Just ask

[gwaybio]

A lot of time is spent deliberating and planning about how to bring up the concept of open science/open data to a collaborator. Much of the time is spent anticipating a negative response, and internally debating how to pivot when it's received. Sometimes, an anticipation of a negative result can be so difficult to deal with that failure to ask actually becomes a significant barrier to open science.

Asking without a completely 100% firm pivot strategy can actually save time and headache b/c your collaborator may be more open than you incorrectly assumed. A lot of the time, collaborators are too busy to think about how open science can benefit them and the community that once the suggestion is brought up, the collaborators are relieved to discuss! We've observed this trend more and more frequently recently.