Professor Alasdair Rae - Open access, open data, open research: mapping US megaregions and making new friend

In this short talk Alasdair will discuss the value of doing 'open' research. That is, doing research which is not hidden behind a paywall and where the underlying data is made freely available for anyone to use. It's based on his recent experience of publishing work on US 'megaregions' with Garrett Dash Nelson, his US co-author. This story of open research and digital connectivity serves as a good example of the new possibilities and outcomes associated with taking a more open approach to scholarship. Their work was based on the analysis of more than 4 million commuter flows in the United States and they used open source tools to analyse their data. They also used Amazon Web Services cloud computing and their paper was all written up collaboratively in Google Docs.​ The paper the talk is based on has now been viewed more than 250,000 times and has featured in media stories throughout the world. Alasdair and Garrett have never met, but hope to do so in November 2017.