POSE: Phase I: An open-source ecosystem for massive online experiments and citizen science

Mgh Institute Of Health Professions, Charlestown MA

Investigators

Abstract

This project is funded by Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems (POSE) which seeks to harness the power of open-source development for the creation of new technology solutions to problems of national and societal importance. Behavioral research has historically and almost exclusively taken place in small laboratories with small numbers of participants. In the era of "big data," scientists have realized that huge numbers of volunteer "citizen scientists" can conduct studies anywhere around the world using their own smartphones, wearables, and computers. Data collected from one such large study can answer questions that would normally need hundreds or thousands of small laboratory experiments. This project's impact will be to facilitate and democratize large-scale behavioral research by planning a community of professional and amateur researchers who use and build upon an open-source software platform used for designing and running such studies. The project has three components. First, the project seek to conduct ecosystem discovery to identify the needs of potential users, scope potential partnerships with other open-source projects, and find potential collaborators at non-profits and in industry. Second, the organization and governance activities will be established a formal governing structure and implemented using Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) Best Practices, including enhanced automated testing, continuous integration, and robust security measures. Finally, community building activities will support existing users and contributors and onboard new collaborators through a series of workshops, hackathons, online tutorials, and targeted lab exchanges. The project develops a long-term plan for growing and sustaining the open-source ecosystem within a well-governed and well-managed organization. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.