open access to citations. It also looks at how preprints, academic social sites, and new communication formats, such as Registered Reports, Lab Protocols, and Study Protocols, are challenging the traditional scientific publishing system

A tale of two 'opens': intersections between Free and Open Source Software and Open Scholarship

There is no clear-cut boundary between Free and Open Source Software and Open Scholarship, and the histories, practices, and fundamental principles between the two remain complex. In this study, we critically appraise the intersections and differences between the two movements. Based on our thematic comparison here, we conclude several key things. First, there is substantial scope for new communities of practice to form within scholarly communities that place sharing and collaboration/open participation at their focus. Second, Both the principles and practices of FOSS can be more deeply ingrained within scholarship, asserting a balance between pragmatism and social ideology. Third, at the present, Open Scholarship risks being subverted and compromised by commercial players. Fourth, the shift and acceleration towards a system of Open Scholarship will be greatly enhanced by a concurrent shift in recognising a broader range of practices and outputs beyond traditional peer review and research articles. In order to achieve this, we propose the formulation of a new type of institutional mandate. We believe that there is substantial need for research funders to invest in sustainable open scholarly infrastructure, and the communities that support them, to avoid the capture and enclosure of key research services that would prevent optimal researcher behaviours. Such a shift could ultimately lead to a healthier scientific culture, and a system where competition is replaced by collaboration, resources (including time and people) are shared and acknowledged more efficiently, and the research becomes inherently more rigorous, verified, and reproducible

Publishing and Pushing: Mixing Models for Communicating Research Data in Archaeology

We present a case study of data integration and reuse involving 12 researchers who published datasets in Open Context, an online data publishing platform, as part of collaborative archaeological research on early domesticated animals in Anatolia. Our discussion reports on how different editorial and collaborative review processes improved data documentation and quality, and created ontology annotations needed for comparative analyses by domain specialists. To prepare data for shared analysis, this project adapted editor-supervised review and revision processes familiar to conventional publishing, as well as more novel models of revision adapted from open source software development of public version control. Preparing the datasets for publication and analysis required significant investment of effort and expertise, including archaeological domain knowledge and familiarity with key ontologies. To organize this work effectively, we emphasized these different models of collaboration at various stages of this data publication and analysis project. Collaboration first centered on data editors working with data contributors, then widened to include other researchers who provided additional peer-review feedback, and finally the widest research community, whose collaboration is facilitated by GitHub’s version control system. We demonstrate that the “publish” and “push” models of data dissemination need not be mutually exclusive; on the contrary, they can play complementary roles in sharing high quality data in support of research. This work highlights the value of combining multiple models in different stages of data dissemination

Publishing and pushing: Mixing models for communicating research data

We present a case study of data integration and reuse involving 12 researchers who published datasets in Open Context, an online data publishing platform, as part of collaborative archaeological research on early domesticated animals in Anatolia. Our discussion reports on how different editorial and collaborative review processes improved data documentation and quality, and created ontology annotations needed for comparative analyses by domain specialists. To prepare data for shared analysis, this project adapted editor-supervised review and revision processes familiar to conventional publishing, as well as more novel models of revision adapted from open source software development of public version control. Preparing the datasets for publication and analysis required significant investment of effort and expertise, including archaeological domain knowledge and familiarity with key ontologies. To organize this work effectively, we emphasized these different models of collaboration at various stages of this data publication and analysis project. Collaboration first centered on data editors working with data contributors, then widened to include other researchers who provided additional peer-review feedback, and finally the widest research community, whose collaboration is facilitated by GitHub’s version control system. We demonstrate that the “publish” and “push” models of data dissemination need not be mutually exclusive; on the contrary, they can play complementary roles in sharing high quality data in support of research. This work highlights the value of combining multiple models in different stages of data dissemination

Free and open source software development of IT systems

IT system development, integration, deployment, and administration benefit significantly from free and open source software (FOSS) tools and services. Affordability has been a compelling reason for adopting FOSS in computing curricula and equipping computing labs with support infrastructure. Using FOSS systems and services, however, is just the first step in taking advantage of how FOSS development principles and practices can impact student learning in IT degree programs. Above all, FOSS development of IT systems requires changes to how students, instructors, and other contributors work collaboratively and openly and get involved and invested in project activities. In this paper I examine the challenges to engage students in FOSS development projects proposed by real clients. A six-week course project revealed problems with adopting FOSS development and collaboration across different activities and roles that student team members have assumed. Despite these problems, students have showed a genuine and strong interest in gaining more practice with FOSS development. FOSS development teaching was further refined in two other courses to learn about adequate teaching strategies and the competencies that students achieve when they participate in FOSS development of IT systems