Introduction
Reproducible research is work that can be independently verified. In practice, it means sharing the data and code that were used to generate published results – yet this is often easier said than done. The Turing Way is a handbook and a community sharing best practices for reproducible, ethical and collaborative data science. We work with a diverse community of collaborators and contributors to make data science accessible, comprehensible and effective across different sectors.
Our moonshot goal is to 'make reproducibility too easy not to do'!
An illustration about The Turing Way guides. By Scriberia and The Turing Way community. Used under the CC-BY 4.0 License. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.3332807.
Explaining the science
Reproducible research is necessary to ensure that scientific work can be trusted. Led by strong advocacy from the research community for open science and research reproducibility, funders and publishers are increasingly requiring that publications include access to the underlying data and analysis code. The goal is to ensure that all results can be independently verified and built upon in future work. This is sometimes easier said than done. Sharing these research outputs means understanding and applying a range of practices, including open science, data management, library sciences, software development, and continuous integration techniques — skills that are not widely taught or expected of academic researchers and data scientists. Furthermore, technical skill alone is not sufficient for making research reproducible and open for all.
Project aims
Launched in 2019 as a lightly opinionated guide to data science, The Turing Way has since expanded into a series of guides on Reproducible Research, Project Design, Communication, Collaboration and Ethical Research. Each guide offers chapters on a range of topics covering best practices, guidance and recommendations. These chapters have been co-authored by contributors who are students, researchers, educators, community leaders, policy-makers and professionals from diverse backgrounds, lived experiences and domain knowledge.
The Turing Way is an open collaboration and community-driven project. The Turing Way's mission is to involve everybody in data science and research infrastructure roles: the developers of the code (research engineers, postdocs and doctoral students), their supervisors and the business team members who coordinate these projects. Everyone who contributes to this book, no matter how small or big their contributions are, is recognised in this project as a contributor and a community member.
Applications
We recognise that the burden of requirements and new skill acquisition can be intimidating to individuals who are new to data science. Therefore the format of The Turing Way chapters is kept modular for the reader to dip in and out of, depending on their level of experience in the various topics. The project will help to answer questions that researchers don't always ask: "How do I ensure that my code's existing functionality doesn't change as I extend the codebase?", "How do I make my project easy for someone else to run?", and many more.
Senior team members – Turing fellows, program directors and managers – will be catered for with key points tailored towards managing reproducible research projects highlighted for each topic covered. The project will build and curate checklists for what can be done to ensure all project outputs are reproducible. A chapter on Binder will be of interest to supervisors who want to regularly review their students' code and will include the technical details of how to set up a BinderHub that will be useful for research software engineers.
To engage industries with these practices and facilitate the adoption of open source, open data and other best practices, The Turing Way Practitioners Hub was launched in 2023. The Practitioners Hub has been hosting partnering organisations and Small to Medium-sized Enterprises from across different sectors.
Recent updates
The Turing Way book currently hosts 200 live pages across 50 chapters that have been co-created by over 300 contributors.
A recent version of the book can be cited as: The Turing Way Community. (2021). The Turing Way: A handbook for reproducible, ethical and collaborative research (1.0.1). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5671094
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Overview of resources
- Explore the GitHub repository
- Read the book online: https://the-turing-way.netlify.app
The Turing Way guides
The Turing Way hosts chapters on research topics cetegorised across the following community-produced guides:
- Guide to reproducible research
- Guide to ethical research
- Guide to project design
- Guide for communication
- Guide for collaboration
- Community Handbook
Illustrations
Since 2019, we have developed reusable illustrations collaboratively with The Turing Way Book Dash participants using the
Community calls and events
- Fireside chat: Monthly webinars to facilitate cross-community discussions on data science, research reproducibility, open science, ethics, collaboration and more! – look out for announcements on Eventbrite.
- Weekly co-working calls: Every Monday (11:00 - 12:00 London time)
- Collaboration cafes: First and Third Wednesday (15:00 - 17:00)
- Book Dash events: 1-2 times a year, more engaged sprint for collaboration, networking and development
Selected reports
- Impact Report 2019-2020
- Quarterly reports
- Videos on YouTube
- Book Dash reports
- Presentations on Zenodo
- Promotion pack for presenters
Selected articles
- An Emerging Technology Charter for London (2020). Access here
- Reproducibility of scientific results in the EU : scoping report (2020). Publications Office of the European Union. Access here
- Innovation Scholars: Data Science Training in Health and Bioscience – UKRI. (2021, January 08). Access here
- Report by FREYA project “Connected Open Identifiers for Discovery, Access and Use of Research Resources”: [Access here]
- Top tips for making the most out of Binder, blog post by Emma Karoune, Sarah Gibson, Martina Vilas, and Sophia Batchelor, 2020, Software Sustainability Institute.
- Training material “Creating JupyterBook with The Turing Way” at JupyterCon 2020, Martina Vilas, Sarah Gibson and Malvika Sharan, 5-9 October 2020: https://github.com/martinagvilas/tutorial-jupyterbook-with-turing-way
- Collaborative work in a pandemic - The Turing Way Bookdash November 2020, blog post by Emma Karoune, 2020.
- CW20 speed blog: Bootstrapping a development team during the time of crisis, Raniere Silva, Malvika Sharan, Colin Sauze, Yo Yehudi, Claire Wyatt, 2020, Software Sustainability Institite. (Available as a chapter in The Turing Way: Managing a new community and a team.
- Experience of The Turing Way Book Dash as a first-time participant, blog post by Arielle Bennett-Lovell, 2020, CSCCE forum.
- The Turing Way: An open source resource promoting best practice for reproducible research, blog post by Becky Arnold, 2019, Software Sustainability Institute.
Organisers
Dr Malvika Sharan
Senior Researcher, Open Research, Tools, Practices and SystemsAnne Lee Steele
Research Community Manager, The Turing Way | Tools, Practices and SystemsArielle Bennett
TPS Senior Researcher in Open Source PracticesLéllé Demertzi
Research Project Manager The Turing Way | AI&Arts Interest Group OrganiserResearchers and collaborators
Alexandra Araujo Alvarez
Senior Research Community ManagerDr Emma Karoune
Principal Researcher - Research Community Building | Tools, Practices and SystemsDr Aida Mehonic
TPS Senior Researcher, Research ApplicationsDr Martin O'Reilly
Director of Research EngineeringDr Jim Madge
Senior Research Software EngineerVicky Hellon
Senior Research Community Manager, Turing-Roche Partnership | Tools, Practices and SystemsDr Cassandra Gould Van Praag
Senior Research Community Manager for the Environment and Sustainability Grand ChallengeDr Eirini Zormpa
Research Community Manager, AIM RSF Open Collaboration | Tools, Practices and SystemsJennifer Ding
TPS Senior Researcher, Research ApplicationsDr Alden Conner
TPS Senior Researcher, Research ApplicationsHari Sood
Research Application ManagerMishka Nemes
Skills ManagerDavid Sarmiento Perez
Research Project ManagerBastian Greshake Tzovaras
Senior ResearcherDr Christopher Burr
Innovation and Impact Hub Lead (TRIC-DT), Senior Researcher in Trustworthy Systems (Tools, Practices and Systems)Dr Sarah Gibson
Researcher, The Turing WayDr Batool Almarzouq
Research Project Manager, AI for Multiple Long-term ConditionsPrevious contributors
Dr Rachael Ainsworth
Research Associate, University of ManchesterBecky Arnold
University of SheffieldAlexander Morley
University of OxfordDr Anna Krystalli
University of SheffieldRosie Higman
University of ManchesterPatricia Herterich
University of BirminghamContact info
Contact the project lead Kirstie Whitaker, co-lead Malvika Sharan and community manager Anne Lee Steele.
Connect
- Slack workspace
- Twitter account
- Get in touch with The Turing Way community manager Anne Lee Steele
- Read the contribution guideline
- The Turing Way code of conduct
- Subscribe to The Turing Way calendar
More ways to connect: bit.ly/turingway