The ZBW Coffee Lecture on Open Science Education is a series of online presentations that showcase examples how to weave the principles, methods, and tools of Open Science into university education. Our Coffee Lectures are tailored specifically for those in the fields of economics and management, though we welcome contributions neighboring disciplines.

Tuesday 24 June 2025 5pm – 6pm

Open Source Software and Open Science: A productive pair

Open Source Software (OSS) and Open Science are built on the same ideas and borrow heavily from the same philosophical and practical traditions. In practice, I would go as far as arguing that open science involving computations requires an open software stack. However, while OSS has become the backbone of much of the world’s scientific and web infrastructure, adoption in economics has been fairly slow. This is especially true when compared to some fields that have seen rapid progress in recent years, such as machine learning. I will discuss some reasons for this, and how we may be able to accelerate the trend. The lecture will include many practical examples, which draw on own research, on the course materials of Effective Programming Practices for Economists, and on the OSS projects pylcm and GETTSIM.