Rivers is an advocate for the open science movement, particularly as it relates to matters of public health and health security. When she began modeling the Ebola virus disease epidemic in 2014, she converted data released by ministries of health into a machine-readable format and shared it openly on GitHub, an open repository for collaborative work on software and code. In the wake of the Zika virus outbreak, she co-authored a perspective piece on the importance of making data sharing the norm in order to maximize readiness for public health emergencies, outlining challenges, such as the need for data standards for sharing, and potential solutions. She has also worked to develop an ethical framework of research standards for analyzing and reporting on publicly available data, with a specific focus on data resulting from Twitter.
