A short talk discussing some potential research ideas for web science applied to scientific research

1. Re-imagining Scientific Research
A “Social Machine” of experienced
researchers, technology & information
Jeremy Frey
j.g.frey@soton.ac.uk profechem

2. Digital Chemistry
Reducing and Managing Uncertainty
Chemistry 2.0 (or 3.0)

3. A Chemist’s Digital Aura
http://mosaically.com/PhotoMosaic/3289771f-0bf3-49bf-bc8a-1810167096ff

4. “We have lots of information
technology. We just don’t have
any information.”

5. Intelligent Open Access to Data

6. Reducing Uncertainty
• What is already known?
• Who is doing what?
• How was a result obtained?
• Access to Data
• Integration of Data.
• Provenance & Planning
http://shop.lego.com/en-GB/Research-Institute-
21110

7. “The Laboratory”
• A laboratory is an Integration of
people and equipment
• A complex socio-technical system
• Disrupted or integrated by digital
infrastructure?
• How to support (a) people to do what
they are best at doing and (b)
computers to undertake what they
can do best and (c) ensure that they
can work together.

8. Contexts
• Digital context for human action
• Human context for computational processes
• To support provenance and trust of the
laboratory process
• Ensure discovery, integration and validation of
data and information

9. Reproducibility
• How to ensure reproducibly?
• How to preserve provenance?
• How to acquire trust?
• How to retract incorrect information
• Open Notebook Science
• Citizen science vs Expert Science

10. Scientific Data Value Chain
• Does the Web currently/have the potential to
disrupt or support the data value chain?
http://www.dreamingnewmexico.org/food/ff-local-foodshed

11. Collaborations
• Impact of collaborative challenges
– Maths “Project Polymath”
– Games “Foldit”
– Analytics “Kaggle”
• How does this influence value and trust?
IBM Watson

12. Citizen Science
Foldit Kaggle

13. How do we
communicate?
• Surprisingly difficult to
explain what a process
involves
• Much of the detail is
assumed to be understood
and not explicitly discussed
• This is where the miss-understandings
usually
arise.
If you can't describe what
you are doing as a process,
you don't know what
you're doing.
W. Edwards Deming
Growing need for the
global (virtual)
equivalent of the
“Tea Room”

14. Semiotic Web
• We have the document
Web
• We have to some extent the
Web of Data
• We have to a little extent
the Semantic Web of
relationships
• We all interact with the
Semiotic Web via the signs
and symbols used in the
human –Web interface
• But social, cultural,
language, background
influences on the
interpretation is poorly
understood
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Name_of_rose_movieposter.jpg

15. Links with the Food Standards Agency
EXAMPLES OF OUR LABS
Internet of Things – Data Integration – Social Media
The Food cloud

16. LabTrove Open Notebooks Mat Todd’s PZQ Project

17. BlogMyData Project - Godiva

18. LabTrove -> RSS -> Email / Twitter

19. We must speed up the knowledge discovery process
All I am saying is that now is the time to
develop the technology to deflect an asteroid

20. The Art of Asking the Right Question

21. He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes;
he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever.
—Chinese Proverb
Why is asking a good
question on Quora (20
credits per follower)
more rewarding than
writing a good answer (10
credits per upvote)?
http://www.quora.com/Why-is-asking-a-good-question-on-
Quora-20-credits-per-follower-more-rewarding-than-writing-
a-good-answer-10-credits-per-upvote

22. http://lab-on-chip.gene-quantification.info/
LABORATORIES OF THE FUTURE

23. The Lego Movie
Everything is Awesome,
Everything is cool when you're part of a team

24. Change in the whole way we design and
build experiments
3D Printers: A radical change to the experimental section of a paper!

25. Thank you for listening
Trust me Mort - no electronic communications
superhighway, no matter how vast and sophisticated,
will ever replace the art of the schmooze