Breaking barriers: open science tackles wicked problems and reduces research waste

April 26, 2024

Speaker

Alex Haagaard and Dr. Clare Ardern

In 2024, KT Connects is focusing on open science — the practice of making scientific inputs, outputs, and processes freely available to all with minimal restrictions. Learn more

Webinar summary

Friday, April 26  

12 – 1 p.m. PST 

“Wicked problems” are challenges that are difficult to solve and identify because of their incomplete, contradictory, and evolving requirements. To tackle wicked problems, collaboration is essential. Open science (sometimes called ‘open scholarship’ or ‘open research’) aims to solve wicked problems by promoting collaboration, transparency, and knowledge and resource sharing. By including people with lived experiences on research teams, open science helps to make research relevant to knowledge users and reduces research waste. In this session, we will explore how open science principles help researchers authentically engage knowledge users in high-quality research to solve wicked problems in health research.

Learning objectives

After this webinar, the audience will be able to:

  1. Identify knowledge users for specific research projects
  2. Describe three ways open science practices reduce research waste
  3. List at least two barriers encountered by patient authors that open science practices can help to overcome.

Speaker bio

Alex Haagaard is a design strategist specialising in digital accessibility, community engagement, disability justice and health equity. Alex has lived with chronic pain since early childhood. This experience informs their interest in designing and advocating for system-level changes to how healthcare services are conceptualized, planned and delivered. Alex is a member of Pain BC’s Putting the Pieces Together conference steering committee, and co-chair of the Chronic Pain Network’s Knowledge Mobilization and Implementation Science Committee. 

Dr. Clare Ardern is a physiotherapist and assistant professor in the department of physical therapy at UBC. Her research team brings researchers, patients, clinicians and health policymakers together to design digital health interventions for musculoskeletal problems. Dr Ardern is the editor-in-chief for the Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy (JOSPT) and JOSPT Open. She hosts the popular weekly JOSPT Insights podcast, which reaches over 16,000 regular listeners. 

Upcoming webinar

Dr. Kelly Cobey

Date

September 27, 2024

Shifting research assessment to open science and beyond

In 2024, KT Connects is focusing on open science — the practice of making scientific inputs, outputs, and processes freely available to all with minimal restrictions. Learn more.

Webinar summary

Friday, September 27 

12 – 1 p.m. PST 

In this webinar, Dr. Kelly Cobey will provide an overview of national and international science policy related to open science. She will discuss why implementing open science has been relatively slow in Canada and share considerations to drive improvements.

She will talk about the academic incentives and rewards used in the Canadian research system, explaining why they can be ineffective to help most funders or institutions reach mission-driven goals. She will use examples to highlight instances where the system could be improved to align with patient preferences.

Learning objectives

After this webinar, the audience will be able to:

• describe limitations of the current system of incentives and rewards in research
• describe what open science is and factors that impact its implementation
• identify relevant Canadian science policies and frameworks related to open science and research assessment

Speaker bio

Dr. Kelly Cobey is a scientist at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute where she leads the Metaresearch and Open Science Program. She is also an associate professor in the School of Epidemiology and Public Health at the University of Ottawa. Dr. Cobey has interests in topics including the implementation of open science, the reporting quality of research, data management and sharing best practices, research reproducibility, and patient engagement in research. She is active in the national and international global science policy community. She presently serves as the co-chair of Declaration On Research Assessment (DORA) and is a current member of the Council of Canadian Academies expert panel on dual-use research of concern (DURC). She actively consults to provide her expertise to federal agencies and academic institutions.