The TIER Network is a forum for exchange of ideas among instructors, researchers, and data support specialists working to integrate transparency and reproducibility into the training of students in quantitative research methods.

What are the benefits of joining the TIER Network?

• Members are invited to participate in live, moderated discussions with other members of the Network on topics of mutual interest.

• Each member is given a dedicated page on the Project TIER website where they can make their work visible to other Network members as well as the general public.

To join the TIER Network

Just fill out this brief form to let us know about your work. We will set up a new page on the TIER website for you to populate with information about yourself and your work, and keep you up-to-date as moderated conversations among Network members are organized. And to thank you for joining, we will send you a Project TIER water bottle.

FALL 2020 NETWORK CONVERSATIONS

A series of informal discussions moderated by members of the TIER Network.

• All conversations take place on Friday afternoons, from 2:00-3:00 pm (eastern US time), via Zoom.
• All conversations can be joined using this link.
• Registration is not required, but would be appreciated. Register here.

October 2: TIER Protocol 4.0 Coming Soon: See What's New
Moderated by Richard Ball

Version 3.0 of the TIER Protocol--Project TIER's flagship guidance for conducting and documenting reproducible research--has been posted since October 2016. We are now nearing completion of a thoroughly revised version 4.0, which will be posted late 2020 or early 2021. Project TIER co-director Richard Ball will give a presentation on what is new in TIER Protocol 4.0--such as automated saving of output, emphasis on relative directory paths to make research compendia portable, and a design that allows more content to be delivered in a streamlined format. This will be an informal, interactive discussion. The goal is as much to get feedback from participants as it is to present them with information.

October 16: Taking the next step in reproducible research with provenance-based tools
Moderated by Aaron Ellison

The transparent, reproducible analyses essential for rapid scientific progress require two steps that are increasingly taken: making data publicly accessible and providing open-source code for their analyses. But author-provided code often is difficult to re-use because it is poorly documented or won’t run on newer operating systems or software versions. In this conversation, we will discuss software tools based on collection of data provenance that enable creation of well-documented, clean (debugged) code that can be run more easily by secondary users. We will also discuss what’s missing from current tools and what other tools could be more accessible and used more widely. (For background reading and exploration: https://end-to-end-provenance.github.io/).

October 30: TIER Without Fear
Moderated by Anne Nurse

How can we help students overcome their terror about reproducibility?  Some of us teach large numbers of students who have few quantitative skills and no familiarity with coding.  What are tricks for teaching them the Tier Protocol?  How can we modify our statistics class to have room to teach reproducibility without losing sight of the main goals of the class? Does everyone have to learn R--or is it possible to do transparent and reproducible research with SPSS?

November 13: Curating for Reproducibility
Moderated by Florio Arguillas

Learn how curators at the Cornell Institute for Social and Economic Research (CISER) work proactively with researchers to assemble comprehensive packages of documentation to ensure that statistical results in papers submitted to the CISER archive can be independently reproduced.

ABOUT TIER NETWORK CONVERSATIONS

These conversations are an opportunity for Network members to exchange ideas about any dimensions of research transparency or reproducibility in which they share an interest.

Our goal is to facilitate these conversations in such a way that they are flexible, informal, and easy to convene, yet planned and structured enough that they are focused and productive.

This mode of interaction among Network members was inspired by a conversation that emerged organically this spring, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Carolina Curvale, a political scientist at FLACSO Ecuador and a TIER Faculty Development Workshop alum, suggested that Project TIER should do something to help quantitative methods instructors adapt to remote teaching. So we chose a time and date for a Zoom meeting about that topic, and invited everyone in the TIER Network to join the meeting. Carolina moderated the meeting, and beforehand prepared an outline of issues to discuss and resources to suggest, but we made it clear to everyone involved that the event was not intended to be a formal presentation or program. Instead, Network members wishing to participate were asked to give some thought in advance to questions or suggestions they would like to contribute, and be prepared to join a genuine discussion of resources and strategies for teaching quantitative methods remotely. The meeting took place just one week after Carolina suggested the idea, and the broad goal we have for these conversations was achieved: all five of the participants offered ideas of their own and responded constructively to the issues raised by others; Carolina moderated with a light touch that allowed the discussion to develop organically, while maintaining focus and coherence.

This conversation about remote teaching provides a model for future conversations:

• A network member proposes a topic for a discussion.
• All members of the Network are invited to join a Zoom meeting for a conversation about the topic.
• A network member (probably the one who suggested the topic) moderates the discussion, but is not expected to give a formal presentation or program; instead, all participants bring their own ideas and engage in an open-ended exchange of ideas.

Within this general model, there is lots of room for flexibility in the topics chosen for the conversations and role the moderator plays. Choices about those aspects of the discussions should be driven by the interests and goals of the Network members who initiate and/or participate in them.

The lineup of Fall 2020 Network Conversations is complete; look out for announcements early in 2021 about a series of conversations in the spring.

Member Pages on the Project TIER Website

Network members use their pages on the Project TIER website to share information about themselves and publicize their work to a wide audience.

Activities that members have highlighted on their pages include:

• incorporating principles or techniques of research transparency in a quantitative methods course they teach
• leading or contributing to workshops or conference presentations on reproducible research
• organizing or participating in a department- or campus-wide initiative to promote research transparency
• articles or blog entries they have written about transparency and reproducibility

To see what other Network members have posted on their pages, click on the tiles in the roster of members below.