Talk by Professor Carol Tenopir at the PRATT and King's College London's Symposium: "Can Scholarship Show as well as Tell".

1. Text + Images + Data: A More
Complete Way to Convey
Results of Scientific Research
Carol Tenopir
University of Tennessee
ctenopir@utk.edu
web.utk.edu/~tenopir/

2. In science, images visualize
data or are data…

3. Text, data, and images together
convey scientific meaning

4. Spatio-Temporal Exploratory
Model identifies factors
affecting patterns of
migration
Diverse bird observations and
environmental data from
300,00 locations in the US
integrated and analyzed using
High Performance Computing
Resources
Land Cover
Meteorology
MODIS –
Remote
sensing data
• Examine patterns of
migration
• Infer how climate
change may affect
bird migration
Model results
Occurrence of Indigo Bunting (2008)
Jan Sep DecJunAp
r
And…together with models can
enable scientific discovery
4

5. Granularity in the Journal World
Granularity=
Divisible: Made up of conveniently
small and independent parts

6. 1. Journal
Title 2. Issue

7. 3. Article

8. 4. Objects (figures, tables, pictures)

9. ProQuest Illustrata: Tables and
Figures
Objects Database
Record includes:
•Full image
•Captions
•Index terms
•Link to full text
•Other metadata

10. The Article can also be a starting
point to expand…

11. Data Repositories like Dryad help
link datasets to journal articles

12. ICE Collectors
ICE Users
Information
Center for
the
Environment
(ICE) UC
Davis
ICE Collects Water
Data
ICE Users
agencies
citizens
faculty
Other repositories exist without
journals…

13. ICE Collectors
ICE Users
Information
Center for
the
Environment
(ICE) UC
Davis ICE Collects Water
Data
ICE Users
agencies
citizens
faculty
Investigator Toolkit

14. ICE Collectors
ICE Users
DataONE
Users
Information
Center for
the
Environment
(ICE) UC
Davis ICE Collects Water
Data
ICE Users
agencies
citizens
faculty
Investigator Toolkit

15. Reading patterns may vary
with purpose …
 Sometimes you need an entire article
or most of one (catching up or writing)
 Sometimes you need just a part like a
paragraph or picture (teaching or to
check a fact)
 Sometimes you need citations or data
beyond the article (research)

16. Deep Indexing Study of 60 scientists
in 7 universities and 2 institutes in US
and Europe
Observing 350+ Searches
Pre and Post
Surveys
Search Diaries

17. What scientists currently do

18. to “be inspired
by how other
researchers set
up figures and
tables”
Potential uses: finding,
comparing, learning
“Sometimes
tables,
figures,
maps, etc.
are ‘hidden’ in
other
papers.”
“comparing
data from
other
researchers
to your own
findings.”

19. Potential Use: To retrieve and use
images for Research and Teaching
50%
70%
90%
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
Test 1
Test 2
Final

20. Potential Use: To compare
their work with others’

21. Potential Use: To support analysis
Participants anticipate using the
objects retrieved :
 for review articles
 to “be inspired by how other researchers
set up figures/tables”
 to “expose me to different areas in
which similar methods are used”

22. Potential to change practice

23. Suggestions for Success
 Images must be of high quality with
ability to enlarge thumbnail images
 The context of the whole article is very
important—in fact it may be dangerous
to see images without the context
 Allow table contents to be searchable
and support extraction of data from
tables

26. 36%
41%
75%
78%
0% 50% 100%
Others can access my data easily
Place all of my data into a central
data repository
I share my data
Place at least some of my data into a
central data repository
Gap Between Willingness
to Share and Accessibility

27. 0% 50% 100%
I would use other researchers' datasets if
easily accessible
Lack of access to data has restricted my
ability to answer scientific questions
Lack of access to data is a major
impediment to the progress of science
78%
84%
50%
27%
50%
Consequences of Lack of Access
to Other Datasets

28. In conclusion…
 Providing access to visual material can help
scientists in many ways
 Sometimes scientists need just a part of an
article and systems that help them find parts
 Sometimes they need to read an entire article
 Sometimes they need data (and many are
willing to share)
 Think at many levels of granularity—journal
issues AND whole articles AND parts of
articles AND extensions to articles such as
data

29. Thank you
Carol Tenopir
ctenopir@utk.edu