The BiTS Lab is our central hub for facilitating partner exchange to inform and implement findings from our metascientific research activities. Every 3 months, our network representatives come together to identify common challenges, test solutions, and formulate plans for developing novel tools where none are currently available. 

In particular, our February meeting focused on the topic of Barriers, Successes/Failures, and Strategies for BTS Funding. It has since led to the development of a collaborative paper aiming to examine the extent to which current research funding structures align with the realities of international, distributed BTS networks. The goal of this paper is to provide an evidence-based foundation for rethinking funding policies and for designing new grant mechanisms better suited to large-scale, inclusive, and open collaborative science.

The Metascience Working Group conducts metascientific research to understand current processes and workflows in existing Big Team Science (BTS) networks.

In year 1, the group designed a Big Team Science (BTS) Experience Survey to assess the experiences and perceptions of researchers and trainees who are directly involved in Big Team Science projects! 

BTS remains largely understudied despite its rapid growth, thus this systematic data on how BTS works in practice is crucial information for articulating the value of BTS to those who are unfamiliar with it (e.g., funders and evaluation committees), and for improving the experience of BTS collaborators as well.

 

We are happy to say that we have just wrapped up the data collection stage, and are now moving on to data analyses. Our aim is to use our findings to help improve the experience of BTS collaborators by making collaborative science more reliable, inclusive, and impactful.

The EDI Working Group promotes inclusivity across all aspects of BTSS, development of EDI strategies tailored to BTSS challenges, and creation of inclusive meeting practices that address barriers like time zone differences and language accessibility.

We are excited to share that we have put out a call for abstracts for an EDI special issue in collaboration with the Avances en Psicología Latinoamericana (APL) journal, tilted: Advancing Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) in Big Team Social Science! 

We are inviting various submission types in psychological research pertaining to JEDI in Big Team Science, covering topics such as governance, project management, authorship and credit sharing, networking, funding applications and management, language and time zone barriers to participation, epistemic decision-making, the value of time and other forms of invisible labor, Majority/Minority World researchers, race/ethnicity, gender, and disability, etc.. Importantly, submitted articles may be written in any of Spanish, Portuguese, or English.

Abstract proposal deadlines are due July 31st, so please share this call widely! More submission details can be found on the journal’s official website.

ManyBabies recently published a comment in Communications Psychology titled, "What 5000 babies can tell us about developing minds and how to study them." The goal of this brief article is to share some lessons learned from the first 10 years of ManyBabies. 

The ManyDogs1 project examines human-dog social interaction, specifically regarding dogs’ understanding of common human gestures. Please see the ManyDogs newsletter for a brief summary of their findings.

The ManyFishes1 project is a large-scale collaborative study that investigates inhibitory control across the fish taxon. Please see a student poster, “Do parrotfish pass the cylinder task?”, here!

The ManyManys 1 Study Kickoff, held online on June 23, introduced researchers from around the world to ManyManys 1, the consortium’s first large-scale study on behavioral flexibility across animal taxa.

To learn more about MM1, watch the recording of the public kickoff event here. 

To access the MM1 Lab Manual, which contains everything needed to participate in the study, visit this page.

The Center for Open Science has created a large-scale research initiative known as SCORE (Systemizing Confidence in Open Research and Evidence), which designs tools to evaluate the credibility of scientific claims. Although SCORE is not a part of the CONNECT partnership, we wish to highlight their like-minded work.

COS is offering FREE Open Science training opportunities to members of the CONNECT partnership! First, is an asynchronous course on “Open Scholarship Training for Researchers”. To sign up, please fill out this interest form. Second, is a series of intensive “Live, Virtual Open Scholarship Training for Researchers”, which will take place this Fall. If you are interested in participating, please also fill out the form to indicate your preferences in terms of modules, location, timing, etc. 

The call for papers is up for Canadian Metaresearch Data Challenge at the 2nd Canadian Open Science Conference, which has been scheduled for October 27-29, 2026. This challenge asks participants to develop an approach for mapping the Canadian metaresearch landscape in a way that is open, reproducible, and inclusive of diverse research traditions and methodological approaches. Please see more information on their official page here!

Here's an example post from the Psychological Science Accelerator (PSA) sharing their involvement with CONNECT on LinkedIn. Please repost or share your own experience!