OLS (formerly Open Life Science) is a non-profit organisation for open science training and capacity building. OLS community has engaged 400+ open science learners and practitioners from across the globe through its Open Seeds training and mentoring programme. OLS is committed to improving the participation of marginalised and underrepresented communities in open science and research more broadly. The OLS Core team includes an Executive Director; three Co-Directors; two full-time employees, and two Resident Fellows, working across different projects in varying capacities (read details in OLS Team and Organisation)
For any questions, concerns or additional details, please email team@openlifesci.org, or directly contact the Directors (directors@openlifesci.org).
As a community-based project, OLS draws mentors, facilitators and experts from the OLS community to support the mentees onboarded for each round of the training and mentoring programme (Open Seeds). We provide honoraria, microgrants and seed funding available to all participants to support and incentivise their contributions to Open Science.
Slide source: Sharan, M., & Sánchez-Tapia, A. (2022). Community Governance: Representation & Intersectionality with examples from Open Science Community. Zenodo. doi: 10.5281/zenodo.7038553. slide 24
The OLS Governance Committee (referred to as ‘Committee’ hereafter) is a dedicated group of individuals appointed to provide strategic oversight and guidance in shaping the governance framework of OLS. This committee provides advisory support in decision-making, transparency, and sustainability within OLS.
- Anelda van der Walt, Talarify and RSSE Africa, South Africa
- Batool Almarzouq, representing Open Science Saudi Arabia, UK
- Esther Plomp, TU Delft, The Netherlands
- Hao Ye, University of Pennsylvania / Community for Rigor, USA
- Laura Ación, MetaDocencia, Argentina
- Laurah Ondari, Bioinformatics Hub of Kenya initiative (BHKi), Kenya
- Rowland Mosbergen, Practical Diversity and Inclusion Project, Australia
- Sara El Gebali, FAIRPoints Project, Sweden
- Saranjeet Kaur Bhogal, RSE Asia Association and Research Software Alliance, India
- Stephen Klusza, Clayton State University as an assistant professor of Biology, USA
-
Patricia Herterich, Organisation Secretary
-
Malvika Sharan, Organisation Liaison
-
Yo Yehudi, Organisation Liaison
- Selection and invitation:
- Invite individuals who have taken active leadership, collaborative or advisory roles in OLS. Names suggested and agreed by the OLS Board, considering diverse representations and areas of work.
- Collaborative Definition of Scope:
- Hold meetings and collaborative processes involving the Committee members and the Board to define the scope and ways of working for the Committee.
- Encourage open dialogue and diverse perspectives and finalise how the Committee will have an overview of OLS work.
- Publish the reviewed documents for public access and invite comments from the OLS community.
- Feedback and Recommendations:
- Establish a regular feedback loop between the Governance Committee and the OLS Board.
- Encourage proactive suggestions for improving transparency in OLS leadership and operations.
- Build transparency by sharing summaries from the meetings for the broader community.
- Sustainability Focus:
- Involve the committee in exploring funding, strategy, and leadership opportunities in OLS.
- Encourage collaboration with local communities for skills development and capacity building in the scope of OLS.
- Design an open and accessible nomination process for community members with recommendations from the committee.
- Nomination Process:
- Ensure a transparent and fair process for selecting individuals.
- Consider criteria such as active participation, leadership, and commitment to OLS values.
- Continuation of Leadership:
- Ensure a smooth transition (rotating some members in, others out) for part of the Committee from 2024, and fill seats with members who wish to start their roles in 2025 for the next 1 - 2 years.
- Foster a sense of continuity in governance and decision-making.
These principles aim to promote transparency, inclusivity, and continuous improvement within the governance committee, ensuring that it effectively serves the OLS community's needs and values.
Transparency and Communication:
- Regularly communicate updates and progress with the Committee and seek open and timely feedback and recommendations.
- Encourage open communication via Slack channels, emails, documentation and meetings for feedback and suggestions.
Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion:
- Strive for diversity within the Committee to ensure a broad range of perspectives, abilities/disabilities, geographical locations, expertise, and backgrounds.
- Establish processes that are accessible and equitable for all current members of the Committee and future members from the OLS community.
Capacity Building:
- Support Committee activities that enhance their skills and visibility, as well as benefit the broader OLS community.
- Encourage Committee members to integrate local capacity-building activities with OLS when appropriate and beneficial for the broader communities.
Feedback Mechanisms:
- Establish mechanisms for collecting feedback from the community on governance practices applied in the Committee’s work.
- Utilise feedback to continually refine and improve OLS’ governance structure and transparency for how decisions are made and communicated to the community.
Documentation and Evaluation:
- Regularly evaluate the effectiveness of the governance structure and make adjustments as needed. Document decisions, processes, and lessons learned from the Committee’s work for future reference.
- Foster transparency by sharing information from the Committee with the broader community and vice versa.
Term Length:
- 1-2 Years. Upon completion of 1 year, members will have an opportunity to renew their membership for up to 12 months. Maximum term length is 2 years.
- Members can step down at any time - following the offboarding process.
- Upon completion of 2-year terms, existing members can be nominated/self-nominated for election for one more term. Service after two full terms (4 years maximum) won’t be possible.
- We encouraged staggered terms (some members opting to stay on the Committee) to avoid the entire board rotating off simultaneously and losing the institutional memory.
Time Commitment:
- Suggested time commitment: 1.5 hours for meetings per month.
- Time commitment before and after the meeting may vary based on tasks undertaken or actions agreed by the members of the Governance Committee.
Legal Status:
- Roles are voluntary, and honoraria can be provided within the budget allocated by the Executive Director in agreement with our finance officer.
- An accessibility fund will be made available to ensure that Committee members can participate in carrying out their responsibilities.
OLS Team Support for the Committee:
- Support will provided by the organisation Liaison (1-2 Board members) and Secretariat in managing logistics, facilitating knowledge exchange and directing timely feedback to and from the OLS team.
- The level of involvement from the OLS Team will be determined by the Governance Committee based on the desired level of support.
In this repository, we describe the governance status and decision-making process of Open Life Science.
Inspired by Cookie Cutter Data Science
├── LICENSE
├── README.md <- The top-level README for users of this project.
├── CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md <- Guidelines for users and contributors of the project.
├── CONTRIBUTING.md <- Information on how to contribute to the project.
├── reports <- Generated analysis as HTML, PDF, LaTeX, etc.
├── figures <- Generated graphics and figures to be used in reporting
├── project_management <- Meeting notes and other project planning resources
└──
Maintainers
This repository is developed by Dr. Malvika Sharan and reviewed and maintained by OLS team.
Please create an issue to share references or ideas related to the development of this project.
For the repository
- Add a README file
- Add a CONTRIBUTING file
- Add a LICENSE
- Add a Code of Conduct
- Install all-contributors bot
- .gitignore file (choose from a template)
- Issue templates
Project management directory
- Capture OLS status overview and OLS team information
- List of projects and reports
- Extended members and community
- OLS opportunities and events
- 2023 governance proposal
- Recruitment process of members in governance group
- Onboarding process and documents
- Timeline for engagement
- Governance documentation
- Set process for transparency for the community feedback
Logistics: Recruitment and onboarding
- Outline the plans for the governance
- Invite nomination from the OLS team for who should be invited in the first iteration
- Get the OLS team to review the proposal and documents
- Send invitation
- Onboard them by sharing the onboarding document
- Gather declaration for CoI and Participation
- Set up the initial meeting and identify the next steps
- Phase 1: Initial work with individual groups on setting resources and directions for their areas of work
- Phase 2: Start recommendation and feedback from January 2024
For any organisation-related queries or concerns, you can directly reach out to Malvika Sharan by emailing malvika@openlifesci.org.
This work is licensed under the MIT license (code) and Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (for documentation). You are free to share and adapt the material for any purpose, even commercially, as long as you provide attribution (give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made) in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use, and with no additional restrictions.