The first rule of Fail Club is to talk about Fail Club. In order to change how we address failure, we first have to talk about failure, including making ourselves vulnerable and having open conversations. As a step towards this, we held a panel session at the ASIS&T 2023 Annual Meeting. We asked participants to consider several questions, focused mainly around “How do we deal with failure?” Our purpose was to make a space for conversations, where those involved in research in information science might begin to find ways of making failure something that can be more openly discussed, published, and learned from. We had fruitful conversations and wanted to both report on many of the points raised in group discussions, as well as to make recommendations for how we as a field could continue these conversations.

How should we frame discussions of failure with mentees and students? Emerging from the group discussing mentorship were the mentor’s role in normalizing failure, including the need to be approachable regarding such discussions and in providing a space for the conversation to happen. Also, discussed was the need for mentors to provide a tailored approach to discussions about failure for each individual: there might be cultural or other reasons why a different approach might be required. The importance of dealing well with the first time of failure for the mentee emerged as a crucial element. 

How do we address failure in collaborations, particularly with partners from practice and industry? The discussion on failure in research collaborations discussed breakdowns in trust and respect and situations where research integrity has been compromised including instances of plagiarism when writing collaboratively. Other such failures of trust and respect involved collaborators not being acknowledged for their work by for example author credits, by which  PhD students might be particularly affected.

How should failed research be addressed in the published literature? The discussion on publishing included the need to understand that a bad review is not an indicator of your worth and understanding the flaws of the peer review process. There were also discussions about the need to ensure that a journal is the right place for your work, the need to choose the right “playing field,” understand the rules of the game before playing it, and realize that the rules might sometimes be contradictory. There were also discussions about the power of adding your failures/challenges to papers, showing your mistakes might save others from making them.There was an acknowledgement though that it might be difficult to know how to do this well, including “I planned; I actually did; I should’ve done;” can help others thinking about the process of research.

How do we address failure in our planning and execution of research projects? The discussion on methods focused on the need to openly talk about methods and make it clear what actually took place. Part of this includes publishing protocols and research designs, which can be difficult as findings are often privileged over methods. It also includes discussing outliers and unexpected results, which may require reframing our thinking about these results as points of interest rather than failures. The discussion included the benefits of using methodologies and methods when developing research studies that encourage openness and flexibility to respond to challenges and failures. This was noted particularly for students. Preparing students for the experience of research – including the inevitable failures – are important, as well as the need to help them to plan ahead for the challenges and how they will respond. The importance of personal ownership of failure was highlighted, including reflecting on what needs to change in the future. However, the culture of silence around expressing failure and – as the publishing group noted – being unable to publish methodological failures makes cultural change difficult. 

The conversations we had demonstrated both that there is a recognition that it is important to talk about failure, as well as that these conversations are not easy. However, we miss out on a lot when we do not talk about failure. We need a cultural shift to discuss research process, which recognizes the role of failure, and that can help to encourage new ideas and methods, as well as to train new researchers in information science. 

As part of our panel, we gave out stickers that read “Failure Club” and attendees placed them on their conference badges. This led to questions of “What is Failure Club” and interesting conversations at coffee breaks. We were excited to hear that CHI 2024 had ribbons that read “Rejected Author” (as seen here) that could be attached to conference badges. We hope that these are small signs of larger changes. But most importantly, the first  rule of Fail Club is to talk about Fail Club.