another comment from Derek Moore - may not fit the paper but a good exploration point for a future work

[malvikasharan]

These cohorts are a useful “structural category with the same kind of analytic utility as a social class” (Ryder, 1965). In most cases, cohorts are seen with a generational lens. With this lens on, the defining event is birth, and generalizations about this cohort are often based on significant events in their life history. The agents of socialization for a generational cohort are family, school media and peers. Social competence (see Semrud Clikeman) within this generational cohort is achieved when this generation achieves socially sanctioned goals.

A cohort, however, needs not only to be seen through a generational lens. A cohort might also be defined around the cumulative experience of individuals “who experienced the same event in the same time interval”. Just as a birth cohort makes “fresh contact with contemporary social heritage” and are socialized into that heritage.
(see Norman Ryder https://u.demog.berkeley.edu/~jrw/Biblio/Eprints/Tempo/ryder.1965.pdf).

So could the cumulative experience of those individuals who completed the 16-week OLS course, also be seen as fresh contact with an open science heritage? These eight cohorts, then, become a mechanism to socialize individuals or participants into the socially sanctioned competencies (or conformities) of Open Science, by their peer group.