AGU receives NASA funding to advance open science practices

AGU has made a strong commitment to being a leader in open science to catalyze discovery and solutions to scientific and societal challenges. I am pleased to announce that AGU has been selected to receive funding from NASA to partner on its new Transform to Open Science (TOPS) mission.

TOPS is a key component of NASA’s larger Open-Source Science Initiative, delivering on the “commitment to open sharing of software, data, and knowledge as early as possible in the scientific process.” Advancing open science has the potential to transform our community through improved accessibility, efficiency and innovation, reproducibility, and diversity and inclusion. This transformation will require a culture shift to a more transparent and collaborative scientific process, which will increase the pace and quality of scientific progress.

The core of AGU’s contribution to TOPS is the development of a new suite of open science courses relevant to all disciplines and free for everyone. These five, 2.5-hour courses will cover the Ethos of Open Science, Open Tools & Resources, Open Software, Open Data, and Open Results.

AGU is inviting international engagement from the open science research community to support the development of these courses and to help encourage our colleagues in the larger scientific community to enroll once they launch later this year. TOPS courses will be held starting in person at Fall Meeting 2022 in Chicago and then at other scientific meetings beginning in 2023, as well as online everywhere.

AGU is also preparing to support NASA’s Year of Open Science in 2023, “a global community initiative to spark change and inspire open science engagement through events and activities that will shift the current paradigm.” We are excited to kick off this year in partnership with the American Meteorological Society at its January 2023 meeting. AGU is also developing a new award to acknowledge exceptional work in the open science community, which we plan to award at Fall Meeting 2023.

Learn more about our advancement of open science in AGU’s Strategic Plan and Position Statement on Data, and through our initiatives, including the Data Leadership Program, Ethics and Equity Center, and Open Access Publications.

Read about TOPS and get involved at the initiative’s GitHub page.