Building a culture that uses open knowledge management for effective collaboration and open research

Luke W. Johnston

Daniel B. Ibsen

May 23, 2024

The Polymath problem

Tim Gowers, a mathematician from Cambridge University and a recipient of the Fields Medal, also known as the Nobel Prize of math, tried to do something different in January 2009.

He was working on an important and unresolved math problem. One that no one has ever been able to solve.

He already had a blog and now he tried to solve the problem in the open and asked anyone to help him solve the problem.

In the first 7 hours, nothing happened. But then, a mathematician named Jozsef Solymosi from the University of British Colombia posted a comment with a suggestion to solve the problem. Minutes later, a high-school teacher from Arizona gave his suggestion. Just after that, Terence Tao, another Fields Medal recipient, chimed in.

The ball had started rolling.

Over the next 37 days, 27 people wrote 800 comments, with more than 170,000 words.

Just 37 days after the project started, the problem was solved.

Reinventing discovery

By using online open collaboration, they solved a complex unsolved problem.

A shift in research practice (=a shift in culture), solved what was thought unsolvable - in record time!

What worked well in this project

They were, with open online tools, able to:

amplify collective intelligence
have a dynamic division of labour
modularize the collaboration
conversational critical mass
restructuring expert attention

The problems we solve are getting bigger and bigger, and more and more complex

Getting a good life with diabetes and preventing diabetes are complex problems

More and more people are needed to solve the problem. Bigger and bigger organizations are needed.

To solve the complex problems we need to change/update our research culture

We can do science because we learned it from others

More researchers doing something = more opportunities to learn

Because our society has a research “sub”-culture, we’re able to learn from other researchers on how to do research. Starting from undergraduate studies, through to PhD graduate work, into postdoc positions, and continuing throughout our careers as researchers, we learn from others in our field how to do and not to do things, what expectations are placed on our work, and how to behave and communicate our work.

Importantly, it isn’t just that there are others doing research and spread the culture for it, a big factor is also that with more people doing research in addition to sharing it, and it is consistent enough over many years, that is when a solid cultural foundation can form.

So research fields with fewer researchers, or who don’t share enough, or if the field is new, there might not yet be a strong strong culture on how to do research more effectively compared to larger, older fields. Because when there are more people doing research, you have more opportunities to learn and grow.

Just as an example, if you want to do register based research, one of the best places to learn to how to do that effectively is in the Nordic countries. Because there is the data for it, people can do the work, get the experience, and share it with trainees or newcomers. And then it starts becomes a feedback loop, as more people learn, more do, which gives more chance to learn and improve.

Researchers tend to move around a lot

PhD students graduate
Postdocs to other institutions
TAP/staff to other labs or contracts end

Moving benefit: personally gain experience, bring new knowledge and ideas

Some knowledge is gained…

Moving cost: group dynamic changes, culture has to be (re)learned

Knowledge is also lost…

Core questions:

What do you do for internal (organizational or group) knowledge management? How could you improve it?

Open knowledge management is…

That is done in an open, accessible, transparent way

Usually publicly online

That stores knowledge from “where’s the printer” to “how to run this assay”

Any knowledge generated or needed could be recorded

That includes multidisciplinary methods

Cultural: Values of sharing, documenting, openness
Organizational: Mentor-mentee, incentive structures, prioritized
Technological: Wikis, document sharing, IT infrastructure

Knowledge management encompasses many multidisciplinary methods and angles to achieve it’s goal.

It includes cultural methods, like having values of sharing, which we researchers often already generally have because of the way we do science. It includes having a culture of recording things down, of being open with our work and how to do things.

It also includes organizational methods, like having buddy-type systems, having incentive or prioritization structures that encourage more recording, storing, and sharing knowledge.

It includes, increasingly, technological methods, like using wikis, posts on websites, document sharing tools, and general IT infrastructure to help store and retrieve knowledge.

In general, we researchers and research organizations tend to be quite good at one-to-one, direct sharing of knowledge, such as through group meetings, supervisor-student and peer-to-peer relationships, as well as general sharing through publications and conferences.

But we’re not as good at sharing knowledge within organizations and groups in a more formal, written, and structured way, as this often requires a greater need for organizational and technological support to be effective.

Open knowledge management can help innovation and collaboration

Internal knowledge easily lost without a formal knowledge management system

This applies to both research and industry

Open research is still new—less researchers are doing it

Less people = less chances to learn and use

More people sharing openly = faster to learn and improve

Like any investment, it takes time but pays off in the long run

Basic principles to start

Documentation-focused culture
- Limit emails, meetings
- Write short posts instead
- Use FAQ to ask/answer questions
- Use group task tracker
- Continuously improve

Something is better than nothing
Central location
Make work visible
Easy to search
Easy to edit
Open wherever possible

One example: Steno Common Docs

Resources and support for conducting research at SDCA.
— https://steno-aarhus.github.io/research/

Examples of open knowledge management within Steno

Various Steno groups

Resources, slides, sessions for groups across Steno (e.g. epi-stats, registers, internationalization).
— https://steno-aarhus.github.io/research/directory.html

UK Biobank research group

Documentation and R package to share knowledge and simplify work with the UK Biobank.
— https://steno-aarhus.github.io/ukbAid/

DARTER project website

Documentation on variables and registers within DARTER project.
— https://steno-aarhus.github.io/darter-project/

Seedcase Project Team

Team Documentation: Open knowledge sharing as we learn how to work together and build software.
— https://team.seedcase-project.org

Seedcase Project Community

Community Documentation: Sharing contributing guides, general knowledge for those outside of the team.
— https://community.seedcase-project.org

Some resources for further learning