Submitting RDS course to the Journal of Open Source Education?

[AoifeHughes]

Hi all,

I'd mentioned this in person the other day, and wanted to make it a group discussion. How would people feel about submitting this course to the Journal of Open Source Education?

I think it could be a great way to:

1. Produce a measurable output from the project
2. Tie into Turing goals of engaging with wider community
3. Bring more attention to the course and invite collaborators
4. Raise visibility and have more self-learners interested
5. Have an independent reviewer(s) critique and make suggestions

Additionally, the robustness of the course and materials already meet all the criteria for publication. I'm familiar with the journal and would volunteer to handle the submission

Would love others' thoughts on this! Particularly, the original creators of the course! @alan-turing-institute/rds-course

[jack89roberts]

Sounds good to me, I don't see a reason not to (apart from the time to prepare a submission etc., which you're kindly volunteering to do 😁 ).

[AoifeHughes]

Fantastic! Only small issue I can see is author order. I would propose just giving it by GitHub contributed size?

Personally, I find author lists / order to be something silly. But if anyone has strong feelings then I’m happy to discuss better or more fair ways to handle.

[jack89roberts]

I doubt (m)any of us would care about the order tbh, but if we're having a non-alphabetical order I'd probably suggest the people involved in the original grant application go first, and then the people involved in creating and delivering the 1st iteration. There are people that were heavily involved in getting funding and leading/organising, or also in helping/reviewing material, in a way that won't necessarily be reflected in git commits (maybe we should set up an All Contributors thingy?)

[AoifeHughes]

eh, I'm always too afraid to suggest alphabetical order... maybe order by number of vowels in name, seems more fair? 😂

[jack89roberts]

🤣 (but everyone knows ascending number of first name characters is the one true order)

[gmingas]

I think it is a very good idea, thanks for proposing it @AoifeHughes. It would be good to discuss this with the Skills team before we decide, to make sure they are on board (though I don't see why they wouldn't be). I have no specific preferences on authors list.

[AoifeHughes]

Thanks, @gmingas, I'll reach out to them about it. Good suggestion. And Excellent point @jack89roberts there will be people involved who aren't showing in contributors, currently. I'll draft something out according to the submission guidelines and make a branch (... at some point in the near future). Perhaps when this is done @jack89roberts you could help check everyone who should be given credit is.

[AoifeHughes]

In the interim I've started a branch, and more specifically a paper.md here, Please feel free to edits or comments re: authorlist.

I'll draft some content ideas and fill out when I've time. I've no real plan, so please chop, change and edit anything anyone thinks is important!

I think @callummole and @helendduncan are coming off the project in October? So, I'll happily chip away at it in October whilst I'm still assigned

[jack89roberts]

This issue might be helpful: https://github.com/alan-turing-institute/Hut23/issues/837 , particularly the original proposal: https://github.com/alan-turing-institute/Hut23/files/5982147/RDS-training-course-proposal.1.docx

[jack89roberts]

Also this list of everyone that was an instructor or a helper last year There's also Peter Foster, who helped review one of the modules but doesn't appear in any of the other lists.

I don't have a strong opinion on how long the author list should be/who should be included (I come from a background where author lists can literally be thousands of people). But Kasra definitely should be added at least, as he was involved in the original grant (I think) and coordinating the development.

[kasra-hosseini]

Thank you, @jack89roberts. I'm happy to be involved and help with the draft.

@AoifeHughes also thanks for suggesting this. I think it is a very good idea. One question: who is the audience for JOSE (I am familiar with JOSS but not JOSE)? Is it mostly for (potential) participants (e.g., students who are thinking to participate but are not sure), or is it mostly for course developers (e.g., lessons learned, why we used Jupyter Book, what not to do, what were the feedback from participants...)? I quickly went through some of the papers on JOSE, and I am still not sure...Some of them seem to present a new tool for teaching, others are more like a short description of the course.

[AoifeHughes]

Hi @kasra-hosseini,

Yep, valid questions. Really, in my view JOSE is a nice way of cataloguing open source educational materials. The peer review process ensures everything published there is high quality.

For us, I see this as a nice way of bringing in more external interest to the course. Making it citable, getting independent feedback.

I could imagine that having the course in the journal could also lead to other educators wanting to use, contribute or just feedback to our materials.

[kasra-hosseini]

Great, thanks.