Understanding Research 2.0 from a Socio-technical

Perspective

Yuwei LinNational Centre for e-Social Science

University of Manchesterhttp://www.ncess.ac.uk

Disclaimer

This paper is not about

Dichotomy of Research 1.0 and Research 2.0

Imposing an ideal version of Research 2.0 Looking at the Research 2.0 activities from

a technology-oriented perspective

Outline

Point of departure Research 2.0 and its meanings and

practices in different scientific disciplines Tim O'Reilly's Web 2.0 design patterns De Roure and Goble's 6 Principles of

software design to empower scientists MyExperiment development process Challenges emerging in the development of

Research 2.0 and possible socio-technical solutions

Web 2.0

http://web2logo.com/

Blogging Bookmarking File sharing (slides,

photos, videos, tags) Podcasting Social networking Co-authoring (wiki)

The World of the Web 2

Communities Connected

and networked Shared

resources Collective

intelligence Wisdom of the

crowds

OpenWetWare

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SciVee.tv

New kinds of data and new kinds of platforms

Social scientists: analysing Facebook messages, twitter

messages, blog entries understanding how Wikipedia is co-

developed exploring how YouTube and SlideShare

can be used for disseminating scientific publications

how Second Life can be used for teaching

Open Access and Open Data

Open access journals Open data: Ordance Survey data is not free/openly

accessible. -> Open Street Map (Open Geo Data)

sourcing crowd wisdom -> MapTube – developed by UCL Centre

for Spatial Analysis (NCeSS Geographic Virtual Urban Environments node)

Go voting at http://www.maptube.org/congestion/

Congestion Charge

Science 2.0 / Academia 2.0

Elsevier B.V.

DELL & COLLEXIS(LinkedIn-like)

Nature Publishing Group

O'Reilly's Web 2.0 Design Patterns

1. The Long Tail2. Data is the Next Intel Inside3. Users Add Value4. Network Effects by Default5. Some Rights Reserved6. The Perpetual Beta7. Cooperate, Don't Control8. Software Above the Level of a Single Device

myExperiment.orgmyExperiment currently has 1286 users, 109 groups, 500 workflows, 139 files and 40 packs

Open Source

powered by

Workflows

This workflow loads molecules from the database and than checks whether the perception of the atom types works or not. After the extraction of the database identifier from all molecules which caused problems during this process will the identifier be written to a file.

Reuse, repurpose workflows

Use the local java plugins and some filtering operations to fetch the comic strip image from http://xkcd.com/ Based on the FetchDailyDilbert workflow. I just uploaded this example so I can play around with the myexperiment api.

The Distributed Team

User, Amsterdam User,

Manchester

User, Manchester

Developer, Manchester

Developer, Manchester

Developer, PM, Southampton

Developer, Manchester

De Roure and Goble's Six Principles

Of design for adoption Fit it, don't force change Jam today and more jam tomorrow

(incentives) Just in time and just enough (delivery) Act local, think global Enable users to add value (empowerment) Design for network effect (community)

De Roure and Goble's Six Principles

Of user engagement Keep your friends close Embed users with developers and

developers with users Keep sight of the bigger picture Favours will be in your favour (trust

building) Know your users (rarely there is one kind of

users) Expect and anticipate change

Socio-Technical Issues in the Development Process

How to keep up with the fast-paced Web2.0 development? -> agile management and development methods for a “Perpetual Beta”

How to involve users? User-centred? Who are the users? How to draw the boundary? Fostering existing Taverna user community or building new communities?How if they have different requirements?

Ethical issues

Privacy and confidentiality Social networking websites usually offer the

features of personal profiles and online logs of personal activities online.

Fear of being watched and monitored and screened.

Socio-technical solutions: security technology + awareness raising

Legal issues

Intellectual Property Rights “Release early, release often”

(mantra of the open source software community)? -> Concerned over being copied or scooped

Contradicting commercial interests if data is provided by private firms

Science Commons

Communication

VRE cf. Face-to-face contact Behavioural change in a Web 2.0

environment Languages Trust Socio-technical solutions: a better

Graphical User Interface, Ajax, and Communication Space for improving human-computer interaction

Multi-disciplinarity

How to improve mutual understandings in a distributed and multidisciplinary environment?

Different terminologies and epistemological understandings (e.g, tagging and tag cloud)

Data in different and incompatible formats Context and provenance Socio-technical solutions: semantic web + social annotation

Methodological Innovation

Collaborative and distributed ways of conducting research

To reuse or not to reuse? - Trust building + Decision making + Social networking

Mutual shaping between technology and academia

A paradigm shift?

Developing a Research2.0 Site

Research powered by Web 2.0 technologies for multidisciplinary collaboration, maintaining relationships

Sharing, depositing, browsing, organising, annotating, reusing, recreating resources (e.g., data, tools, publications, experiences) in a virtual environment

Research 2.0 – social networking sites for scientists?

Research 2.0(?)

“[...] I am not sure we are building a full social networking site -- we are building a social curation site.”

“One of the things that makes myExperiment a "virtual research environment" rather than a social networking site is that it has support for the particular research objects that people are using - we've focused on workflows and experiment plans just now.“

Future Research

Contexualising 'Research 2.0' is important – how Research 2.0 is perceived, adopted and practised for conducting what kind of work

How skills and knowledge are enacted in situ How this supposedly democratic and

seamless integration of distributed scientific work affects academic identities and shapes the social organisation of science.

Whether e-Science practices can be easily translated across boundaries.

Thank you for your attention.

Yuwei LinNational Centre for e-Social Science

University of Manchesterhttp://www.ncess.ac.uk