Love, money, fame, nudge: enabling data-intensive bioscience through digital infrastructure nudging

Abstract

“Bioscience has emerged as a data-rich discipline, in a transformation that is spreading as widely now as molecular biology in the twentieth century. We look forward to supporting new research careers, where data are valued and shared widely, where new software is a natural part of Biology, and where re-analysis and modelling are as creative as experimentation in understanding the rules of life and their applications.” Prof Andrew Millar FRS, chair Expert Group UKRI-BBSRC Review of data-intensive bioscience 2020. Indeed - biomedical science is knowledge work and knowledge turning - the turning of observation and hypothesis through experimentation, comparison, and analysis into new, pooled knowledge. Turns depend on the FAIR and Open flow and availability of data and methods for automated processing and reproducible results, and on a society of scientists coordinating and collaborating. For the past 25 years I have worked on the social and technical challenges in digital infrastructure to support scientific collaboration, data and method sharing, and automate scientific processing. Big ideas I have been instrumental in – sharing and publishing high quality computational workflows, semantic web technologies in bioscience, ecosystems of Research Objects as the currency of scholarly knowledge, FAIR data principles - preached revolution to inspire but need nudges* to get traction. I’ll talk about making good on Andrew’s quote: what I’m doing to nudge and where we need to do more. I’ll also talk about my experiences as a woman in a digital infrastructure and computer science over the past 40 years – and some nudging is needed there too. *Thaler RH, Sunstein CR (2008) Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-14-311526-7. OCLC 791403664.