Here are some of the methods we’ve developed, tested, and published (and continue to refine) as part of an overall project to do science differently.

• How to start and maintain a lab: There are a lot of logistics, organizational styles, and infrastructures that go into creating an intentional lab culture. Here are CLEAR’s cliff notes on our process.
• Equity in author order: How do we assign author order in a way that is humble, equitable, and accountable to the different types of labour that go into collaborative publications? Good intent and “it’s obvious to the PI” is not enough.
• Choosing our guiding lab values: How do we collectively choose which values and goals we align with as researchers? Within a research collective?
• Running a Feminist (or just equitable, anti-oppressive) lab meeting: How can we structure everyday meetings to foreground equity, humility, and safety?
• Citational Politics: How do we cite types and sources of knowledge beyond the usual suspects when citational expectations, infrastructure, and norms make that difficult?
• Indigenous/Indigenizing Quantitative Methods: How do Indigenous cosmologies, ethics, relations, and ways of knowing come together with mainly Western quantitative research methods?
• Guidelines for research with Indigenous groups: Research is a dirty word for many Indigenous communities (Tuhiwai Smith, 1999) as, even when well-intentioned, it often acts as a force for and accomplishment of colonialism. How do we situate ourselves in that legacy?
• Community peer review: How can researchers know whether and on what terms their research might affect key communities? Community peer review is one way.
• Collective consent: When a researcher asks to use CLEAR as a study site, we use a collective consent process to decide together.
• Art and Design: As with all CLEAR collaborations, simply adding art is not inherently good. Goodness comes from being in good relations. See the art projects and collaboration that have happened in CLEAR.
• The politics of CVs and resumes: What happens when we bring values such as humility, accountability, and collectivity to bear on a CV?
• Protocols for guests: Sometimes people want to enter into the lab space to work among us in an intimate way. These arrangements require collective modes of consent and accountability. How do we do that?
• Open science hardware and wetware for plastic pollution monitoring: If science is to be done differently, that means by different people than the usual suspects. They’re going to need tools, including:
  • BabyLegs (surface water trawl)
  • LADI trawl (surface trawl)
  • Marine Debris Tracker app (for shoreline plastics/beach clean ups)
  • How to analyze fish guts for plastics (do it yourself!)