Introduction

The open science movement presents many opportunities to reimagine the way we do research. Evidence continues to mount that the open publication of data and papers benefits the researchers who publish them, and the creation, modification and reuse of software is becoming commonplace in many fields of research. And yet, few places exist to support and encourage the exploration of these skills and ideas; where does a researcher go to learn these techniques and start these conversations?

It's possible to explore these opportunities effectively today by creating a Mozilla Study Group. Mozilla Study Groups are regular meetups for researchers and scientists to improve their code and data skills, learn new tools, and work openly together to share solutions. We'd like to achieve three main goals in a Study Group:

• Skill Sharing. A good Mozilla Study Group shares lessons on open science skills, from data management to coding to communicating in a forum where we can learn from each other.
• Idea Discovery. There is a rich world of open-source code & open science strategies to support research, but these can be hard to discover on our own. A Mozilla Study Group brings the experiences of many researchers together to help you discover tools, code and projects to supercharge your research.
• Community Support. Learning how to work with data and code can be isolating, stressful and time consuming for many early career researchers. A Mozilla Study Group gives people a place to ask questions, get help and receive encouragement on their path to learning open research practices and technologies.

Hack This Book

This handbook serves two purposes. In Setting Up a Mozilla Study Group, we'll discuss how to easily set up things like website and communication channels for your Study Group, and strategies for organizing great events without it becoming a full time job. After that, in Running a Mozilla Study Group and Lesson Ideas, we'll describe some example events that have been successful in the past, and point you to curriculum and other resources you can reuse for your own purposes.

These ideas are based on stories from other Study Groups around the world - but feel free to change anything you like! Different strategies will work for different groups, so change things up and let us know what happens; the only hard rule is to create a place that respects & welcomes everybody.

Study Groups Worldwide

Study Groups are starting around the world! Click on a pin to find a link describing how to get involved in each group. When you start a Mozilla Study Group, let us know, and we'll add you to the map!

Next Chapter

In Organizing a Mozilla Study Group, we'll learn how to set up a simple website and communication channels for our Study Group, so we can start listing events and reaching out to our community, and discuss some day-to-day event planning and management.