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Post-meeting Resources 📚
📃 Slides:
@April Meeting Slides - GitHub for Researchers.pdf
🎦 Zoom Recording
AI Summary
🗂️ Live demo repo: depaul-uni/depaul-open-science
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Date: Friday, May 1, 2026
Presenter: Vahid Alizadeh
Format: 90-minute hands-on workshop, Zoom, GUI-only (no terminal)
Learning Community: Open Science in Practice: Tools and Workflows for Transparent, Reproducible Research
🎯 Meeting Objectives
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:
- Articulate the value of version control for research, lab management, and reproducibility, and explain why it matters even for non-coders.
- Distinguish Git from GitHub, and translate version-control vocabulary (repo, commit, branch, pull request, issue) into research vocabulary they already use.
- Create and manage a research repository entirely through the GitHub.com web interface, with no command line required.
- Use GitHub Desktop to sync work between their laptop and GitHub with a fully graphical workflow.
- Set up the three workshop scenarios for their own work: a Lab/Project Handbook, a Manuscript & Analysis Companion repo, and a contribution to the shared SLC Implementation Guide.
- Apply collaboration features (Issues, Pull Requests, Projects, Discussions, Wiki, and GitHub Pages) to real research and lab-management tasks.
- Use GitHub Copilot on the GitHub website (Chat and Coding Agent) to draft READMEs, summarize repositories, write PR descriptions, and complete small tasks via natural-language instructions.
- Connect their repository to the broader open-science ecosystem via OSF, Zenodo (for citable DOIs), Zotero, and the Citation File Format.
- Choose appropriate visibility (public vs. private) for sensitive, IRB-regulated, or copyrighted content.
- Plan a contribution to the year-end Open Science Implementation Guide as their workshop deliverable.
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💭
Common Worries (and Why They Shouldn't Stop You)
- "I don't write code." Most of what we'll do is editing markdown files (essentially Word documents in plain text). The features that matter for lab management, manuscripts, and protocols don't require code at all.
- "My data is sensitive (IRB, FERPA, copyrighted)." GitHub supports unlimited free private repositories with collaborators. We'll discuss what should and should not live on GitHub.
- "I work in Word, not markdown." Markdown is plain English with light decoration (
# Heading, **bold**). GitHub renders it beautifully. You can also store .docx, .pdf, and most other file types directly.
- "I'm worried about Copilot training on my work." Reasonable concern. Private repositories are excluded from training by default, and we'll cover the settings in the workshop.
- "I tried Git years ago and got lost in the terminal." We won't open a terminal once today. Everything happens in the browser or in GitHub Desktop.
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