jankowski, vks e research slidecast, 26 june2008

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e-Research: Issues & Challenges Slidecast as background to VKS Research Meeting 26 June 2008 Nicholas W. Jankowski Visiting Fellow Virtual Knowledge Studio for the Humanities & Social Sciences www.virtualknowledgestudio.nl [email protected]

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Presentation on e-Research, for VKS Research Meeting, 26 June 2008

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Page 1: Jankowski, Vks E Research Slidecast, 26 June2008

e-Research: Issues & Challenges

Slidecast as background to VKS Research Meeting

26 June 2008

Nicholas W. Jankowski Visiting FellowVirtual Knowledge Studio for the Humanities & Social Scienceswww.virtualknowledgestudio.nl [email protected]

Page 2: Jankowski, Vks E Research Slidecast, 26 June2008

Outline

• Terminology

• Illustrations

• e-Research Project

• Issues & challenges

• Discussion

26 June 2008 2VKS Research Meeting

Page 3: Jankowski, Vks E Research Slidecast, 26 June2008

Terminology: Alternative formulations

– Cyberinfrastructure

– e-Infrastructure

– Big Science

– Cyberscience

– Internet research

– e-Science

– e-Social Science

– e-Research

26 June 2008 3VKS Research Meeting

Page 4: Jankowski, Vks E Research Slidecast, 26 June2008

CyberinfrastructureIndiana University (March 2007), http://rc.uits.iu.edu/newsletter/archives/

“Cyberinfrastructure consists of computing systems,

data storage systems, advanced instruments and data

repositories, visualization environments, and people,

all linked together by software and high performance

networks to improve research productivity and enable

breakthroughs not otherwise possible. “

Compared to ubiquitous infrastructures in society:

transport, electrical power, gas & water

Note: concept in flux; see Edwards et al. (2007)

26 June 2008 4VKS Research Meeting

Page 5: Jankowski, Vks E Research Slidecast, 26 June2008

e-Science & Big Science

CERN http://www.gridpp.ac.uk/pics/stand2004/cern.html

Big: budgets, staffs, machines, laboratories

26 June 2008 5VKS Research Meeting

Page 6: Jankowski, Vks E Research Slidecast, 26 June2008

e-Science• Definition

National e-Science Centre, http://www.nesc.ac.uk/nesc/define.html

“In the future, e-Science will refer to the large scale science that will increasingly be carried out through distributed global collaborations enabled by the Internet. Typically, a feature of such collaborative scientific enterprises is that they will require access to very large data collections, very large scale computing resources and high performance visualisation back to the individual user scientists.”

• Features– sciences &engineering: primary; humanities & social sciences: secondary

– grid computing: key component

– alliance with computer science; tool development

– top-down mandate; incorporated into science policy

– documents: sense of inevitability, technological determinism

26 June 2008 6VKS Research Meeting

Page 7: Jankowski, Vks E Research Slidecast, 26 June2008

e-Research

• Rationale– Broad disciplinary relevance; social sciences and humanities– Unhindered by proclivities of other terms

• Features– Distant, international collaboration – Data preservation & access– Internet-based instruments– Visualization– (high-speed) networked computers

26 June 2008 7VKS Research Meeting

Page 8: Jankowski, Vks E Research Slidecast, 26 June2008

Illustrations: capita selecta

• e-Science• e-Research: social sciences• e-Research: humanities

26 June 2008 8VKS Research Meeting

Page 9: Jankowski, Vks E Research Slidecast, 26 June2008

e-Science: large-scale instrumentation & distant collaboration

Birnholtz, J. P., & Horn, D. B. (2007). Shake, rattle and roles: Lessons from experimental earthquake engineering for incorporating remote users in large-scale e-science experiments. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(2), article 17. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/issue2/birnholtz.html

26 June 2008 9VKS Research Meeting

Page 10: Jankowski, Vks E Research Slidecast, 26 June2008

Social Sciences: Data Visualization

Vizster: Visualizing Online Social NetworksHttp://jheer.org/vizster/

26 June 2008 10VKS Research Meeting

Page 11: Jankowski, Vks E Research Slidecast, 26 June2008

Humanities: Data Preservation & access

International Institute for Social Historymanuscript Communist Manifestohttp://www.iisg.nl/collections/manifest/manifest.php

26 June 2008 11VKS Research Meeting

Page 12: Jankowski, Vks E Research Slidecast, 26 June2008

Humanities: Data Visualization

The Qumran Visualization Project http://www.nelc.ucla.edu/qumran/

26 June 2008 12VKS Research Meeting

Page 13: Jankowski, Vks E Research Slidecast, 26 June2008

Recapitulation: ways of imagining e-Research

• ‘Revolutionary’ change, transformation of scholarship

• (merely) new tools for scholarship

• Proposal: examine within components of research process

26 June 2008 13VKS Research Meeting

Page 14: Jankowski, Vks E Research Slidecast, 26 June2008

Research Process: conventional

Problem statement

 

Data collection

 

Data analysis

 

Reporting findings

26 June 2008 14VKS Research Meeting

Page 15: Jankowski, Vks E Research Slidecast, 26 June2008

Research Process: extended

Problem statement

 

Data collection Project

  Management

Data analysis

 

Reporting findings

26 June 2008 15VKS Research Meeting

Page 16: Jankowski, Vks E Research Slidecast, 26 June2008

Research Process: e-Research

 

Project Management

Activities: managing, facilitating, supporting, monitoring research process; crisis intervention

Tools: communication software (e.g., video & audio conferencing, email, IM, web archiving software, questionnaire design software

 

Data Collection

Activities: data archiving, instrument construction, data collection, securing secondary data, data merging

Tools: web archiving software, questionnaire design software

 

Data Analysis

Activities: data cleaning, coding, variable construction, statistical analysis, qualitative analysis

Tools: statistical package for data analysis (e.g., SPSS, SAS); qualitative data analysis software (e.g., Atlas)

 

Reporting findings

Activities: collaborative composition, reference preparation, online publishing,

Tools: Google Docs, EndNote, Adobe Creator, Web tools

26 June 2008 16VKS Research Meeting

Page 17: Jankowski, Vks E Research Slidecast, 26 June2008

e-Research Project: events

– Etmaal conference (Twente, Nov. 2004)

– NCeSS workshop (Manchester, June 2006)

– Journal theme issue: JCMC (January 2007)

– AoIR panel (Vancouver, October 2007)

– Goldsmiths panel (London, October 2007)

– Oxford conference (Oxford, October 2008)

– Routledge monograph (early 2009)

– Website of Project materials (2009 ….)

26 June 2008 17VKS Research Meeting

Page 18: Jankowski, Vks E Research Slidecast, 26 June2008

e-Research monograph

Objective– Provide panorama of early experiences– Multi-disciplinary– Theoretical diverse– Emphasis on social sciences, with illustrations

from e-Science and e-Humanities

26 June 2008 18VKS Research Meeting

Page 19: Jankowski, Vks E Research Slidecast, 26 June2008

Overview of monographE-RESEARCH: TRANSFORMATIONS IN SCHOLARLY PRACTICE

Introduction

1 The context and claims of e-Research

Nicholas W. Jankowski

Conceptualizing e-Research

 2 Towards a Sociology of e-Research: Shaping Practice and Advancing Knowledge

Ralph Schroeder & Jenny Fry

3 e-Research as Intervention

Anne Beaulieu & Paul Wouters

4 Many Challenges, Multiple Solutions: Facing the Barriers to Data Sharing and Reuse

Ann Zimmerman, Nathan Bos, Judy Olson & Gary Olson

5 Developing the U.K. e-Social Science Research Program

Peter Halfpenny, Yuwei Lin, Rob Procter & Alex Voss

  Management and collaboration

6 e-Research and Scholarly Community in the Humanities

Paul Genoni, Helen Merrick & Michele Willson

 7 Creating Shared Understanding in Research across Distances and Cultures

Petra Sonderegger

 8 Moving from Small Science to Big Science: Social and Organizational Impediments to Large Scale Data Sharing

Eric T. Meyer

 Special Issues

 9 Naming, Documenting and Contributing to e-Science

Samuelle Carlson & Ben Anderson

10 e-Social Science Visualizations

Mike Thelwall

11 A Picture is Worth a Thousand Questions: Visualization Techniques for Discovery in Computer-Mediated Interaction

Howard T. Welser, Thomas Lento, Marc Smith ,Eric Gleave & Itia Himelboim

 12 Web Archiving as e-Research

Steven M. Schneider, Kirsten A. Foot & Paul Wouters

 13 Intelectual Property in the Context of e-Science

Dan L. Burk

14 Open Access to e-Research

Rob Lucas & John Willinsky

Case studies

15 Situated Innovations in e-Social Science

Bridgette Wessels & Max Craglia

16 Wikipedia as Distributed Knowledge Laboratory: The Case of Neoloberalism

Clifford Tatum & Michelle LaFrance

17 The Rise of e-Science in Asia: Dreams and Realities for Social Science Research. Case Studies of Singapore and South Korea

Carol Soon & Han Woo Park

Page 20: Jankowski, Vks E Research Slidecast, 26 June2008

Issues & Challenges

• Archiving Difficulty in archiving dynamic websites Limitations with off-the-shelf archiving tools Restrictions on access to documents

• Visualization By itself visualization of data ‘says’ little; interpretation requires second

data source

• Reporting Tension between status attributed to traditional book publishing and

multimedia opportunities via online venues

26 June 2008 20VKS Research Meeting

Page 21: Jankowski, Vks E Research Slidecast, 26 June2008

Discussion• What is the relevancy of e-Research to ‘ordinary’ humanities

and social science scholars?

• In what manner and to what extent are features of e-Research adopted / adapted in the social sciences and humanities across disciplines, scholarly cultures and political climates?

• What areas / concerns merit investigation and facilitation?

26 June 2008 21VKS Research Meeting

Page 22: Jankowski, Vks E Research Slidecast, 26 June2008

Selected Resources ACLS. (Dec. 2006). Our Cultural Commonwealth. Report of the American Council of Learned Societies Commission on

Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities and Social Sciences. http://www.acls.org/cyberinfrastructure/ Akins Report. (Jan. 2003). Revolutionizing Science and Engineering Through Cyberinfrastructure. Report of the National

Science Foundation Blue Ribbon Advisory Panel on Cyberinfrastructure. http://www.nsf.gov/od/oci/reports/toc.jsp Baym, N. (Ed.) (2005). Is "Internet Research" a Virtual Field, a Proto-Discipline, or Something Else? Theme issue ,The

Information Society, 21(4): http://www.indiana.edu/~tisj/21/ Bruns, A. (May 2007). Methodologies for Mapping the Political Blogosphere: An Exploration Using the IssueCrawler

Research Tool. First Monday, 12(5). http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue12_5/bruns/index.html Edwards, P.N., Jackson, S.J., Bowker, G.C., & Knobel, C.P. Understanding Infrastructure: Dynamics, Tensions, and

Design. (Jan. 2007). Report of a Workshop on “History & Theory of Infrastructure: Lessons for New Scientific Cyberinfrastructures”. http://www.si.umich.edu/InfrastructureWorkshop/documents/UnderstandingInfrastructure2007.pdf

Hine, C. (2006). New Infrastructures for Knowledge Production: Understanding E-Science. Hershey, PA: Idea Group Publishing.

Jackson, S.J., Edwards, P.N., Bowker, G.C., & Knobel, C.P. (June 2007). Understanding Infrastructure: History, Heuristics, and Cyberinfrastructure Policy. First Monday, 12(6), http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue12_6/jackson/index.html

Jankowski, N. W. (Ed.) (2007). Theme issue on e-Science, JCMC, 12(2), http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/issue2/ National Science Foundation Cyberinfrastructure Council (March 2007). Cyberinfrastructure Vision for 21st Century

Discovery. http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2007/nsf0728/nsf0728.pdf Schroeder, R. (March 2007). e-Research Infrastructures and Open Science: Towards a New System of Knowledge

Production? Prometheus, 25(1): 1-17. http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/08109028.asp

26 June 2008 22VKS Research Meeting

Page 23: Jankowski, Vks E Research Slidecast, 26 June2008

Thank You!

Nicholas W. Jankowski Visiting FellowVirtual Knowledge Studio for the Humanities & Social Scienceswww.virtualknowledgestudio.nl [email protected]

26 June 2008 23VKS Research Meeting