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In this paper we report the results of an open participatory research project that surveyed 209 people with a Ph.D. who have left academia. In this paper, we share the advice they had for people who have not yet left their academic position. We found significant themes in the advice we heard from respondents: We heard advice that folks leaving academia need to shift their mindset when thinking about transitioning out of academia. This mindset shift includes reframing the choice to leave as something that is beneficial as well as beginning the process now and not waiting. We also heard a sense of optimism and positivity around leaving academia as well as suggestions around how to reframe one’s career. Folks leaving academia have found a wide variety of practical strategies helpful during their career transition. These include how to explore careers, how to reframe one’s skills, the importance of networking, informational interviews, and to consider the differences in doing job applications outside of academia versus a CV and cover letter inside of academia. Finally, we heard advice on the realities of leaving academia in the form of frank advice around money, value and worth as well as a discussion of the differences between academic work and industry positions. Our hope is that the discussions of the mindset, practical strategies and realities of leaving academia will be inspiring to people looking to gain insights on the choice to leave academia and the honest realities from those who have experienced the shift. This project is an experiment in participatory qualitative research. Our open dataset is available here:https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8014779 We encourage anyone wishing to look at the full dataset to contact the lead authors, Beth M. Duckles and Borhane Blili-Hamelin. &nbsp

This toolkit shares insights and strategies from our 2021 pilot Open Problem Workshop series. We asked how might we help rethink how real world problems call for the expertise of PhDs from all fields? For those interested in hosting a cross-disciplinary workshop, we have assembled a toolkit of nine activities and suggestions on how to facilitate those activities in an online, collaborative setting. We uncovered three core insights and five guideposts for building successful cross-disciplinary workshops. We believe that openness requires us to empower other communities to replicate, fork, and remix our insights. *Authors listed are in alphabetical order to denote equal co-authorship.

Would you like to learn more about how qualitative research methods can support your research? Are you a data scientist or quantitative researcher who would like to know more about collecting and analyzing textual data? Maybe you’d like to build a survey or plan to do some interviews to support the research you’re already doing? Would you like to know how to measure something that’s hard to measure such as sustainability or long term impact?

This workshop covered the skills needed to facilitate an open workshop online.This model encourages facilitating open dialogue, community building and open documents. This talk was given to the Open Post Academics Community.

Template for gdoc model described in: Schley, S., Duckles, B., & Borhane, B. In Press. Open Knowledge and collaborative documents. To appear in Journal of Faculty Development, Sept. 2020. Content also appears here:https://bit.ly/workingopen_gdoc

This is a workshop to explain how to do the Open Workshops Model online which encourages both community building and open documents. This talk was given to the Open Post Academics Community.

Qualitative research has long suffered from a lack of free tools for analysis, leaving no options for researchers without significant funds for software licenses. This presents significant challenges for equity. This panel discussion will explore the first two free/libre open source qualitative analysis tools out there: qcoder (R package) and Taguette (desktop application). Drawing from the diverse backgrounds of the presenters (social science, library & information science, software engineering), we will discuss what openness and extensibility means for qualitative research, and how the two tools we've built facilitate equitable, open sharing.

The emergence of the US Green Building Council’s (USGBC) provides a unique case study into the organizational change strategies of a hybrid organization. As a nonprofit, social movement organization the USGBC seeks to create change in the marketplace by encouraging more sustainable building practices through a voluntary standards. As they have done so, their organizational processes have begun to draw from regulatory agencies and firms to accomplish this aim. Through the use of multiple organizational processes and forms, the USGBC works with stakeholder groups to respond to change and dissonance in a way that is congruent with Stark’s (2009) theory on heterarchy. Heterarchical thinking about the utility of dissonance and the importance of the distribution of intelligence within a hybrid organization has implications for the ability for these organizations to respond quickly as the industry and stakeholder needs change.

Through the generosity of the Moore Data Driven Discovery Initiative, assessment work has been undertaken across both Data and Software Carpentry to help build an evidence base to complement the large body of existing anecdotal evidence that Carpentry-style training is both useful and effective in improving researchers’ work practices.This analysis of how Carpentries workshops have impacted learners long-term has been extremely insightful. In general, our workshops are helping learners improve their efficiency with managing and analyzing data. Learners are taking advantage of online resources to improve their skills, and many see value in becoming involved longer term with our community.

The goal of this survey was to gather data on the value of Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry to our instructors as well as to find useful stories and narratives about how the organization has made a difference. To do this we chose open-ended questions to get a broad sense of the variety and range of different ways that volunteer instructors became interested in and derive benefit from Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry.