Building a local community of practice in scientific programming for life scientists

PLoS Biol. 2018 Nov 28;16(11):e2005561. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.2005561. eCollection 2018 Nov.

Abstract

In this paper, we describe why and how to build a local community of practice in scientific programming for life scientists who use computers and programming in their research. A community of practice is a small group of scientists who meet regularly to help each other and promote good practices in scientific programming. While most life scientists are well trained in the laboratory to conduct experiments, good practices with (big) data sets and their analysis are often missing. We propose a model on how to build such a community of practice at a local academic institution, present two real-life examples, and introduce challenges and implemented solutions. We believe that the current data deluge that life scientists face can benefit from the implementation of these small communities. Good practices spread among experimental scientists will foster open, transparent, and sound scientific results beneficial to society.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Big Data
  • Community Participation / methods*
  • Data Analysis
  • Data Science / methods*
  • Education, Professional
  • Humans
  • Models, Theoretical
  • Research
  • Research Design / standards

Grants and funding

NWO http://www.stw.nl/ (grant number 12988). Defence in the wild: from trichome transcriptomes and metabolomes to breeding tools for defence markers in tomato. Received by PB. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Marie-Curie Individual Fellowship https://ec.europa.eu/research/mariecurieactions/about/individual-fellowships_en (grant number 655656). DURETO project. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. National Science Foundation https://www.nsf.gov/ (grant number MCB-1518130). Received by SS. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.