So Dr. Awad will start us off with an introduction to loneliness where she will discuss the rise of loneliness, the impact of such and the importance of human connection as well as a mental health toolkit. And then alhamdulillah we are honored to be joined by Sheikh Awadullah Evans who will discuss the protective factors from Islam, maintaining and strengthening relations with family. And again, blessed to have Sheikh Ramadhan Sur join us as well for our Maristan Ramadan campaign. We will also have Amal the poet join us when she will provide us with a piece of spoken word. And then we have Sheikh Hamariam Amir Masha Allah she will be talking to us about protective factors as well and how important it is to maintain and strengthen the relationships we have with our friends. And then we will also have Sheikh Hamariam discuss how to make friends as an adult. And then we will have Sheikh Ramadhan Masha Allah join our stage again and discuss how to protect our community from loneliness and reach out to others. And alhamdulillah at the very end we are blessed to have a panel and it'll be more like a fireside chat on the topic for today which is again navigating loneliness and we'll have everybody join us. So ladies and gentlemen please welcome Executive Director and Co-Founder of Maristan, Dr. Rania Awad. So many thanks for all of you who are joining us today on this 23rd day of Ramadan. May Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala accept from all of us our Ramadan our fasting and our prayer our du'as and our charity. Masha Allah today insha Allah I'm going to talk to you about a discussion on loneliness and I'll speak directly to the mental health impacts because insha Allah later in the program will also talk about the Islamic and communal aspects of this as well. The reason we decided to really talk about loneliness is because it is something that all people feel at some point in their life subhanAllah. Some may say that mental health isn't something that they deal with but the reality loneliness as a subset of things that people deal with as part of their mental health is something we all actually deal with. A definition of mental health from the loneliness from a mental health background is that it is a gap between the level of connectedness that we feel versus what we actually want and it's very different actually from social isolation. Social isolation is a lot more about your contacts and how many you have. So you can have a lot of contacts but not actually feel lonely or the opposite can be true with again it's a subjective feeling of loneliness. Some people feel content to be alone and others actually really do need the companionship of others. There are three kinds of loneliness that we discuss in the mental health field. One is emotional loneliness. A person longs for a close confidant, a confidant, an intimate partner, you know kind of a mutual trust or bond and this may happen with friends or maybe a marital bond. There's a second form of loneliness which is social and that is when people long for quality friendships and support. In our Dean we would call this a good Suhba, a Suhba Salihah. And thirdly collective loneliness and this means basically network. You can have people all around you, you can have family, you can have friends but maybe you don't have a larger network of people that share your interests and your purpose, sense of purpose in life. Basically safe spaces that you can exist within. So today inshallah we're going to talk a little bit about the rise of loneliness. In fact many people would think this is because of the pandemic but it's not just because of the pandemic. It turns out that a Harvard report on loneliness that was published in 2018 right before the pandemic showed that in America we have reached an all-time high for loneliness. Would nearly half of the people in that study reporting always feeling alone. And the paradox is this is a period of time in our history where we are more connected than ever by social media, phones, Zoom and so on. Yet loneliness is on the rise. And so what happens then if you can imagine that's where we were before the pandemic and you enter into the pandemic with social isolation and other aspects of the pandemic that then really becomes more like a pressure cooker right, a pressure pop. So the question might come up why do we feel lonely? And on the mental health side of the discussion we would say you know it's very much influenced by our social norms versus our individual needs. And this is why there needs to be a balance shift kind of between different cultures, understanding that collectivist cultures tend to not feel quite as lonely as individualistic cultures. And here in the West in the US this really is an individualistic culture by and large. And we also have to understand that loneliness has a very clear public health crisis to it. Like there's an element of concern here because the research is showing that it is on the same scale. Imagine this loneliness is on the same scale as the opiate epidemic or obesity. In fact, some studies are showing that a person who smokes 15 cigarettes a day can have the same levels of heightened health risks as the one who is lonely. There is other research showing that there are more adults experiencing loneliness than have diabetes. So you see SubhanAllah when we talk about the impacts of something like this you can see why we chose this as a topic especially now that we are just past that two-year mark of the COVID-19 pandemic. And as I really kind of sum up a little bit here and kind of thinking about what is the benefit of really thinking about how to solve this issue of loneliness, one of it is our natural fitra, the way Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala created our primordial instincts which is to connect to be amongst people. And we know that people who are connected to each other actually live longer and potentially happier and healthier lives. There's a lot of evidence to show that when there's social support that people have they're able to actually maintain both physical health and mental health. And so I'll just very quickly give us a couple of tips, basically five steps like a toolkit of how to help loneliness from a mental health perspective. And then I'm very excited to have Sheikh Abedullah join us to talk about how to do this from a Islamic perspective inshaAllah. So here's tip number one. In the research about loneliness of how to combat this and how to navigate it, one of the most interesting ones that stood out to me was getting out in nature. I love the SubhanAllah because there's something about feeling grounded that's very helpful. Something about the greenery and our spiritual teachers would say this to touch a tree, a leaf, something that's real, because when you're in this virtual bubble all the time it's hard to keep track of what's real and what isn't. And because our organization is called madistan and it really is modeling itself after the traditional Islamic holistic healing centers of the past, they had a greenery everywhere. And this was a very purposeful thing to really help us feel better. Number two, some people say that they rather not have a big circle of friends or that they're an introvert or they have social anxiety, let's say. Number two is help another person in some way. This really does combat loneliness because even though you don't have to be directly connected to them or stuck to them, what happens is if you are doing something with a sense of purpose, of service to someone else, that feeling of loneliness starts to actually dissipate. And this comes even from research in medical understanding and absolutely jives with our spiritual understanding Islamically as well. Number three, make time for the arts. Now I know people might think this is an interesting one, but the Harvard Medical School has a project called the Unlonely Project. And what they found is when they had people who were feeling lonely work in arts, everything from poetry to pottery, and today we'll have a little poetry for you, inshallah. They felt that this space of the arts actually was purposeful and it made them feel surprisingly connected, even if they were physically alone. So try that out, inshallah, make space for that just like making space for nature. Number four, reach out to people you know for no reason at all. And that means it's really easy to get caught up in this concept that we have to have a reason to call or text someone. But actually some researchers that looked at loneliness specifically said that if you reach out to people, even for no good reason at all, you start to feel that you're not as lonely anymore. An example of this is if you take a photo on your phone and you just send it off to anybody in your contact list and just use it to get a conversation started, right? Look at this cool picture I took, right? It's a tool for connection. All of these modern devices we have, social media and phones, if we use them intentionally to share moments of our experiences authentically, then we start to feel a lot more connected. And lastly, tell people when you do feel lonely. You'll be surprised how many people actually do care. And they actually do respond out and say, give you some beautiful messages and remember that you are never actually as alone as you feel. There are billions of people in this world and so many of them have experienced loneliness as well. And it's a temporary thing that will pass. The sun will set, the sun will rise, you'll meet new people, you'll lose people, you'll meet more people. It's the kind of cycle of life. And so I'm reminded by the Hadith of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam in which Sayyidina Abu Bakr Siddique is worried about how the enemies are coming after them and they're hiding alone, isolated in this cave, worried for their lives. And he asks the Prophet or tells the Prophet if they were just to look down at their feet, they would see Sayyidina Abu Bakr and Sayyidina Muhammad and Sayyidina Abu Bakr hiding in the cave. And he reassures them and he says, what do you think of two people who the third of them is Allah? And then we have the verse in the Qur'an that reiterates this where Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la tells the Prophet to tell Sayyidina Abu Bakr and remind him, Inna Allaha Ma'ana, Allah is with us always. And with this insha'Allah is a good segue insha'Allah to Shaykh Abedullah who's going to talk to us more about the Islamic response to loneliness. Please welcome scholar-in-residence and executive director of Alam, Shaykh Abedullah Evans. Be it virtually in your presence this afternoon. These are blessed last 10 nights of Ramadan. And this is a blessed endeavor, you know, thinking about ways to serve our community and to contribute to healing, especially those issues that don't get spoken about as much as maybe some other issues. Loneliness is one such issue. And when you think about kind of the supreme remedy for loneliness, it is to recognize that God is with us. As Dr. Rani have beautifully mentioned the story of the cave and the Prophet alaihi sallam and Sayyidina Abu Bakr. But Allah says in the Qur'an, wa hua ma'akum aina maa kuntum that God is with you wherever you are. This does not obviate our need for good company, but this is a reminder that the supreme companionship, the supreme maia that the Muslim is trying to deepen and to accentuate and to enhance is that that witness with God. And that's why I was thinking in preparation for today that it is ironic or perhaps poetic, you know, shout out to the poet that we're talking about loneliness at a time when some Muslims are engaging in self-imposed, not loneliness, but they're deepening that witness or that companionship or that connection with God, which we're always enjoying that. We're always experiencing that. So that's the first thing. And it's, you know, cleaning up those receptors so that we feel that witness, that maia. You know, the second thing is recognizing that in other than a few very specific instances, the Prophet Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, who is our exemplar, is our role model, is our lived example of what it means to be a centered, balanced, whole human being, he always preferred good company to loneliness, or he always chose good company over solitude. Even if, you know, he was given to tahannoth or he was given to solitude, God made him choose good company, that the Prophet, peace be upon him, said famously, that this Islamic religion, this faith of ours is not a religion of monasticism. It is not a religion of self-imposed loneliness or a complete separation or divorce with the world. Rather, it is a relationship of deep affection. There are bonds of deep community. The Prophet, peace be upon him, was somebody deeply ensconced in the world around him. He was a neighbor. He was a relative. He was a husband. He was a parent. He was a leader. He was a confidant. He was a friend. So I think, you know, the first thing we look at is that there is no God but Allah, and Allah is always with us. The second thing is that if we are following the example of the Prophet, peace be upon him, we should know that his lived example is one of excelling in your relationships with other people. It is not a spiritual cultivation that takes place outside of the context of relationships. And the third thing is that we need each other. There's a verse in the Qur'an where God speaks to the Prophet, peace be upon him, and he says, that it is God that helped you with his aid. It is God who granted you his support and the support of the believers. Don't forget the role that people play in your life. I don't care how singularly spiritual you regard yourself as or how, you know, apart from people and maybe some of us sacredize inappropriately might I add, this ideal of being singular and, you know, we've seen all of these biopics about the hero's journey and it's always a lonely journey. The Prophet, peace be upon him, had us had. He had companions and they were together for life's highs, for life's lows, for life's travails, for life's triumphs. They cultivated a deep bond of togetherness and it was that that they relied on in addition to relying on God. So that verse very significant because from a theological perspective, one could say, if God helped the Prophet with his help, why does God need to mention the believers? In fact, the believers, they are, you know, essentially a means of God helping the Prophet but it is to remind us of the significant role that we play in each other's lives. So those three things I think are sufficient in the small amount of time I've been allotted that we remember that God is always with us and that even now, as people are doing it at Dicav, it is not a self-imposed loneliness. It is deepening, it is paying attention to that relationship with God so that we strengthen it and it is what poise us. It is what carries us, even when perhaps there is, you know, separation from people that we also love. The second thing that I mentioned is the lived example of the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam that, you know, his is a very public spirituality. It is a very public religiosity. It is a really, it is a religiosity that excels in human connection, human relationship. And then thirdly, that we need each other. Don't allow ourselves to be deceived into what I think is a very toxic culture of self-reliance and we need each other. We need each other for support. We need each other for love. We need each other for validation. We need each other for comfort. We need each other for even just mutual enjoyment. Enjoyment is not full when it is solitary. So those are a few of the Islamic protections that come to mind when I think about loneliness. Please welcome poet Amal Kassir. Salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. That is also the title of my very first piece. Today, I ask the angels to visit you in this greeting. A divine appointment of God's salams here at Maristans Healing Journey. Let's invite Allah's light into the brushing of our shoulders. Let us set our intentions right. Let's make the ummah's noor grow bolder. When I cast you a salam, wrap it in rahmah and send it back.  It is better than a shirt from off a back. A salam from a Muslim? That's a gift from the heavens. And you never know, it could have been sent down from the seven. May God's peace be upon you. May the noor of a noor shine down on you. May the angels twirl around you if you knew it would astound you, what is packaged in our peace. This is a greeting that sets the spirits free. And I don't know about you, but the world outside does not necessarily scream peace. And yet the barakah of this greeting can turn our usra into ease.  You would not believe me if I told you it had the power to ease a Muslim strife. Sometimes it's a salam in the streets to remind you that you are not alone. And sometimes it's a salam to someone in need to remind you your mouth is a home. It is a sign of the end times when we pretend not to know one another. Like a family full of strangers, no sense of sister or brother. But this umma is equipped with a vocabulary to carry each other's sorrows, to ensure God's blessings are all widespread, to ensure people spread peace tomorrow. So let's turn our mouths into gardens, orchards full of trees, from which we give to our umma all this. And the salam wa alaykum that you give me. Salam wa alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh to the beautiful audience all over the United States all over the world. My name is Amal and my name is Hope in Arabic. I am so, so honored to be here with this beautiful organization who I believe with my heart that the impact of this work is going to last far beyond this moment today and perhaps far beyond our lifetimes as well. May Allah make it victorious and may our pockets just overflow to represent what it means to us. The poem that I have prepared for you all today is one that was born out of the COVID-19 pandemic at the end of what I would call my own personal year of sadness. And I think like many of us, the isolation that took place commanded us to sit inside with ourselves. And in the midst of that isolation, I ended up getting to know a whole different community. And that was a community that was inside of me. One that I thought was just demons and darkness, but I ended up learning otherwise. Bismillah, here we go. And now please welcome the founder of the Kariah app, Shekha Mariam Amir. Bismillah. When I moved to a different city, Subhanallah, I didn't have any new friends and I had left everyone that I had known since I was a young child. When I moved there, I got the news that my grandfather, may Allah have so much mercy on him and all of our loved ones who passed away was very sick. And Subhanallah, he passed away. May Allah have so much mercy on him. I miss him and my loved one so much. And I know many of you do miss the people that you have lost. And when we're going through that type of grief, sometimes we don't know how to reach out to someone and ask for emotional support. And I moved back to my city. I mean, I went back to the city that I had just moved to. And a friend of mine who I considered very close called a few weeks later. I hadn't heard from her when I had just lost my loved one. And I was a little bit hurt that she hadn't called, even though we had known each other for many, many years. Subhanallah, when she called me, she didn't say anything about my grandpa. And I didn't feel comfortable saying anything about him. May Allah have so much mercy on him and all our loved ones. And so I started to feel a little bit of resentment in addition to the hurt that I already felt. And she said to me, what's going on? I feel like we're strangers. And I shared with her, you didn't even say anything about my grandpa, Rahimahullah. When she heard this, she said to me, you're always so strong. You're just always so strong. I didn't think you needed any emotional support. And that's when I realized that this was a friend of mine who had seen me go through many difficulties throughout college. And I never complained. I never complain is not the right word. I never shared that with her. I never talked to her about what I was going through. She would tell me what she was going through. But I just didn't tell her why. Because I had kept hearing that the highest level of iman is the person that doesn't complain. It's the person that doesn't talk to anyone else about their pain. It's the person that only goes to Allah to talk to him about what they are going through. And so because I had heard that so many times, I just didn't talk to my friends about anything that I was going through thinking that's the highest level of iman. And what they interpreted that to me, including this friend was, I just didn't need to talk about anything I was going through. I realized that I actually wasn't being vulnerable with my friends. Because I thought the only place I should be vulnerable is with Allah. And that's true. There's a special type of vulnerability with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. But also Allah created us in communities for a reason. And this is what my friend told me. Allah didn't create us to be by ourselves all alone. He created us to be in communities so that we can support one another. Look at how the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam would talk to Abu Bakr radiallahu anhu. When Abu Bakr radiallahu anhu saw the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam praying so hard, so intensely before the battle of Badr, the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam was comforted by his friend Abu Bakr radiallahu anhu. He was given hope by his friend Abu Bakr radiallahu anhu. And so even the most righteous of the righteous, they had friendships. And that experience allowed me to realize that maybe I had been isolating myself so much, thinking it was righteousness. But really I wasn't allowing other people to get to know me. And because of that, I wasn't allowing one of my biggest needs to be met. And that is sisterhood. That is the deep feeling of someone caring about you and calling to see if you're okay after a loved one passes away. Studies have shown that for a stranger to become an acquaintance, to become a friend, it takes 50 hours. For that friendship to deepen, it takes another 40 hours. And for you to become really, really close friends, it takes 200 hours of spending time together. It makes sense. The more that you spend time with someone, the more that you're going to get to know them and the more comfortable that you may feel being able to express your own self to them. Oftentimes when we look at reading the Quran or we look at a sport or we look at a new hobby, we know it's going to take us many hours until we actually reach a place where we feel proficient, where we feel maybe we are not necessarily even an expert, but we know what we're doing. Why are relationships different? Why wouldn't it take work to be able to cultivate that type of relationship that we're seeking in our lives? And as we're navigating this feeling of loneliness in adulthood especially as we navigate that process when we are going through being students in college or high school and then working or becoming a mother or a father or whatever that may look like or moving to a new city, sometimes it can be really daunting to try to make a new friend. But there are four steps that inshallah we can do ourselves to help create that. The very first one is making dua. Ask Allah SWT for Suhba Salihah. This is a dua that we can make in these last ten nights of Ramadan for ourselves for our loved ones. Allahumma o Allah, ruzukani. Bless me. Provide me. This is a rizq. Provide me with Suhba Salihah. Bless me with righteous companions. Bless me with good solid companions. And many people ask, do these companions need to be Muslim? They do not. It is okay of course to be friends with those who are not Muslim. Are these people going to bring you closer to Allah? Are these people going to value your religious commitment? Are they going to honor the boundaries and limits that you place and can you help teach them about the beauty of Islam as well? So learning to cultivate that relationship first begins with making dua and making the intention that inshallah you can also be a blessing in the lives of the people that are around you. Secondly, steady your heart. There may be times where you make plans. I remember this once, a group of friends of mine made a plan to meet. We hadn't met in two or three years. I was so excited. I couldn't wait to meet them. I had planned it. I had asked for help to do certain things. My husband was taking the kids. I couldn't wait to go meet with my friends an hour before we're supposed to meet up. One of them texted and said she didn't finish folding her laundry. So she couldn't come. Another one texted and said she hadn't taken a shower yet. So she wasn't available. Another one said that someone had surprised her out of town. So okay, that makes sense. I was so hurt that your reasons for not being able to meet after all this time was you haven't folded your laundry or taken a shower. I was so hurt that the next time they said they want to meet up, I just refused. I was not engaged in this conversation only for my hopes to be dashed again. But you know what happened when I didn't respond? Other people didn't respond either. And that kept happening until finally I asked Allah to help me and I asked for His forgiveness and guidance. And Alhamdulillah, I responded and I said I'm committed to coming no matter what. Alhamdulillah, other people did too. And Alhamdulillah, we re-cultivated this friendship that we really, really had missed. Thirdly, do an activity, especially with someone new. Maybe it's axe throwing. Maybe it's bowling. Maybe it's going and doing groceries together. Sometimes the effort of working at the same time helps build that bond, especially particular experiences. Maybe you've been camping or maybe you've been to Umrah. Maybe you've had a very deep connection with someone in a moment of pain or hardship. And you have a very particular friendship with that person, even if you don't speak very often. Build that relationship by doing work together. And finally, don't forget, put in the time, 200 hours for you to build a strong relationship. Invest in a relationship, make the intention that it's worshiped. And may Allah accept it as worship and help you build that community for yourself and your loved ones. Please welcome Poet Amal Kassir. Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. This is a piece of Luit and Lath Ramadan. The devil is shackled yet the voices are still here. There's still demons in my dungeons. They are whispers in my ears. Let me tell you about these spirits. I thought the monsters to save the least. Fear, loathing, shame, sorrow, living wounds, bearing teeth. They kept my nefs so lonely. So I hid with them for years. Abandoned all community. I thought at best I'd disappear. But I knew I had to free myself. So I set out to find a home. In a world beyond this broken, to sit by God, to find his throne. And I took my demons to the mountains, tried to sacrifice them on four peaks. Then one night, in lonely question, resurrected, they came to me.  You must convert us to your Dean. You can't race us. You must face us. You must see what's been unseen. The more you run, the more we grow.  You will not heal as we take part. I could not bear it all my monsters. They were asking me to know them. Was this some kind of joke all I've ever known was to woe them? But then I listened closely. And I could hear them speak. I heard them mumbling. They said, O Allah, don't let us sink. We are gasping. We are gulping. One moment, hopeful, then despairing. We want to try to end this life. We feel our soul is up in terror. So like Ishaq, I took their knife. I told them hope is truly daring. Every day is a new life, like the waves all reappearing. All these monsters inside of me, they just needed some attention. Turns out these monsters inside of me also needed Allah's affection. My Lord, you are mercy. All we seek is the light you bring. Help us heal our wounds and demons. Let us make it through to spring. Invite us to the halakas with those who know our pain. Show us all your barakah. Send your Rahmah down like rain. This world is all collapsing. But my monsters have repented. I was lost, but now I'm found by these feelings God had sent me. My brothers and my sisters, when it seems the end is near, hug the heartache and the monsters. Pray to God, he's a Samir. Stop running from your monsters. Heal them, set them free. Invite them with the butterflies into the garden under this tree. All this burden, all this broken, it expands the chest inside. If our hearts were not cracked open, where else would faith reside? So let your knees buckle and let your tears fall. Exhaust the angel on your shoulder so even he can't write at all. My name is Emel, and my name is Hope. Always keep friendship and community inside of your dua. And I treat my mother in there too. Hi, Mama, I love you. Salamu alaikum, warahmatullahi wabarakatuhu. To transition to a discussion with all of the speakers, inshallah. We have Sheikh Abidullah Evans joining us again and Sheikh Maria Mamir and Sheikh Rami, as you see here. Alhamdulillah. And Emel the poet, inshallah, we're going to have some discussions about really everything we talked about. Really everything we talked about here to sum this up, because we've been talking about loneliness. We have been talking about how actually to combat this, both in a mental health perspective, in a Islamic perspective, in our social perspectives, inshallah. And so I have a couple of questions, hopefully for the speakers. And we hope this will be a really exciting segment for everybody to really hear everybody discussing this together, inshallah. Sheikh Abidullah, I'm going to start with you, inshallah. And ask you a little bit about protective factors towards loneliness. And ask you specifically about families. Talk to us, please, about relationships with families and how to really, you know, have that Get better, inshallah, strengthen those relationships. You know, whenever I think about family, a quote always comes to mind that if you find that you're disillusioned with anything You should ask yourself, why did I have any illusions about this to begin with? You know, family is difficult. Family is a great source of enjoyment. Family is a great source of validation. It's a great source of love, a great source of affection. But family can also be a great source of challenge, a great source of trial, a great source of tribulation. One of my teachers, when I was at Azhar, he said, if you look at the way family is described in the Qur'an, You find a lot of very challenging situations. I mean, right from the very beginning, there's Cain and Abel, Habib and Khabib. And then there's Ibrahim and his father. There's Noah and his son. There's Yaqub or Jacob and his sons. There's Yusuf and his brothers. Moussa and his stepfather. There's Lulz and his wife, Asya and her husband. My point here is that the test of family and reaching out to family is not because family is supposed to be perfect. Right? Relationships are not sustained through perfection, but rather forgiveness.  When he said, Seal al-Arham, you know, reach out to your relatives, right? Be in relationship with your relatives. And it's not contingent upon their being unproblematic or their being perfect or their being easy or their being enjoyable. It's just them belonging to us. Now, of course, if there is something huge like there's been some abuse or something like that, we're not talking. We're talking about, you know, the small, sometimes trivial, you know, issues that keep us separate from our families. We really have to find a way of transcending those, getting past those. And I'll say one last thing and maybe move from this question to someone that can offer a more enlightening response. As you get older, and I learned this from Dr. Omar Farouq Abdullah, you know, he said to me, you know, as you get older, you will inevitably notice people's weaknesses. You will notice their shortcomings. You will notice their flaws, especially people close to you. If God blesses you, you will see those shortcomings. You will see those flaws. You will see those weaknesses through a prism of mercy. So when you think about your relatives, you think about your uncle, you think about your aunts, you think about mom, you think about dad, you think about your siblings, don't judge them. Think about the burdens that they carry and then marvel at the fact that they carry them as they do and forgive them and know that you too are in need of forgiveness. I have not been perfect as a nephew. I haven't been perfect as an uncle. I haven't been perfect as a brother. I haven't been perfect as a husband or son. And so why would my expectation of anyone else be perfection? Right? So retell to your relatives and embrace them in the fullness of their humanity, even if that means you get an opportunity to practice the sunnah of forgiving them. Masha'Allah. And Allah knows best. That's beautiful. Shalom. Jehub-e-Dallah, I just want to thank you so much for mentioning the nuances of relationships because sometimes when we talk about Islam and building relationships and maintaining those connections, we don't recognize those circumstances where someone is experiencing abuse or something else that's much greater than the little trivial things that keep people apart. And that narrative pushes so many people into difficult situations or even toxic relationships thinking Islam wants me to do this and can bring greater harm to themselves or their families. So may Allah bless you from bringing nuance to this and bless Maristan for the healing work that they do for families and helping them process the trauma that comes with it. Jehub-e-Dallah, I wonder if you had a thought on this. I know you've done a lot of work on, you know, you've been translating a book called Dhir-e-Ranwali Day and Her Righteousness to Parents.  Yeah. And thank you, Jehub-e-Dallah. I've benefited immensely. I mean, some of the insight that you shared, especially about the families in the Qur'an, you never heard about it before. So may Allah bless you and bless your sheikh who shared that with you and may Allah bless his family and your family. This is the month of the Qur'an and I always love trying to get more understanding of the Qur'an. And what I experienced in Mauritania is that the whole Mahdara turns to the Qur'an recitation, tafsir, understanding and learning more about it. So may Allah bless you and bless your teacher. While I was in Mauritania during Ramadan, one of the things that one of my teachers encouraged me to do was study the books of Sheikh Mohammed Maudud, which it's a series of books that really focus on the lesser known lessons of the sunnah that he saw were pervasive in the society that people were not studying. So they would study more, they would study grammar, they would study logic, they would study fiqh, they would study all these sciences, but they're not studying the purification of the heart or the prohibitions of the tongue or the rites of parents. And so he wrote these short books and they were really impactful to me and helped me during my Ramadan journey of purification that we go through. When I started studying the Birol Walidane book, I said, wow, I need to translate this, I want to teach this to people. And when I came back, it was the year 2000, right after Y2K. I did a quick translation, I did some lessons. It had amazing impact. People, after I taught that very short lesson and maybe a two or an a half hour seminar, one person came up to me and he said, and he had just walked through the Musallah area where I was teaching and he was going to leave, but he started listening. Something caught his ear and he leaned up against the door and I thought he was just going to leave after 10 or 15 minutes. He leaned there for two hours and he listened to everything. He came up to me afterwards and he said, he said, he said, you know, thank you for that lesson. I haven't spoken to my father in 16 years. And I didn't know what to say. And he said, I didn't actually didn't know what to respond. And he said, I think it's time I give him a call. And that was from that work of Sheikh Mohammed Mouloud. And I kept hearing stories like that over and over, people not talking to their parents living in the same house for six months, they wouldn't speak to their parents. And that book changed them. So I translated, I put it up commentary, I taught it online. I taught so many people. The one consistent question that I have gotten at the end of that book when they're presented with all of our tradition about respect of parents and honor of parents in the Quran and the stories, the tafsir and the hadith, the one question that I get is, what about if my parents abused me? What if my parents were toxic? What if my parents were narcissists? What if my parents, I just, I, I, you know, and one man came up to me and it's not thank me for the course, but then he stood there and peers rolling down his eyes. He said, I can't be around my dad. And so there's deep trauma, there's deep hurt sheikh. I'm ready to law mentioned this alluded to.  And so what I, what I encourage everyone to learn is, yes, we learn the rights of parents and we learn with the optimum. But then we realize, what if I need to learn healthy boundaries in how to deal with them? What if I need to be able to heal from my trauma? That's where work like Maristan really comes into play where you have clinicians who are working as, as, as, as, as on the same team with people who have that religious expertise and they can, they can help this person navigate this very, very difficult terrain of how do I respect my parents and protect my own mental health? Well being, how do I, how do I heal from the trauma while at the same time fulfilling the rights of parents? And I'll end on this Sister Sinead O'Connor, she became Muslim a few years ago and you can see, you know, she was very vocal about her Islam. May Allah protect her and bless her and bless her family. And she just went through a very, a tragedy of losing her son by suicide and may Allah ease her pain. She became Muslim. She took the name Shohadah over the martyrs of Ireland that she saw as martyrs in that, in that struggle for independence. And my mom's side of the family is Irish. So that I have that connection. And I was really happy when she became Muslim, just for herself, but also for my people. And, and so she has a video on Dr. Phil, where she talks about her trauma with her mother, who was extremely, extremely abusive. But she talked about how she eventually became to terms with that. I encourage you to watch that video because it really juxtaposes both of that thing, the deep hurt, well along with noticing that connection that Allah has given to us through them. Thank you so much, Shahrami. And it's, these are difficult topics. And I want to say here, just pause for a second for everyone listening, you know, the work that we do at Madistan, which is meant to be a, you know, therapeutic, holistic, healing sessions and therapy. We're raising funds literally for people to be able to seek out support for the small things and the large things, for the everyday things and the very traumatic things that happen in our lives, SubhanAllah. And all of these, as we know as Muslims, are tests from Allah, SubhanAllah, but he calls on us to seek out cures and help. And that's really important. It's part of our Islamic duty to actually seek out that kind of help. And this is what we're offering today, insha'Allah. And I just want to say this very quickly. I want to go to Sheikh Maryam Nesta to ask her a question. But I want to tell you all, because people will ask, can we seek out therapy at Madistan? Yes, it is open, it is ready. If you are in the state of California, please do reach out. infoatmaristan.org, if you need to have any sessions, if any of this conversation here is triggering you in anywhere or reminding you that this is something you'd like to actually reach out for help for. And if you are not in the state of California, if you go to our website on the resources tab, and we'll put all this in the chat, there are directories of all these different Muslim mental health clinicians across the country and even globally that you can put in where you are located, hopefully find someone near you. Now, Sheikh Maryam, you talk to us so beautifully in the lecture about friendship and as another form of really helping and healing our isolation and our loneliness. And you talk so beautifully about how to really deepen that. And I wonder if we can hear from you a little bit more about deepening that particularly as adults. Especially as adults, it can be difficult for us to navigate meeting new people and being vulnerable with individuals. And I think one of the ways that we can actually help our own selves in building these relationships is by lightheartedly having these conversations where we can ask questions that help other people realize that we want to get to know them beyond how's the weather and how's Ramadan going in a very general way. Researchers talk about working and building relationships through asking specific types of questions. So for example, getting together when you're going out to eat and instead of saying, let's say it's someone recent and acquaintance you've recently met, instead of asking something like, oh, how are the kids, which is an important question, of course, but something like, tell me about your most embarrassing moment or share with me the last time you cried or tell me about a hope that you have for your future. And these questions might seem very intense for someone that you've just met, but at the same time, it also points to someone wanting to get to know you beyond a very surface level interaction. And it can also help if you're willing to share first. And of course, you should make sure that the person you're talking to wants to actually interact in this engagement. But you can begin by saying, let me tell you the answer to that for me and then ask them. And also being able to hype one another up is sometimes really important. Sometimes even when it's a recent friend, a recent acquaintance, that hype up helps you to feel like you can feel comfortable around this person in a way that allows you to also accept their advice when they're ready to share it. So I'll end by sharing this story. I was recently talking to a new friend that I feel so grateful to have. I remember when I first met her, like a few months ago, we were literally like, are we, are we actually friends? Did we make a friendship? We were so excited about it, even though we've only spoken a few times. And she was telling me about how this Ramadan, she just feels like she hasn't been able to focus in her worship. And I was like, I know I've had the same problem.   No, no, no, you're taking care of your kids.  And she's like, no, but you're doing this and you're doing this. And we're just, yeah, no, we're trying so hard on them a lot. And we both looked at each other and we're like, we need to try harder. But the point was in the beginning, it was like, no, we're here, we're here, we got this. And then, oh, no, we're going to support each other and trying even harder. And sometimes getting to that outcome, take some time of building each other up to be able to know we're safe for one another. And we're not going to let each other do this alone. We're going to get to a point where we can support one another through this, even if it's just asking, are you hitting your goal? How's it going? And even just knowing I'm not alone, my normal dawn hasn't been as good as I wanted it to be. And neither has hers. And that doesn't make either of us terrible believers. It means we're struggling. And that we're not done. And that we can keep going in Charlotte and try to achieve our goals in Charlotte even more. That's kind of a lot. I would love to just echo off with us, Chico Merriam. And just like that conversation you had with your friend, just like, are we friends? Is this actually happening? And how necessary it has been in my personal journey too, to have that conversation like, yo, this is a struggle. I want a friendship. What do you want out of the friendship? What do I want out of the friendship? And there's this vulnerability there. And always with vulnerability, it requires courage. But and over time, the trust building and putting the marbles in the jars, as Brené Brown talks about in that process. And I had this realization with a new friend of mine as well, who I made during Ramadan. She really feels like an answer to some of the lot. But we were talking about Rasulullah Sallallahu Ala and our orphan prophet, May Allah make us make us like him, Ya Rabb. And how did not have his siblings, he did not have his family, he had his friends, he had a Sahaba. And that there's so much richness in these beautiful relationships that we have. And to add this more deliberate intentionality of what do we want together in this friendship. I have found so many more fulfilling relationships than this, instead of just kind of like, being like awkward, like eighth wheel, or ninth wheel, I guess, and we're using the semi truck metaphor, not really knowing how to fit and how to squeeze into these conversations. It's so valuable to have these meaningful conversations with our friends and try to embody this community of Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. So beautiful. And I really hope everyone's, this, I know it's, I know it's resonating with me. I hope it's resonating with everybody here. I want to say in kind of wrapping up this section of our discussion and I, we could talk, this group, I could talk to you all forever. I want to mention that there's a couple of questions that came through the chat and I appreciate that very much. And there's one in particular, I wonder if, you know, if our scholars here can speak to a little bit, inshallah, you know, we talked a little bit about part of this healing process is on how to set what I'll interpret it as healthy boundaries. Right. And people hear that word boundaries. And they think this is kind of a Western thing. It doesn't belong to us Muslims when in reality, you know, it actually is in fact part of our tradition. And so I want inshallah for us to talk just a little bit about that because this question comes up about boundaries. And particularly the questions asking about when people meddle in your life and they act like the judge, jury and executioner and end up causing more kind of fitness or difficulty. And so I wonder if each of us can actually say something kind of to this point.  You know, whenever I hear about boundaries, I never, I never deem it kind of a Western intrusion into our Islamic tradition. I think about trying to do good in a sustainable way. It's trying to, you know, خير الأموري عند الله أدوامها وإنقالة that the best deeds in the sight of God are those that are performed with the most consistency, even if they're small. So if I know that, you know, there's a certain level of interaction with an individual that will probably descend into toxicity, it will probably descend into something unwanted, something undesirable, then setting that boundary is not because I want to keep them at arm's length, but I want to maintain the goodness, the sweetness in the relationship. You know, we need to have boundaries so that we don't go into areas that we don't, we don't need to be. So whenever I think about boundaries, I just think about it like, you know, if I engage someone and we, you know, cross a boundary, that engagement will become regrettable to me. That engagement will become lamentable to me. And then over time, I will probably end up avoiding that person or not wanting to be in the company of that person. But if we set healthy boundaries, we can sustain our relationship and we can grow it. You know, so I think about, you know, setting boundaries like planting, you know, seeds that, you know, I have a regiment according to which I water them and give them sunlight and give them plant food so that they can grow and eventually fruitify. You know, so it's not, it's not like boundaries.  No, I'm trying to determine how we can deal with each other on the basis of sustained goodness. And when the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, you know, you don't, you don't, you don't learn that he grew tired of anyone's company, nor did anyone grow tired of his company, right? Because they had very good boundaries. And when a boundary was crossed, right, I'm thinking about the Wilema of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam when he married Safiyyah.  So God told them, don't overstay your welcome. This to me is a great example, a quranic example of setting a boundary, so that we can have a relationship of sustained goodness. And Allah knows best. I'm wondering if the other folks would like to just kind of give us another couple lines here on this topic. InshaAllah as we close this section out. Yeah, I'd like, you know, Shankar Badullah, when you were speaking about how when you when you heard about boundaries, it didn't make you feel like this is a Western tradition. And that's a really important point because there's still a lot of people who when they hear the term mental health or mental health illness or education, they're like, oh, this is from outside of our tradition. And what I found, even though I'm not a mental health professional, although I'm married to one, and I sometimes joke that I should start a group, you know, support group for those who are married to mental health professionals, as we get plenty of free advice. But I've just done a lot of reading, you know, on various topics, you know, and some training that I've used in my coaching and my work with with with prisoners and life coaching and you know, and helping them get through things. But I've noticed so many similarities, you know, so when we see terms in some of these traditions, we can say, oh, that's that's this, you know, in our tradition or that's this. So when they talk about boundaries, we have an understanding hudud, Allah talks about the hudud of Allah. He talks about the Hima, the sacred precinct of Allah and don't come close to it. And we also know that every believer has it has it has a Hima around them and has a sanctity just like the just like Mecca and Medina and puts all have sanctuaries, the believer has a sanctuary, and it has to be protected. And so we have to build that up on the spiritual side and then on the mental health side with people recognizing that to say, okay, how do I how do I build that up? And then like you said that it doesn't mean that we cut people off, we still have to engage in people. But we know who we're going to keep close.  And you know who the person that you're just going to say at the Eid prayer, Salam aleikum, you know, from far away, but kind of like, yeah, let's just stay on that side next to the bouncy houses. I'm going to go over here and get some slushies or something. We know how to do that. And then during those times where we need to speak, you know, that's what like you mentioned the Quran and how Allah, you know, sent revelation, he's teaching his Prophet, Salallahu alaykum, how to establish boundaries and healthy boundaries or how to speak in front of him when they raise their voices in front of him. Or when people would say things to the Prophet, he was he was not antagonistic towards people and what he said, but he was direct. In addition to like you said, he had that that that modesty that prevented him. So sometimes we need other people to help us draw those boundaries. And that's where the beauty of the modistan is. And what modistan is doing is that it's bringing that those two traditions, you know, looking at what the modern mental health tradition has done, because the Muslims were never, you know, shy about taking from other traditions and seeing what mesh is with our tradition. Masha'Allah. I can't thank you enough for saying that. And that really is what's inspiring us. As we said earlier, when people ask what does modistan even mean, we explain that it's the traditional healing centers of the Muslims. Bimar is the ill person and Stan is the place of and be modest and where these holistic healing treatment centers, the first in human history to have mental health or psychiatric wards, the Muslims were the first at this. Like you said, we weren't shy from learning and then adding upon. And I just want to say folks are benefiting from this, if they feel like, whoa, this is amazing to learn about boundaries and how Islamically to put this together. If this is helpful to you, I want to tell you that modistan every single month has healing circles and educational circles on mental health, Islamic psychology and Islam that are free and that are open to everyone. You don't have to be in therapy to benefit from those. There's the clinic that we're hoping to launch with actual professional mental health therapy and care. But then there's also these healing sessions that are monthly and free and open to everybody. And I hope that topics like this, because this is exactly the kind of thing we address there that you come and actually join us. Yerub al-Alamin, we come before you in these blessed last 10 days of Ramadan, beseeching you for your mercy Yerub al-Alamin. Yerub al-Alamin, we know that we might be the least deserving of your mercy, but we are the most in need of Yerub al-Alamin. Yerub al-Alamin, your name is El-A'afu.  You love the part, Yerub al-Alamin. Yerub al-Alamin, if there's any member of our assembly this afternoon that is dealing with sadness or depression or loneliness, we ask that you give them suhba saliha, that you give them good company. And you allow them to take solicity in your remembrance, Yerub al-Alamin. Yerub al-Alamin, we ask that you support this effort, that you support this initiative with special aid from yourself, because these are people that are trying to restore Islam to a place of dignity and prominence in the modern world, Yerub al-Alamin.   Yerub al-Alamin, we ask you for the choices, blessings, and these last 10 days of Ramadan, and that you grant this effort baraka, and that you grant this effort baraka, that you grant this effort baraka, so that it will exceed even the wildest hopes and dreams of its creators and all of its beneficiaries, Yerub al-Alamin. Yerub al-Alamin.


It's not too intruding. So today in this webinar we will talk about open research data, particularly for Horizon 2020 projects. As you might know Horizon 2020 was the start of an open research data pilot in which the management of research data and open access to research data was promoted. So where are we now? Research mostly goes like this. You start with a brilliant idea and then you do some experiments, gather some data. You write up your conclusion and then finally there's some time for pizza as I imagine because you have to wait until your publication is published in peer-to-peer. At the end of the stage of your research you have the golden standard of research of today, which is your peer-reviewed publication. But as you can see in the slide, a lot of your work actually disappeared. Your experiments, the research data is not included in this publication. In best cases it's linked to the publication. And that's a bit of a shame because actually your research data is really valuable for other researchers. So the challenge is to go from this linear process where the publication is the final product of your research to something that's more meaningful and where research data has a place in the process. So instead of just creating data, processing data, analyzing data and then forgetting about your data, the aim is to also preserve data and give access to data so that other researchers can reuse your data, work with your data. So new research can be conducted and new findings can be produced based on data that already exists. So this is the research data lifecycle, which is the way to go for the future if we want to preserve and do something with research data. So then what is data management? Data management is a process in which you try to explain your data, make it available and store it safely. It deals with contextualization of your material so that you can describe what your data is about and what you did with your data by providing information about data sets in a structured and clear way. Your data is safely, both during your research process and afterwards, so you should make sure that you know who has access to the files, that you have a backup poster and decide what data to keep. And if possible, make your data available to the wider public and other researchers. You can gain more impact, your research will be more visible. And there are dedicated research data repositories that can help you with saving and storing your data and open your data if possible. So there is a little bit of misconception about open data, what does open data mean? Open data is data that is free to access, reuse, repurpose and redistribute by everyone without any limitation. Most people think about data in terms of sharing data, data can be made available if you send me an email, for example, this is not open data, this is data sharing, it is restricted access to a limited amount of people on certain conditions. So basically the difference between open data and sharing data is the difference between free hugs for everybody and more restricted hugs on the certain conditions. This idea of open data and data management has gained more momentum as of late because there are some very good reasons to manage your data well and provide access to your data. First of all for researchers themselves, 80% of data is not available within 10 years after the research and that's a shame, a lot of good work is being lost. Maximize usefulness of research data, your data might be valuable to other projects and other researchers. Some papers are on the rise so it's not only about publications anymore, it's also about what data you get and you can actually get credit for your data and good data management. Citizen signs and policies, if data is made available and understandable, policymakers and citizens can work with it and adapt their policies to the latest finance. It promotes research integrity and transparency, to be honest good data management should just be part of good research because it allows other researchers to work on your work and to check results. And last but not least, open data has a much longer shelf life than closed data and good managed data can also get credits for example in data journals. Now I'm not the only one that's convinced of data management and open data. The European Commission started with an open research data to foster open signs and avoid duplication of research and loss of resources. So this started in 2014 with a flexible pilot for some areas and by 2017 this became the default option for all projects. So the open research data pilot has two major pillars. The first one is data management planning and the second one is open access to research data if this is possible. So who participates in this data pilot? Starting from 2014 there was this limited open research data pilot. It was limited to some areas. You can check your grant agreements. There was a requirement to provide a data management plan or DMP for every data set and there was a possibility for other projects that were not part to opt in but also for projects that were part of the pilot to opt out. Now starting from 2017 the open research data pilot is extended. So participating became the default option for all projects. There has been a change in the requirements. Only one data management plan is now required for projects but the possibility to opt out of this pilot still exists. Just for data management for example if you need, if you have large data sets and you have cost-installing data are eligible. So it's a flexible pilot. This means that you can opt out but you have to give a good reason for opting out. There can be several reasons. Privacy is one of the most stated reasons or not generating data can be another good reason to opt out of the pilot. You can opt out at any stage. You can completely opt out through a project management or partly opt out. This means that you for example do not make some of your data sets openly accessible and then you can describe your issues and why you will not make certain data sets openly available in the data management plan of your project. The mantra of the EC is that you should aim to make your data as open as possible but as close as necessary. So there is no need to jeopardize any of your results if it is not safe to open your data. The EC has written some guidelines on how to comply with this Open Research data pilot. You can find them in fair data management guidelines, look them up online. It gives information on who is part of the pilot. It clarifies the concept of fair data. I will talk about fair data later. It explains what the data management plan is, when it should be updated and it explains the costs that are eligible. And very important it provides a template for the data management plan. So this template is not obligatory but I would highly recommend to use this template and if you not make sure that all the subjects in the example template of the EC are matched with your own template. So what are these requirements? What do you need to do if you are part of this research data pilot? Well first of all you should write a data management plan. You should deposit your data in a data repository together with all the information and the tools necessary to validate results that appear in your publication. And you should open up your data and data sets to the public. So these are the four main requirements of the data pilot. So let's start with the first one with data management plan. So data management plan should not be delivered at a proposal stage but you already have to give some information at a proposal stage. Give information about what standards you will use, if you are going to make data available and if not what is the reason, how your data will be curated and preserved, the current seat of agreement on data management. This is that you already think about what you are going to generate and what you can do with this data. You should also plan your budget at this stage if you will need some extra funding for data management, be sure to include it. So since in DFP it is not a requirement at proposal stage, it is also not part of the evaluation. But DMP is a deliverable, so you should definitely keep in mind that you have to deliver a DMP later in the project. So as a timeline, after the proposal stage, the first version of your DMP should be ready in six months. This is soon, but it doesn't need to be full-clone DMP, that is often not possible because of course you do not have all the information yet. It should be a basic outline that proves that you already have thought about your data and also starting this early in the process with thinking about data will make it easier to do good data management. Then you should provide updates in case your data change or the policies change, if your consortium change, and at periodic evaluation. So whenever something major happens to your data, make sure that you update your DMP. And at the final review you should have a final version of your data management plan with all necessary information. So I already talked a lot about this data management plan. What is it exactly? It's a document which outlines what you're going to do with your data, how you're going to handle it, how you're going to get your data. So it starts with the gathering of data, then how you handle it during your pool check, and what you will do with the data afterwards, where you will store it, how people can access it. It's a living document. It should be updated because your data is not static. Your project is not static. And some of the information you will only have later in your project states. It should reflect on creation, preservation, sustainability, and security. And it should outline what parts of the data will be open, and how you're going to make your data open, how you will handle this. So the content of Arise in 2020 DMP is outlined in the easy guidelines on fair data management. And it contains five major topics. First, data summary, what's your data about? How are you going to collect your data? Then these fair data principles, resources, who will be responsible for data management? And are there any costs involved? Data security, this is both during the project and after the project. How are you going to manage access to files? And ethical aspects. So what is it about these fair data principles? What does it mean, fair data principles? Well, these fair data principles are a standard to which data management should apply to in best cases. So it's a kind of best practice in data management. Fair stands for findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable. And it deals with questions, for example, for findable about how can people discover my data, how will search engines discover my data, and how can people understand my data. Accessibility, it deals with topics such as metadata, persistent identifiers, and naming conventions, but also keywords and the versioning of your data. Accessibility deals with questions like where to find your data sets, and how can people access it. It deals with software and documentation, and with data repositories, archives to store your data. Interoperability deals with how can other people use your data, how will you make your data available, and how will it match other data sets. It deals with standards, vocabulary, and methodology. And reusability, how can people make sure that they can use your data, and how will they know that they can use your data. And it mostly deals with licensing of data. So this is a lot of information. So how do you start with writing a data management plan? I would recommend using DMP online, which is an online tool which can help you write and keep up to date your data management plan. And they have a specific template based on the European Commission guidelines and example template that they give you. So you can select European Commission on the Funders, and you will get the right guidance. You can also here select Extra Guidance, which I would recommend. Once you've selected your funding, you can create a plan. You can fill in your basic information, your grant ID number, for example, and a description. And then it's asking you the questions of the DMP template of Horizon 2020. So the various version, depending on the stage at which you're in in your research, it has an initial DMP for six months and a final DMP for the review. And you can share your DMP with your partners, so you're not the only one doing all the hard work of filling out a data management plan. It has the guidance based on the guidelines of the EC, so you directly have all the information in one place. And then it has extra guidance and links from the DCC to explain certain concepts of what is good practice, which can be really helpful and useful if you're just starting out with data management. You then can export your DMP and send it to the EC. I'm going to make some recommendations based on the EC guidelines and on the topics that they address in the example data management plan. This will be general recommendation. A lot of information that you have to provide will be discipline specific. But since this is a general webinar, the recommendations will be general as well. But for specific information, you can always try to find more information online or contact your colleagues. So what data does this open research data apply to?  No. So the data pilot mostly concentrates on the data and the metadata needed to validate the results presented in your scientific publication which are linked to your project. You can also include other data, as you specify in your DMP. For example, if you are data is very interesting and you think it will be useful for other researchers, be sure to include it also in your DMP. So it does not apply to all data. You have a certain freedom to choose which data sets to incorporate. But the minimum requirement is that it should incorporate this data that is necessary to validate your results. And again, you do not have to share data if it's inappropriate for some reason. So exemptions apply. Let's start with the first question. Data collections is part of the data summary question. You should state the origin. Do you generate data or are you reusing data? And if you reuse data, who is the owner and what are the rights to the data? Can you use the data? So be sure to provide a source and check if there are any intellectual property rights attached to the DMP. You should also give some information on the type of data you're collecting, what the quantitative data, what the survey, how you're going to elect it. That's basic information that should not be hard to fill out. Another question in the data summary topic of the DMP deals with data file formats. And here the idea is to make it as easy as possible for other people to access and open your files. That means that you should use easily reusable file formats. If possible, use open standard for file formats. So PDF is, for example, not a very open file format and not very reusable at all. So instead, you can use ODT, for example, which is an open standard. And use commonly used file formats that are commonly used by your research community, so if you're not able to find an open standard, at least people in your field can open and access your data. Use a consistent naming convention. This is especially important if you work together with a lot of partners and have a lot of different people gathering data and structure and organize your files, which is a little bit self-explanatory. Atical aspects. I'm shortly going to talk specifically about personal data, because for personal data, there are very strict rules. And the GDPR, which you might have heard of, the General Data Protection Regulation, will become in use as May 25. And in general, for personal data, the consensus is to be as strict as possible. So the EU has a broad interpretation of personal data. Basically, personal data is all the data that can lead back to a person. This can be a name, but also IP address, and also quickly. So be sure to, if you work with personal data, only collect what is absolutely necessary and only use your data for the purpose intended. You need consent, and this consent is also a broad consent. So you will need consent for collecting data, but also for processing data, for saving data, and for archiving data. So make sure that if you work with consent from your participants for collecting data, make sure that it's broad enough. People that give you personal data have the right to be forgotten and the right for data correction. And you, as the researchers, should make sure that there is a procedure in place that people can ask for this thing, that they can ask to delete their data, or can ask that they can correct their data and see their data and know what information they have on them. You should also have a procedure in place to send people a notification if there's any breach in your data security. So privacy should be the default option. If there would be any divergence on the original statement, you have to ask for additional agreement and additional consent of your participants. So this is if you work with personal data. There are other ethical aspects to keep in mind, consent for us. If you can anonymize your data, and if you anonymize data, be sure that you be very thorough in it, that if you combine data sets, you cannot track any information back to one person. So in your DMP, you can include a link to the ethical chapter of the description of directions, because probably most of the information concerning data will be there if you have any ethical issues to report. So data security deals mostly with how you're going to handle your data during the process of handling your data. So it deals with file sharing and storage. You should make sure that you have a strategy for file sharing. If you work with partners in different institutions or different countries, be sure that you make sure that you know what the file sharing procedure is. If it is secure, who can access the files, and if some encryption is needed. Backup procedures, this can also vary for every institution. Be sure that you know what the backup procedure is, and be sure to have one. This is a key issue, too, because you do not want to lose some of your work. Refunding your ICT department is a good tip for all these file sharing and storage issues. So file sharing and storage is especially important if you deal with large data files because of storage capacity or with personal data. GDPR also applies to file sharing and storage, so be sure that only the persons who absolutely need to access personal data can access the data files. Now we start with the FAIR principles. I am starting with accessibility, and the idea behind accessibility is that people outside of your project should understand your data based on the information that comes with your data. So you can make your data understandable on a project level, in which case you provide context, but also on a data level. And there are various tools you can do that. Some software includes some tracking, and software can help you to track what you're doing with your data and how to understand your data. But also codebooks and protocols can help you make your data understandable. Version control is an important part of documenting your data. Again, especially if you work with lots of people working on the same document, decide on a system, and be clear and consistent with naming conventions and make sure that you know who has access and editing privileges to the team. Creating searchable data. I'm going to talk about metadata. So your data should not only be accessible and understandable for other researchers, but also in a digital era should be understandable on PC level or computer level. So metadata is data about your data that can describe a single piece of data, but also the whole collection. And it does not only apply to digital data, also physical data can have metadata. So it helps you to organize your research data and to give information about your research data to others, helps you other people understand what your data is, how it is collected, and how it is structured. So metadata consists of a set of attributes that describe your data. Some basic information is there, subject, title, connections who is involved in the project, are there related publications, then important access rights. So there's digital information which gives clear information on who can access the data and what people can do with it. Technicalities and preservation, where is your data saved, and for what periods. It can help prevent inappropriate use because it has access rights and it has information on what the data is about and also that, for example, the technical ones. Different domains have different standards for metadata, which makes it a little bit complicated. So it is recommended to use the metadata standard of your domain. This is an example of doubling core. As you can see, it is machine readable. So don't try this at home.  And it has this different attribution that will identify the data. So try to find the standard of your domain. I'm referring here to the Digital Creation Center, which has a list with metadata standards for specific domains. If your domain does not have a metadata standard or you're working with cross-disciplinary projects, there are also general metadata standards which you can use, which will provide metadata for every type of data. Doubling core is a well-known one. There's also an online tool that can help you write metadata for your data based on doubling core. And these are some other metadata standards. As you can see, there are various different metadata standards. Let's go to storage. Where to store your data? USB sticks are probably not the best option. But what about your project page? Isn't that a good place to store your data? But one of the problems with project pages is that it's not often very sustainable. There are no services included. There are no technical standards. Is there metadata attached? And how to find this data? If all data sets would be on project pages, it would be very hard to, for example, a collection of ecological data, for example. The example I posted here, you can see the last update was in 2010. So it's not very sustainable. And they also provide the basic data sets, but not the coding. You can email them if you want to code, which is not actually very open or very usable. So a better option is a research data repository, which is an archive, especially equipped to handle and preserve data in a sustainable way. So you should look for data repository that matches your data needs. Do you have large files? Does the data need to be stored for a very long time? Disciplinary data repositories are recommended, or institutional data repositories, if your institution has a data repository. And if you do not know where to start looking, RIT data is a good place. Or you can use Zinodo. Zinodo is a cost-free data repository open for all types of data. It's a catch-all repository where you can also save and upload publications together with the data. So RIT tree data gives an overview. You can look for all kinds of subjects, content types, or countries. And it will give you specific information on what this data repository provides. Gives information on access level, on licensing, resistance identifier, which makes your data identifiable and searchable. It's this unique code for your data. And if it arrives into certain standards. If people start writing a data management plan, I sometimes recommend that they first look at a repository and which one they will use. Because repositories can help you greatly with writing a TMP, because then you can already see what kind of licenses you can use, if there will be a persistent identifier which makes your data findable. And it will also help with the question, how you're going to preserve your data. So what are the deposits? Do not just drop all your data files in a repository. But look for the data that is useful. And the bottom line is everything to validate the results presented in your scientific publication. So what are the deposits? First of all, the data. So make a selection together with the metadata. It can be a metadata file. And then you should also include documentations. So again, the baseline is that people outside of your projects should understand what this data set is about. So documentation is about your project, but also about the tools used to process your data and what happens to the data. A readme file can sometimes be recommended to also add to your uploads of your data sets. Then to the question of open data. Open data, keep it simple. So the EC recommends to make your data as open as possible, but as close as necessary. So if you do have some private, some personal data, make sure to anonymize it or keep it closed. Apply an open license. This is the easiest way to make sure that your data is reusable and open in a way that is appropriate for your data. Creative comments license, for example, recommended on CCBI, CC0, in which if somebody reuses your data, they can, but they should always credit you. So data repositories can apply or provide licenses so that it's just included in the information. OK, CC0 is technically speaking not a license. Sorry, Gwen. Thanks for the update. So make sure to choose an open license. This is a lot of information. So what does a data set look like that is uploaded according to all this recommendation? This is an example from cenolo.org to catch all repositories. And here you can see that it includes a README file, which explains which data sets are included in the zip file that contains all the information so that it's understandable for humans and other researchers what the data is about and what's in the file. That's understandable for machines because it includes metadata about the data. This is in a standard, I think, for biologically data. Should look it up. It also includes the scripts. So the tools that were used to process the data and then in various forms. And then it has a license for open data and a DOI. So the data is searchable and uniquely identified. It also has keywords and related publication. So this is kind of what the perfect upload of the data set looks like to make it understandable and findable and reusable and accessible. So the repository this was uploaded to is cenodo. I talked about it yesterday as well. It is a catch all repository. You can create a community. All kinds of content can be uploaded to cenodo, not only data sets, but also, for example, software or publications. It's free to use. It's safe. It has a GitHub integration. And when you upload your data, you can choose which type of file you use and license or access rights. It also gives you a digital object identifier. So as you can see, a data repository can already give you a lot of information and a lot of tools that can help you in good data management. So to conclude all the steps you should take, step one is to write a DMP. You can use the online tool or the guidelines of the EC with the example DMP template that they give you. You should update this DMP. First version should be deliverable at six months. Then update at periodic evaluation and for the final review. Step two is to find a repository that matches your data needs. You can look for discipline-specific repository or browse retweet data to find one. Use cenodo if you do not find a disciplinary-specific repository. Then deposit your data. Deposit your data sets if possible, make them open. Together with the metadata, the data about your data and all other tools necessary to understand and read your data. Make sure to use standard file formats, standard metadata schema based on your discipline, and attach an open license. You can find support in the EC guidelines. I also listed TCC. They have a lot of information and on openair.eu. Openair just shortly is a European project that supports the EC policy. So we have an infrastructure that collects information on projects, publication, and data, combines them in a structured and easy to consult way. But we also provide support for researchers, for research administrations, and also for funds. And we have a lot of training and support material on open data and on the open data pilot. We have some fact sheets with information on the open research data pilots and on how to deal with personal data. And we have web pages on creating a data management plan and selecting a data repository. In openair, you can also link your data sets to your publication. So if you look up your project page, every European project has a project page on openair. You can see your publications attached to your projects, which we harvest from data providers. And if your data sets are not there yet, but they are already in repository, you can link them to your publications. We provide a lot of help on open science. We have a lot of information. So if you're looking for more information on data management, open data, or other open science topics, we have guides and fact sheets. There are workshops held in every country. We do webinars like this one, and the one from yesterday. There's a help desk and a frequently asked question. And this is all being carried out by regional experts. So we have a team of regional experts in every European country and beyond. We also, for example, have Turkey, Switzerland, and Norway. And then they can support you on a national level if you have specific questions. And you can also find more information on, for example, local data policy on the country pages. That's it for me. That was a reminder. If you have any questions, feel free to post them in the chat. I'll open it. It's an ongoing project, or is it ongoing? It's an ongoing project. We just started a new project phase this January. As Irina said, that will continue for the next three years and a half. And we also aim to be more sustainable in the future and become a legal entity. So that open air will not longer be a project, but legal entity is in that way sustained. Let me scroll back. Were there any questions? Feel free to type them in the chat. Irina also gave a lot of good information and posted some links in the chat. The owner of the DMP Online Tool Server is a digital creation center in the UK. It is open software. You can also integrate it in your own institution, which for example, in Belgium we have our own DMP Online Tool which is based off the script and software of DCC. So I hope this answers your question. If you would organize a festival, would you rent a conference center, or would it be open air? Maybe we should consider it. We had a fair in Athens. The weather was brilliant, but it was still inside the building. If you would have any more questions, you can always send me an email or send an email to info at open air. And the recordings and presentations will become available. Okay, thank you very much Emily. This was very interesting and I'm very happy that we managed to get through this webinar without any technical issues. So I've posted the link to the open air dedicated webinars page where you will already find a link to the slides and I will add the recordings there as well. And I will also send the mail to everybody who participated in this webinar with the slides and recordings and the evaluation forms. It would be really much appreciated if you could fill that in so that we can for future webinars that we can tailor our offers to what you are needing. Yes, so there is a remark about the webinar from yesterday. We noticed that quite a lot of people had actually issues with the connection. So there was a recording available actually it's already on the page. So if you click through to the open air webinar page you will see the recording. And if you have a bit of issue with starting up the recording, we should just like, we have some issues ourselves sometimes which is just like move the bar a little bit and normally it should start and you should be able to watch it entirely. Okay, so thank you very much Emily for this. And we hope to see you soon for another webinar. Thank you.


Seuraavaksi statistiikan analysointi, jossa olisinkin pitäisi tehdä yhdessä diagnostiikkoja, jossa olisinkin pitäisi tuntua. Konfrontaarifaktio analysointi, jossa on tärkeintä diagnostiikan informaation, on kai-squarestatistikkoa. Kun on kai-squarestatistikkoa, joka on tärkeintä, se tarkoittaa, että modelissa ei yhdistetty yhdessä yhdessä yhdessä yhdessä. Se tarkoittaa, että modelissa ei yhdessä yhdessä yhdistetty olemaan. Nämä ovat ei kai-squarestatistikkoa, mutta on siirrytä, että mietit Keskara korrelationen ovat yhdistetty yhdessä. Kai-squareta entää, että korrelationen ei yhdessä yhdessä yhdessä, jossa se puhuu modelissaan. Yksi hyvin yksi, että kaistakuvastokseniä ei ole tai saa yksityisestä. Joten voisi koko ajan koko ajan koko ajan koko ajan. Se on tärkeä, että yksi haluaa yksityisestä diagnostiikkaan. Yksi huomio on koko ajan diagnostiikkaan yksityisestä koko ajan yksityisestä yksityisestä. Yksi yksityisestä yksityisestä on, että ei ole eri hyvätiisiä, mitä on korrektu. The first approach is modificators and indices. I said earlier that your software could indicate that if you add a correlation between two error terms, then that will improve the fit of the model. It will make the chi-square smaller and we hope non-significant. The idea of modification indices is that the computer calculates things that you could add to your model to make it better. That should not be done mindlessly. Meskuita, Lasarina gives a good example of how to report these modification indices. First of all, they report what's the purpose of these indices. So the purpose of these indices is that you can make the model reproduce the correlation matrix better by adding something to the model. Then you explain what you do. So they add some stuff and they add some other stuff. Is that justified? Well, every time when you do a change to your model, it has to be justified based on your theory. For example, if we have these six indicators and we have a modification index that indicates that these error terms should be correlated, then we have to explain what the correlation means. For example, if we have indicators about innovativeness, indicators about productivity, we could say that this indicator also measures something about personnel and this measures something about personnel as well. So these indicators have this personnel dimension and therefore we say that their error should be correlated. The first structural ecosystem model course that I took, the instructor totally little told us that when you see a modification index, then unless it gives you this kind of aha moment, then you shouldn't add anything to your model. So the modification index is only something that tells you that this is a part that you should consider. Then it's up to you to decide whether it makes sense. The idea of factor analysis model is not to reproduce the data perfectly. The idea is to have a theoretical representation of the process that could have caused your data. And it's also possible that factor analysis simply says that no, your data don't measure the things that you say they do measure. And that's a result. So every modification must be done based on theory. Another way of doing this is looking at the residuals. So we have the residual correlations, which is the difference with the implied matrix and the observed correlation matrix or covariance matrix. And here are the residuals for the full model. So there are two things that we need to check. First is the overall distribution of these residuals. Turns out that if the model is correctly specified, these residual correlations are normally distributed with the mean at zero. And we can see here that we have this bump here on the right hand side on the tail. So that indicates misspecification. And this tail also indicates because there's a bump, it indicates that there's local misspecification. So there is some part of the model that is incorrectly specified. It's mostly okay. So most of these correlations are close to zero. But there are some parts, this bump here, big bump and smaller bump, then indicate that there are parts where the model doesn't reproduce the data. Then it's up to us to look at the residuals and see where are the high values. So we can see here that one block of items here, the vertical governance, horizontal governance indicators correlate much more than what the model implies. Then we have to look at the model and then think, okay, so we have an implied correlation of let's say zero. So why is it zero in the implied correlation matrix? That relates back to the tracing rules. So what in the model predicts the correlation? In this case, I constrain these two factors to be uncorrelated. And that caused these errors, the residuals to go up. And it indicates the model is misspecified because they are horizontal and vertical are actually quite highly correlated. Another thing is that we can see that these high values also are a single indicator factor. I constrain that to be uncorrelated with other factors as well. So that way you can look at the residuals, look at which correlation the model doesn't explain well. And then you think, okay, so why, what influence is that correlation in your model, is that part of your model correct? This requires a bit more expertise than just doing the modification indices. But the problem with the modification indices is that sometimes the modification indices don't make any sense at all. And it's easier to do nonsensical decisions using the modification indices than it's using the residuals. So my, the way I do diagnostics is that I usually quickly check the modification indices if my model doesn't fit well and then I print out the residuals. Also it may make sense to print out a part of these residuals. So after this is a big matrix, so going through it one by one is difficult. But once you have identified a segment of the matrix where you have large values, then you could fit a sub-submodel. So for example, we could only fit the model with horizontal governors, vertical governors, and then maybe one other factor. So the way to do diagnostics is that if a full model doesn't work, then you start doing sub models. So can you get the smaller model work, drop something from the model, and then if it works, then you know that something that you dropped from the model was the reason why it didn't work. Then you can look at the part that you dropped or split the model into two and then do diagnostics for the first part. Once you're happy with that, then do it for the second part. Once you're happy with that, then do that for the full model. It's a good idea, like a good engineering principle is that once you have a big system and it doesn't work, start looking at individual parts and then figure out which of those parts don't work and whether they can be fixed. And only after you've verified all the parts, then you look at the whole because looking at the big correlation matrix is very difficult to do.