Organizational Change for Open Science

This workshop is a short introduction to organization change for people with backgrounds in research. All of the material is available under an open license, and contributions through our repository are welcome. All contributors are required to respect our Code of Conduct.

Learner Persona

Sabina, 28, has a master's degree in animal physiology and now works as a data analyst for a mid-sized pharmaceutical company.
Sabina takes open access publishing and open source software for granted, but has never been involved in politics or advocacy beyond signing a few online petitions.
Sabina's company doesn't have a policy on staff contributing to open source projects, and the head of her department occasionally grumbles about "all this diversity stuff" distracting people from "real work". Sabina wants unambiguous permission for the former and official company support for the latter.
Sabina doesn't mind public speaking, but finds face-to-face conflict very stressful.

This workshop teaches Sabina the basics of organizational change, while the exercises help her figure out what changes she wants and how to achieve them.

Lessons

Introduction: what this training does and doesn't cover.
Goals, Strategies, and Tactics: deciding what to do and how to do it.
Power: figuring out who has it and how to influence them.
Starting: where and how to begin.
Finishing: closing the deal and what happens afterward.
Conclusion: a few more tips and a modest proposal.

Appendices

Acknowledgments

Toby Hodges s a bioinformatician turned community coordinator based in Heidelberg, Germany. He is currently Director of Curriculum at The Carpentries.
Greg Wilson is a programmer, author, and educator based in Toronto, Canada. He was the co-founder and first Executive Director of Software Carpentry and received ACM SIGSOFT's Influential Educator Award in 2020.
Thanks to Ben Cotton, Kate Hertweck, AJ Lauer, and Esther Plomp for feedback.

start where you are · use what you have · help who you can