Streamlining Python Development: A Guide to a Modern Project Setup
Researchers of Tomorrow
1. The Future of Research? Research in a digital age Branwen Hide February 8 th , 2010 Researchers of Tomorrow
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3. Simplified research life cycle Research Production Publication Development of a research idea Post-publication and distribution Pre-publication dissemination Literature reviews, archival material, e-mails, face-face meetings, conferences, networking Bench research, field research, conceptualizing Conferences, meetings, departmental seminars, personal communications, emails Peer reviewed publications, conferences, seminars Personal communications Conferences, seminars, Personal communications, technical reports, grey literature, popular literature, newspapers, grant applications, networking
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5. Web 2.0 usage according to position on career ladder (RIN 2010) Use and relevance of web 2.0 for researchers 31% 22% 20% 28% PhD Student 15% 15% 18% 16% Research Fellow 12% 9% 13% 11% Lecturer 11% 18% 15% 14% Senior Lecturer 5% 9% 6% 7% Reader 19% 21% 20% 18% Professor Position 40% 44% 14% 100% All respondents Non-adopters Occasional Users Frequent Users All respondents
6. Research 2.0 Research Production Publication Development of a research idea Post-publication and distribution Pre-publication dissemination Literature reviews, online data bases, online archival material, online discussions Text mining, virtual lab equipment, online-analysis, reuse of existing data Blogs, wikis, networking sites, on-line forums E-journals, e-books, open access publications, subject specific repositories Blogs, wikis, online-forums, networking sites, slideshare, Flicker, YouTube, institutional repositories, reference sharing sites, subject specific repositories, Society web pages Times Archives Online, UKPMC, UKDA EMBL,H-net.org, Economists online myExperiment, Ensembl MyExperiment, arXiv, Friendfeed Researchgate, H-net.org Mendeley, Conneta, citeUlike, Connotea, Twitter, Omeka, ScholarPress PLoS, open humanities press, EBI, PDB, UKDA, UKPMC
10. Branwen Hide Liaison and Partnership Officer Research Information Network [email_address] www.rin.ac.uk
Editor's Notes
-personal background Recently completed my DPHIL in the department of clinical medicine at Oxford, and have been working for the RIN for ~ a year and a half We enhance and broaden understanding of how researchers in the UK create and use information resources and services of all kinds and try and bridge the gap between researchers and policy makers at all levels
What I want to do today, is look at the way we do research now and think about/questions the way we could do research in the future particularly with the increase in digital technologies
I have just put together a simplified version of a research life cycle to help us identify the basic components of research and to think about how we approach the different steps There is a lot of overlap between the different stages Have a think about how you undertake each stage and the tools that you use – how do you currently work? Just give you a minute to write down things you do at each stage for example – development go to an archive – production analysis survey data Development: Searching and reading current literature, talking to different people including librarians, archivists, other researchers, exploration Production: The actually doing of the research this may be physical experiments of synthesis of archival material Discussions of preliminary results/findings/thoughts early stage discussions with colleagues about current findings suggestions on how to take things forward – have you thought about… Formal publication of finalized research It is all done Formal peer reviewed publications – journals, monographs Dissemination of published results – getting the word out It is all fine and dandy having done the work but now you need to get people to read it! Hands up who use at least one web based application such as Google
Now that we have had a look at the research cycle the question is who uses the web and why By web 2.0 we mean web based tools/applications that facilitate interactive information sharing , collaboration , interoperability , user-centred design The definition is not limited to technologies but also includes the changing ways in which individuals and groups produce and communicate information 1stly - Over the past few years, there has been a growing increase in the use of the internet within research, and tied to this is the rabid development of new tools and services being launched by commercial players as well as arising from the efforts of research communities, information service providers and knowledge intermediaries such as publishers and conference organizers Secondly Benefits: Saves time, enhances collaborations, analyse your data in new ways, find new sources of information Associated issues presented by researchers: ethical implications, IP and copyright, inappropriate use of information, lack of credit/ increase chance of getting ‘scooped’ 3rdly = question assumption
- This is some work that we have done which shows that actually not everyone is using these tools and that we do need to challenge this assumption. -
Think about my earlier slide on the research life cycle and all the different tools and resources that we consider to be ‘tradition’ Research 2.0 - Research 2.0 involves new Internet-enabled methods of generating peer-produced online content by leveraging the lightweight, easy-to-use and easy-to-modify tools of Web 2.0 (wikis, blogs, mashups, social networking sites, content sharing sites, applets, etc.) by reusing, re-purposing and/or redesigning them as tools and resources for academic research. Eric Meyers Oii Current research practises: have a look the list we had for current research practises and now think the resources you use and those that are web based There are actually web based tools and resources for all stages of the research life cycle (go through cycle) Question then is what are the implications for this – that does it mean for traditional sources of information i.e. non-digital materials?
I want you think about this questions in relation to your own work and please feel free to provide some thoughts in the discussion I.e. from going to that remote archive and finding that hidden material – or running your own experiment vs. pooling info from a database There are some studies that indicate we read differently online that we do when reading print material – does this translate to online info and data? how do you deal with digital information? What I think is an important question – is everything we really need online? Are we limiting ourselves by thinking that everything is on line now and that if it isn’t online it doesn’t exist?
Our own work has highlighted that many researchers do not have the necessary skills to use or feel confidant to use advance searching options – as a result they may miss key information sources and have a large number of pages to scroll through Also in a world where many of our information related sources are no longer just trusted peer –reviewed literature, researchers are being asked to make judgment on quality in a way they have never had to before How do you determine the quality of a blog or a wiki? Or info on twitter? Would you trust it as research material? Would it depend why you were using it…
In summary, though the web does potentially have a lot to offer in terms of enhancing the research life cycle, the use of the web does bring up a lot of questions which need to be though about when one is using.