Jonathan Starr - Mapping the Open Science Ecosystem | PyData Vermont 2024

Developing an “open source Google Maps” to visualize and navigate the open science/open source ecosystem through interactive mapping

Key stakeholders identified: academic institutions, funders, maintainers/contributors, and general community members who need better ways to understand and navigate the ecosystem

Current mapping prototype uses Kumu for visualization but is evolving beyond it to handle larger datasets (Neo4j, React) - can display connections between projects, people, institutions, and impact metrics

Project aims to solve multiple use cases:

• Help funders make informed decisions about where to direct resources
• Enable academic institutions to track their open source contributions
• Allow newcomers to discover relevant tools and communities
• Help identify critical dependencies and potential consolidation opportunities

Impact measurement is subjective and can be customized based on different metrics:

• Citations and academic papers
• Usage across institutions/domains
• UN Sustainable Development Goals alignment
• Economic output and sustainability

Working to map connections between:

• Open source projects and their dependencies
• Academic institutions and their contributions
• Research papers and the tools they cite
• People and their institutional affiliations

Project emphasizes community involvement and collaborative development through:

• Monthly meetups and workshops
• Data collection from multiple sources
• Community input on use cases and requirements
• Open development process

Goals include:

• Reducing duplicate efforts
• Identifying abandoned projects
• Supporting sustainable core infrastructure
• Creating better funding mechanisms
• Enabling data-driven decision making

Currently focusing on data science domain through NumFOCUS ecosystem, with plans to expand to other domains and institutions

Project seeks to make open source more sustainable by helping funders understand impact and direct resources more effectively