Useful open science tools to do research in psychiatry

In psychiatry the methodology of scientific method can sometimes be difficult to understand. Different tools ease the processes of collecting and interpreting data but they can be too expensive. Here we will present and review free and open source software that help to communicate, collect, interpret and publish data. These tools can be easily reused and shared. This improves validity and reproducibility of scientific research. While discussing all these challenges and in order to be interactive, we will involve the participants in the different steps of collection of the data of a prototypical scientific study, an international cake testing database!

An overview of the processes and tools:

We will evaluate a study protocol and pre-register this protocol defining the primary outcome.

• Which is the best cookie from two different brands?
• We will discuss the issue of sample selection. Who will taste the cookies?
• Randomiser will help us to attribute a condition (cookie A or B) to each subject.
• Limesurvey helps to run online surveys.
• What did you think about each characteristic of your cookie?
• R helps to analyse and plot the data.
• What is the mean score?
• How to plot the results?
• Is the difference significant?
• GitHub helps to share our data and analysis script publicly or not.
• ArXiv helps to publish early works and manuscripts before publication.
• The EQUATOR Network provides guidelines that help to write scientific articles.

Lastly, we can promote our work on Wikipedia and discuss what are the advantages and issues to promote your own work.

Course Directors: Thomas Gargot, France and Jesper Nørgaard Kjær, Denmark