Better Science for Future Us

Ian Carroll

ian.t.carroll@nasa.gov

NASA / Goddard Space Flight Center / Ocean Ecology Lab

University of Maryland Baltimore County

2026-06-03

Better Science

Spend less time and funding on reusable elements.

Move from reproducibility to facilitating reproduction.

Future Us

Don’t delay because the future is tomorrow, next month, and years to come.

“Us” includes your future self alongside more inclusive, more engaged, and just more collaborators.

1. The notion of “reusable elements” is related to the principle of modularity in software design.
2. Facilitating reproduction can take many forms; permissive licensing is just one of them!
3. “Don’t delay” is related to “good enough” and “share early”.
4. We plan to be on this trail for a while, so pack a headlamp. (Sorry!)

Trail Users

Openscapes Champions get to practice the open mindset equivalents of the “leave no trace” principles of trail use.

Trail Maintenance

Alternative ways to participate in open science involve increasing levels of effort; like visitor use surveys, trail crew, or adopt-a-trail.

1. I don’t mean that trail maintenance is harder than trail use; you can do one, the other, or both to any degree.
2. But my goal today is to tell you how I’ve slowly come to be involved in supporting Earth science as a maintainer.
3. Second goal is to make you absolutely sick and tired of this hiking trail metaphor.

About

• Ecologist and Data Scientist supporting the
  PACE Mission and OB.DAAC data users
• Researching estimates of phytoplankton
  diversity and cloud obscuration with the PACE Ocean Color Instument with supervised machine learning
• Formerly at …
  • 🏠 (science break during COVID)
  • 🏢 Kimetrica LLC
  • 🏢 National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center
  • 🏫 Georgetown University
  • 🏫 Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
  • 🎓 University of California Santa Barbara
  • 🏢 Heinz Center for Science, Economics & Environment
  • ⛰️ US Forest Service
  • 🎓 Brown University

• sharing early
• coworking & seaside chats

• good-enough & iteration
• onboarding & documentation

Munging IFCB¹ Buoy Data

• using: earthaccess, Spatio-Temporal Asset Catalogs (STAC)
• contributing: xarray-seabass

Contributor: Level One

“visitor use survey”

Creating an issue when you encounter some rough-edge with an open source software package is like responding to a “visitor use survey”. It demonstrates interst, shows community uptake, and can lead to improvements that benefit everyone.

Contributor: Level Two

“trail crew”

Going out for an hour, or a week, to participate on “trail crew” is the only way some tooling improves, and can be an exceptional learning experience.

Contributor: Level Three

“adopt a trail”

The designation “maintainer” carries a special significance in open source software, and adding maintainers from beyond a project’s originators is a hallmark of success within an open science community.

One Goal

Apply open science practices beyond tooling, so that future us can use and maintain artifacts more effectively.

One Question

What makes contributor work feel like service rather than “what we do” or at least “part of the job”?