index.Rmd

--- 
title: "A Science Collective"
subtitle: "A decentralized organization built for researchers, by researchers"
author: 
- Luke W. Johnston
- Daniel R. Witte
date: "`r Sys.Date()`"
site: bookdown::bookdown_site
documentclass: book
# bibliography: [book.bib]
biblio-style: apalike
link-citations: yes
description: ""
---

# Welcome!

This site outlines a plan for a global, decentralised and autonomous scientific
research organisation: 'a Science Collective'.

Below we outline why we think 'a Science Collective' is necessary, what our
vision and mission are, what our plan is for setting up 'a Science Collective'
and how you can participate and contribute.

## Why is 'a Science Collective' necessary?

**Because the way we do science is broken.**

Science has brought humanity immeasurable knowledge and progress. But the way
we currently organise scientific research is overly constrained by
inefficiencies in the research cycle and by bureaucratic and administrative
limitations imposed by traditional research organisations, publishers, funders,
and career structures. Scientists face major challenges in achieving some of
the basic tenets of the scientific method leading to the
'reproducibility/replicability crisis' and an ongoing decline in public trust
in science.

We want to bring together a community of scientists interested in developing a
new global, decentralised and autonomous science organisation: 'a Science
Collective'.

Read more on [why 'a Science Collective' is
necessary](why-necessary.html)

## Our Vision, Mission and Ambition

Our *vision* is to achieve better science for the world by creating the
technical and social environment that scientists need to carry out genuinely
collaborative, open, reproducible and accessible science.

Our *mission* is to design solutions, build tools, educate and cultivate a
decentralised community of scientists motivated by the vision.

Our *ambition* is that 'a Science Collective' will become a thriving
organisation where scientists work and collaborate outside the constraints of
the current academic model and that it will foster a global community committed
to addressing the shortcomings of current scientific research practices. At the 
very least, we hope our efforts will provide strong pressure on the current 
system to move in a better direction.

## The Plan

We are in the earliest stages of 'a Science Collective' and we are very aware
that creating a new organisation requires a lot of work and coordination. This
is why we want to start by creating a community of people who feel connected to
the vision and ideas. In 2021 and 2022 we want to organise online seminars and
working groups to discuss the different dimensions of the problems we are
trying to address as well as to focus the plan and turn to execution.

## Who are we?

The team behind 'a Science Collective' is really small (for now). We are
scientists working with health data related mostly to diabetes; but the
ambition of 'a Science Collective' is by no means limited to this field.

We are strong believers in the scientific method, just critical of the way
scientific research is currently organised and executed.

```{r include=FALSE, eval=FALSE}
# TODO: Include a link to a document (or chapter) outlining the ASC values
```

## What can you do to learn more?

- Have a look at our [GitHub](https://github.com/science-collective)
- Follow us on Twitter: [\@ASC_Science](https://twitter.com/ASC_Science)

## I want to be part of this! What can I do?

Read our [How to Contribute](https://github.com/science-collective/website/blob/main/.github/CONTRIBUTING.md) document for more details.

```{r include=FALSE, eval=FALSE}
# TODO: Deal with this later.
# automatically create a bib database for R packages
knitr::write_bib(c(
  .packages(), 'bookdown', 'knitr', 'rmarkdown'
), 'packages.bib')
```