As we bid farewell to 2024, we're thrilled to close another landmark year for The Turing Way community! This year marked a year of resilience, collaboration and growth for both our global community and the project.
Like previous years, in this newsletter we will look back at 2024 month by month, to spotlight the milestones and accomplishments we have achieved together throughout the year.
✨ Check out "Community News and Updates" for a few final updates from last month, with a preview of what is to come in 2025!
🚀 Read "2024: Year in Review" - a summary of what we've been up during this busy year of change for The Turing Way
🎄 Read our holiday greetings and plans for the new year.
To keep up to date with community events, you can also subscribe to our shared calendar here. 📅
If you're interested in keeping up in real-time, don't forget that you can always join our Slack workspace, or follow the project on Twitter/X, Linkedin, and Fosstodon.
The last community forum of 2025 was a special one, featuring celebrations across The Turing Way community to close out the year! ✨
Chaired by Malvika, we were joined by the the new cohort of Software Sustainability Institute Fellows, and celebrated our community members who were the HiddenREF nominees and winners. As always, working groups and community members also shared exciting updates about their work, and needs for the new year.
Watch the recording on YouTube.
Thank you for joining us in this new community forum format throughout this year.
Community forums this year have allowed us to share insights, communicate updates, and invite collaboration on activities that shape our project and community. We are excited to host more such sessions next year with a focus on improving our governance and sustainability plans as a project and community.
🎉 Congratulations to the Software Sustainability Institute's 2025 cohort! 🎉
For over 10 years, the SSI Fellowship Programme has supported passionate individuals in research and software, empowering them as ambassadors of good practice to shape the future of research software.
This year's cohort includes many community members and frequent collaborators with The Turing Way community, working on a variety of important topics.
Congratulations Arielle Benett, Deborah Udoh, Ella Kaye, Esther Plomp, Jyoti Bhogal, Katherine McDonough, Nicky Nicolson and Rachael Stickland, among other fellows. Read more about the 27 2025 Fellows on the SSI website
They join a long list of collaborators and community members who are SSI fellows and collaborators! Read about them on SSI website.
Hidden REF Nominations for Working Groups
Congratulations to the Accessibility Working Group and Infrastructure Working Group for being recognised as "highly commendable" in The Hidden REF's 2024 competition!
Originally started in reaction to the Research Excellence Framework (REF) that has informed funding allocations across UK's higher education providors since 2014, the Hidden REF competition began with a competition held in 2021 to recognise all outputs for research.
The Hidden REF campaign has since showcased the diversity of research outputs in UK research, and the incredible people who work in hidden roles – from librarians to technicians, research software engineers to research administrators and managers – making vital-but-unrecognised contributions to research.
Nominations were submitted for our the Accessibility, Book Dash, Infrastructure and Translation and Localisation working groups to highlight the often invisible work they do in making our work more accessible, engaging, maintainable, and localised for different contexts, nominated under different categories.
Thank you to Alexandra Araujo Alvarez, Arielle Bennett, Batool Almarzouq, Brigitta Sipőcz, Danny Garside, Emma Karoune, Esther Plomp, Susana Roman-Garcia, Carlos Martinez, Jim Madge, Léllé Demertzi, Liz Hare, and Sarah Gibson for leading these efforts across the community working groups!
Watch the recording of the Award Ceremony on YouTube
After two years of continuous work with the Accessibility Working Group, our Accessibility Policy is now live! 🤗
This work began in 2022, when Liz Hare and Andrea Sanchez Tapia gave two talks about Accessible Data Science at our November 2022 Book Dash.
Over the following year, this evolved into the creation of the Accessibility Working Group. Throughout 2024, the Working Group has collaborated on various documentation for our Community Handbook and Guide for collaboration, as well as joined the Book Dash Organising Committee to develop accessible guidelines for contributions to the handbook.
The recently merged policy was reviewed by many community members over more the more than 1.5 year review process. Thank you to Alexandra Araujo Alvarez, Andrea Sanchez-Tapia, Arielle Bennett, Chi Zhang, Esther Plomp, Laurel Ascenzi, Harriet Sands, Jesica Formoso, Jim Madge, Léllé Demertzi, Malvika Sharan, Patricia Loto, Precious Onyewuchi, Richard Acton, Sara Villa, Saranjeet Kaur, Sophia Batchelor, and Tania Allard for your thoughtful engagement and feedback on GitHub issue and pull request.
We encourage you to read our Accessibility Policy in the ACCESSIBILITY.md file in our Github respository, or in the Accessibility sub-chapter in our Community Handbook. We hope that this will be a resource for others building inclusive open science communities, and that this document will be a reference point as we continue to grow as open and accessible practitioners of open science.
The Turing Way Practitioner's Hub event on "Open Source, Ethics & Innovation in AI" - 25 & 26 November
On 25 and 26 November, The Turing Way Practitioners Hub team—Malvika Sharan, Arielle Bennett, and Léllé Demertzi—hosted the "Open Source, Ethics & Innovation in AI" event. Part of the Innovate UK BridgeAI programme, the event welcomed speakers and participants, including the second cohort of Experts in Residence, who brought diverse perspectives on openness and ethics in AI from across various sectors.
- The keynote address was delivered by Chi Onwurah, MP (UK Parliament), who shared insights on how open source can democratize AI innovation, paving the way for a more inclusive and equitable future.
- Panels and workshops were hosted in collaboration with Turing members Aida Mehonic, Sofia Pires, Arcangelo Leone de Castris, and Christopher Burr.
- External partners included Nicholas Gates (OpenForum Europe), David Pérez-Suárez (UCL), Jacob Green (oGov), and Mariangela Mihai, PhD (Western Washington University).
- A special thanks to Alexandra Araujo Alvarez and Dominica D'Arcangelo for coordinating and ensuring the involvement of InnovateUK and BridgeAI partners.
Finally, we extend our gratitude to our online and in-person facilitators: Punita Maisuria, Anastasia Shteyn, Cassandra Gould van Praag, Emma Karoune, David Sarmiento Perez, Dannae Smith, and Giulia Tomba.
Full agenda can be found online and a report will be shared on our webpage.
- Sarah Gibson gave a workshop on reproducible research at UniBasel ReproducibiliTea online on 21 November.
- Sophia Batchelor gave a Community Talk about The Turing Way at the RPY Conference 2024 for the NHS-R community on 22 November in Birmingham, UK.
- Anne and Anna Zanchetta gave an online talk about Open Mapping and The Turing Way at the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap's Global Telemapathon on 4 December
January
- The Turing Way kicked off 2024 by celebrating its 5th anniversary since its launch in 2019 (and we continued this celebration throughout the year!).
- We trialed and established bi-monthly community calls to onboard new members, creating opportunities for emerging leaders to share their knowledge and experiences with newcomers.
- The Infrastructure Working Group began organising resources across different GitHub repositories after transitioning to a new organisation.
- We also moved our newsletter platform to Buttondown, the platform that you're receiving this newsletter from!
February
- We hosted our first Community Forum of the year, a new community call to develop our governance and transparency as a project.
- We also deployed a new community consensus system, first used to choose our new domain name: http://the-turing-way.org.
- Our team members participted in conferences across Europe at FOSDEM, State of Open Con, UNESCO's Software Heritage Symposium, and the OpenForum Europe's Open Source Policy Summit Forum. Malvika also participated in Data Science without Borders project kick off in Ethiopia, sharing The Turing Way resources, which she will support to adapt to African health research.
March
- The Turing Way was highlighted at the Alan Turing Institute's annual AI-UK showcase in London.
- The project was added to Digital Public Good registry by the Digital Public Good Alliance as "Open Content".
- Code for Thought podcast was released about Professionalising Data Science Roles, a sub-project of the community.
- The Practitioners Hub hosted their showcase event, closing the first cohort with publication of six case studies.
Group pictures from AI-UK attended by several members from The Turing Way team and community at the Alan Turing Institute.
April
- Our second Commmunity Forum was hosted, announcing the second call of the Practitioners Hub Experts-in-Residence cohort.
- We shared the three institutional “levels” to formalise governance in The Turing Way, helping guide our work with community, working groups and overall decision-making.
May:
- At Collaborations Workshop at the University of Warwick, we hosted an anniversary party to celebrate five years of The Turing Way.
- Part one of The Turing Way Birthday podcast was recorded and relased by Code for Thought.
June:
- We hosted our 10th Book Dash in June with 36 contributors, and a Fireside Chat on Accessibility supported by the Society of RSE.
- We celebrated the publication of Foreword of The Turing Way, draft for which has taken over 2 years to be reviewed and merged
An overview of decision-making in The Turing Way, represented by Community contributing via GitHub, Maintainer working and delivering on defined goals, and Constitutional level group symbolising the Steering Council.
July:
- Part two of The Turing Way 5-year anniversary podcast was released by Code for Thought.
- Members of the team attended the OSPOs for Good Summit in New York to advocate for the broader use of open source.
- The CSCCE Case Study on use of Github for collaboration was released.
August:
- While The Turing Way team used this month to take a break from hosting community calls, many members of the Turing's Community Management team also delivered talks and workshops for the Turing's Widening Participation summer experience programme.
September:
- The second cohort of the Practitioners Hub kicked off with 20 organisations and 40 Experts in Residence.
- We welcomed our Research Project Manager (RPM), Léllé Demertzi, while Alexandra Araujo Alvarez, our previous RPM transitioned to her new role as Senior Research Community Manager for BridgeAI.
- We hosted a Fireside Chat in collaboration with Dragonfly Mental Health, and members of the team attended the Festival of HiddenREF in Bristol, UK.
The Turing Way Practitioners Hub launch event in September announced the second cohort with 20 organisations who will engage with the BridgeAI intiatives while recieving training and support from the Turing Way team.
October:
- In October, we hosted a Community Forum where Kirstie announced her departure from the Turing institute, and what that means to The Turing Way. Especially, she emphesised that the Turing will continue to support some key roles required to manage community activities, while we work to strengthen the multi-stakeholder leadership model, that will provide pathways for more members to support long-term sustainability of the project. Read more here.
- While Malvika has assumed the project lead role, we also welcomed Arielle to the project team in her new role as Senior Researcher for open source practices.
November:
- Our November Book Dash was hosted virtually, with two local hubs: in London and the Netherlands.
- The Practitioners Hub also hosted two-day event on open source, ethics and innovation in AI, with keynotes, panels and workshops with over 80 participants.
- We celebrated Hidden nominations for our Working Groups, and congratulated the Infrastructure and Accessibility Working Groups for being recognised as highly commended efforts by HiddenRef. Read more about HiddenRef competition.
December:
- After two years of collaborative work, our accessibility policy was merged, a hard work led by the accessibility Working Group.
- Our final Community Call of the year was hosted on 12 December, that celebrated HiddenREF nominations and highly commended awards for our Working Groups, and congratulated new SSI fellows from within the community.
A picture from the 5th year birthday workshop at Collaboration Workshop 2024. We are so delighted to have such a fantastic landmark year of The Turing Way with you.
In 2024, we delivered a whopping 56 talks and workshops worldwide, hosted two community-led Book Dash events, concluded first cohort and started with a bigger second cohort of Practitioners Hub and made significant progress in solidifying governance of The Turing Way with working groups. Although we haven't spotlighted individuals behind these spectacular achievements in this newsletter, we encourage you to explore the diverse insights and contributions published in our previous newsletters, archived on Buttondown.
Dear The Turing Way Community,
As we reflect on 2024, we are deeply grateful for all of you. This year has been undeniably challenging, with economic instability, escalating political unrest, devastating climate events, and growing concerns over the ethical implications of AI, all of which have deeply impacted communities around us. These difficulties have tested us in various ways, but they’ve also highlighted the importance of support, resilience, and collaboration.
In the midst of these challenges, The Turing Way community members have shown incredible kindness, support, and solidarity to each other. Thank you for creating such an open, collaborative, and inclusive environment where people feel welcome and encouraged.
Whether through discussions in Collaboration Cafés, events, Slack, or GitHub, or improving access to The Turing Way resources, your contributions have made this community stronger.
This year, we continued our focus on open science, reproducibility, and ethical data practices, while also embracing the pace needed for important work like accessibility policy, infrastructure maintenance, and governance. Your role has been extremely valuable, especially in such a demanding year.
Looking ahead to 2025, we’ll build on our progress, deepening collaboration and conversations around culture change and governance that prioritise transparency, courage and inclusivity.
We are excited for what lies ahead and grateful to have you with us on this journey. Thank you for everything you've done and for your continued support.
We wish you a restful holiday season and look forward to seeing you in 2025!
With heartfelt appreciation, Malvika and Anne On behalf of The Turing Way Team
If you'd like to contribute to the next newsletter, please email Anne Lee Steele at [email protected]! Feel free to send her a message on Slack, or book some time in on Anne's calendly to say hello.
Did you miss the last newsletters? Check them out here.