ScienceLab

The vision

The web has revolutionized multiple aspects of our everyday life, from commerce to gaming. But for all of the advances made in other sectors, we still have not yet seen the same efficiencies take hold in science.

In scientific research, we’re dealing with special circumstances, trying to innovate upon hundreds of years of entrenched norms and practices, broken incentive structures and gaps in training that are dramatically slowing down the system, keeping us from making the advances needed to better society.

The Mozilla Science Lab will explore how we can make the web work for science, from the tools needed to do better research, to the shifts in mindset and culture to one centered around openness, collaboration and innovation. The initiative will foster a two-way conversation between the open web community and researchers so that each side can share ideas, tools and best practices with one another, and explore how we can make research more efficient.

Initial focus areas

Exploring what "digital literacy" means for science

Digital literacy is as important as reading, writing and arithmetic. In academia, skills training to match the tools and technology is still leagues behind where it should be. We need to find a way to better empower students to be "digital researchers" by shortening the gap and providing the means for them to learn how to share, reuse and reproduce research on the web.

Software Carpentry

Software Carpentry helps researchers be more productive by teaching them basic computing skills. They run boot camps at dozens of sites around the world, and also provide open access material online for self-paced instruction.

For more on Software Carpentry, visit their website.

Supporting and innovating with the community

There are some incredible tools out there pushing the limits to what the future of science on the web can be. We want to help support that work as well as find ways to help coordinate efforts and innovate together.

Starting a global conversation

Science is a global enterprise, and this needs to be a global conversation. We want to make sure we are getting tools into the hands of the people who need them most, and continually soliciting your thoughts about how we can, together, work towards more open, efficient science on the web.

The team

• Kaitlin Thaney (Director, Mozilla Science Lab): Kaitlin came to Mozilla from Digital Science, a technology company that works to make research more efficient through better use of software. She also advises the UK government on digital technology, is a Director for DataKind UK, and chairs the London Strata Conference series on big data. Prior to Mozilla and Digitial Science, Kaitlin managed the science program at Creative Commons, worked on education technology with MIT and Microsoft, and wrote for the Boston Globe. You can follow her at @kaythaney.

• Greg Wilson (founder, Software Carpentry) : Greg started the Software Carpentry project in 1998. He has been a professional software developer, an author, and a university professor. Greg received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Edinburgh in 1993. You can follow him at @gvwilson.

How to get involved

• Twitter: @MozillaScience, @swcarpentry
• Join us for a Software Carpentry bootcamp: a list of upcoming events, and how you can get involved
• Follow our planning here on the wiki, for new ways to get involved over the coming week. We'll be hosting community calls, running events, and providing other means for you to join the conversation. Stay tuned.

Support =

The Mozilla Science Lab is supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. If you'd like to find out how you too can support the Science Lab, contact us.