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.

Building a culture that uses open knowledge management for effective collaboration and open research Luke W. Johnston Daniel B. Ibsen May 23, 2024

Building a culture that uses open knowledge management for effective collaboration and open research
The Polymath problem
Reinventing discovery
What worked well in this project
The problems we solve are getting bigger and bigger, and more and more complex
Culture is social learning
We can do science because we learned it from others
Researchers tend to move around a lot
Moving benefit: personally gain experience, bring new knowledge and ideas
Moving cost: group dynamic changes, culture has to be (re)learned
🤔 How exactly do you communicate and share within Steno/your group?
🤔 Is your way of communicating and sharing easy for newcomers?
Core questions:
Open knowledge management is…
A formal approach to sharing, creating, and managing knowledge
That is done in an open, accessible, transparent way
That stores knowledge from “where’s the printer” to “how to run this assay”
That includes multidisciplinary methods
Open knowledge management can help innovation and collaboration
Internal knowledge easily lost without a formal knowledge management system
Open research is still new—less researchers are doing it
Like any investment, it takes time but pays off in the long run
Basic principles to start
One example: Steno Common Docs
Activity: Think 🤔 pair 💬 share 📢
Examples of open knowledge management within Steno
Various Steno groups
UK Biobank research group
DARTER project website
Seedcase Project Team
Seedcase Project Community
Some resources for further learning