Open Science terminologies across language borders
Funding Area: Critical shared infrastructure / Infraestructura compartida critica
Problem Statement: Among many barriers to engaging in Open Science is the breadth of new terminology surrounding research practice and culture. New nomenclature can be an obstacle to joining ongoing discussions, and vague or competing definitions can cause confusion and misunderstanding. Our collaboration of over 100 scholars in the FORRT (Framework for Open and Reproducible Research Training) community sought to reduce these barriers by developing a Glossary of over 300 Open Science Terms (Parsons et al. 2022; forrt.org/glossary/). We aim to aid mentoring and teaching, and to support newcomers and experts in open science to communicate efficiently. However, term definitions are currently only provided in English. This, unfortunately, limits the access of non-English speaking scholars, with special consequences to the inclusion of scholars from LMIEs - where English may be less known and used - in the Open Science movement. Highlighting this, we have received many contacts enquiring about translated versions. To make this valuable resource accessible and inclusive to scholars worldwide, we have committed to develop and release translated versions of the glossary in 10+ languages on the FORRT website. Parsons, S., Azevedo, F., Elsherif, M. M., Guay, S., Shahim, O. N., Govaart, G. H., … & Aczel, B. (2022). A Community-Sourced Glossary of Open Scholarship Terms. Nature Human Behaviour, 6(3), 312-318. doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01269-4. publisher’s shared version rdcu.be/cHsqM.
Proposed Activities: To support our project's aim to deliver translations of the glossary in 10+ languages, we will hold a series of approximately 20 workshops (lasting 3-4 hours) over a 12 month period. Each workshop will have two interlinked aims: Translate individual term entries into the language Cross-check translations Each language-specific workshop will include between 3 and 10 scholars native or fluent in a particular language. It is important that multiple scholars that speak and write in a given language lead the translations, in order to truly support the diversity, inclusivity, and equity of this project. Although machine translation applications are improving, they do not capture the contextual and culture-specific relevance of specialist terms such as those in this glossary. To ensure that all contributions are recognised, we ask participants to track their contributions. We have been contacted by scholars with interest in contributing to translations in the following languages: German, Spanish, Hindi, Polish, Bengali, Italian, French, Chinese, Arabic, and Portuguese. For several of these languages, teams have already begun work translating. For each active team, we open a channel on FORRT’s Slack Workspace, allowing the team to continue communicating throughout the project. A central team led by the applicant Sam Parsons is overseeing the whole project and resolving questions related to the translation process. At present, this central team consists entirely of volunteers. We hope to reduce the risk of burnout among this team by offering honoraria for their time. We expect that project management over the course of the year will total 100 hours; this will be split between individuals in the central team as required. The translations will be added to the FORRT Glossary webpage (forrt.org/glossary/) once at least 50 terms have been translated into a specific language and each translation has been vetted by at least one other team member. To give credit to all involved scholars, similarly to the original FORRT’s Glossary, each term translated will be accompanied in the website by the names of scholars who translated/revised the translations. Every 3 months, the overarching team will meet to plan workshops for the following three-month period based on the current status of translations in each language and current levels of interest. Each workshop will be advertised broadly through FORRT’s social media, mailing lists and partners, in liaison with FORRT’s Outreach team, to ensure maximal dissemination and uptake. The workshops will be held online and vary in time zones to allow everybody to join the project. We hope to reduce barriers to participation in these workshops by offering $100 honoraria to all attendees. At the end of a 12-month period, our goal is to have at least 10 translations of the Glossary including at least 50 core open science terms.
Openness: The entire pipeline of the Glossary project and the translations activities are open. We have Google Documents outlining how people can contribute to the Glossary project generally (tinyurl.com/FORRT-glossary), and specific guidelines for translations teams (tinyurl.com/FORRT-translations). Integral to these guidelines, and meeting FORRTs aims, is ensuring that contributions are tracked so that contributors receive credit for their labour. The translations will be available on FORRT’s Glossary web page (forrt.org/glossary/), with the option to easily flip between languages of a given term. The planned workshop activities will be advertised through FORRT’s large community of over 800 scholars, FORRTs regular newsletter and social media activities, and our partners (forrt.org/about/partnerships/). We leave the decision to each translation team whether they wish to submit the translated glossary (and appropriate introduction) for publication in a peer-reviewed journal. We have in principle agreement from Nature Human Behavior to publish translations of the glossary. Teams may of course opt to publish in a journal in their own language. In this way, members of each translation team have the opportunity to receive more formal recognition for their work. The applicant team, and the broader FORRT community, will support translation teams however possible.
Challenges: We anticipate two challenges, and below outline how we plan to mitigate them. First, the scale of the project aim - achieving 10 or more completed translations of the Glossary - will require strong organisation from our lead team and most importantly, sufficient contributions from native/fluent speakers of each language. To mitigate this, we will adopt a bottom-up approach whereby those interested in working on a translation team create and begin this work (In contrast to a top-down approach of trying to force a language translation where there may be no current interest). Further, we have budgeted US$100 Honoraria for each workshop participant as compensation for their time and valuable expertise to further incentivize contributions. Second, the dynamic completion of translations and the workload required to update the website requires substantial management and time investment. In anticipation of this, we have already built the background infrastructure on the website to allow this. Further, we ask translation teams to release their glossary translations in batches of terms, starting with the first of 50 or more translated terms. Therefore we minimise the resource and time investment of updating the website too often, e.g. per individual term translation. Further, to address both challenges, we will capitalise on the expertise of FORRT’s community managers to facilitate the process of overseeing and managing contributions.
Neglectedness: To our knowledge there are very few sources of funding available to support this type of work. Exploring others, such as the Netherlands' NWO Open Science Award typically limits the scope of work within a single country and as such we would be unable to compensate participants for their time and expertise. Other international sources of funding are either too large in scope or require funding for an organisation, rather than an individual project with aims to build capacity and infrastructure.
Success: We have a single measurable objective for this project: Have translations of the glossary project in at least 10 languages (each including at least 50 core open science terms) live on the FORRT website by the end of the project duration. Achieving this objective will mark our success on the project.
Total Budget: 15,000 USD
Budget File: pdf
Affiliations: The project is affiliated with FORRT (Framework for Open and Reproducible Research Training; forrt.org/).
LMIE Carveout: The project fits into the category “services that are widely adopted by communities in LMIEs”. Many of our active FORRT members and project contributors come from LMIEs. We will advertise our workshops broadly and give preference to attendees from LMIEs to encourage their active engagement with FORRT and Open Science more broadly. Lastly, we hope the translated versions of the FORRT’s Glossary will benefit the wider uptake of Open Science, especially in non-English speaking LMIES.
Team Skills: In 2018, Flavio Azevedo and Sam Parsons co-founded FORRT (forrt.org)—an interdisciplinary international community of 750+ scholars at all career stages. FORRT integrates Open Science into higher education to advance research transparency, reproducibility, and ethics through pedagogy (Azevedo et al. 2022). Flavio has directed the FORRT community through the development of a range of pedagogical resources, including: ready-to-use Open Science lesson plans, and a systematic review of the impact of Open Scholarship on students’ outcomes. Sam has been involved in these projects and led the consensus-based glossary of over 250 Open Scholarship terms, which this project builds on. Helena Hartmann, a community manager at FORRT, is co-leading the German translation team and will also contribute to event organization and dissemination due to her long-standing expertise in public outreach. Leticia Micheli and Bethan Iley, community managers of FORRT, will aid in organizing and leading workshops. They will leverage their extensive experience with teaching and conducting outreach activities at FORRT (e.g. initiatives to lower barriers to the adoption of OS practices). We also leverage the FORRT community. Since 2018, they have demonstrated a strong track record of completing big-team science projects with high-impact publications and resource dissemination. FORRT includes diverse international researchers and educators across all career stages with a wide array of expertise.
How Did You Hear About This Call: Word of mouth (e.g. conversations and emails from IOI staff, friends, colleagues, etc.) / Boca a boca (por ejemplo, conversaciones y correos electrónicos del personal del IOI, amigos, colegas, etc.)
Submission Number: 147
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