Virtual Research EnvironmentsVRE 1 One year later

JISC Conference 2010 London, UK | 13 April 20109

Jim Farmerinstructional media + magic, inc.

i n s t r u c t i o n a l m e d i a + m a g i c, i n c.

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Three questions

• Are VREs sustainable?

• Do VREs improve productivity?• At least in the minds of the researchers

• Is the use of a VRE consistent with the trends in research methodology?• Global collaboration

• Digital-based research methods

• Sequence of projects

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UK Research Productivity• “The U.K. has the most productive research

based in the G8. We produce more publications and citations per researcher and per pound of public funding than any of our major competitors. We are responsible for 8 percent of the world publications, and we have increased our global share of the most cited papers to 14 per cent.”

(UK BIS 2009)

#1 in papers (45.5) and citations (1,330) per billion GDP (29.2 citations/ paper)

(Evidence Ltd 2009)

The VRE1 projects report researchers believe VREs (100%) improve quality of their research and publish sooner.

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Q1 Sustainability

• Sustainability of virtual research environments—software, IC infrastructure, and processes—is when the community of users, including “free loaders” if open source, are willing to provide funding and/or support to maintain and advance the VRE.

VRE Meeting, Leeds University, 22 Jun 2009

VREs of all (100%) projects were in use one year later. 80% improved their VRE during the first year following VRE1.

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Q2: Productivity

• All reporting (100%) believed the VRE improved the quality of their research.

• Number of unpaid collaborators (beyond those proposed) increased (50%)

• Public use increased (67%)

• Increased data availability (67%); decreased (33%)

• Published earlier (60%)

• Papers were produced earlier (interviews).

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Q3:Research methods

• Global collaboration

  Two collaborated with every Harvard education area. Both Cambridge and Hull previously participated in multi-national open source software projects

  All project communications were in English; all publications in English and none were translated by the project

• Digital-based research methods

  All (100%) reported more data was available, more data used, and more was archived.

• Sequence of projects

  Provision for subsequent projects by others is not yet a consideration.

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• The contribution of VRE’s as the source of “innovation” was not evidenced. But one “idea” was cultivated through collaboration and subsequent development at a different UK university. It is now a VRE Rapid Innovation project.

This is an example of “sequenced projects” and the value of immediate funding.

Note

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Innovation UK Style

• UK prof Carol Goble receives Jim Gray awardTodd Bishop’s Microsoft Blog, 9 Dec 2008

• At the 2008 Microsoft eScience Workshop, the first Jim Gray eScience Award was presented to Carole Goble in recognition of her contributions to the development of workflow tools to advance data-centric research.

research.microsoft.com/en-us/events/escience2010/jim_gray_award.aspx

The Goble-De Roure idea was developed, implemented, and made available to researchers throughout the world as MyExperiment.

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The End

Jim Farmer

JXF [at] immagic . com

JXF [at] georgetown . edu

Except where otherwise noted, this presentation is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License

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Virtual Research Environments programme (Phase 1)

• The aim of the programme is to engage the research community in:• building and deploying Virtual Research

Environments (VREs) based on currently available tools and frameworks

• assessing their benefits and shortcomings in supporting the research process

• improving and extending them to meet the future needs of UK research

• developing or integrating new tools and frameworks where appropriate solutions do not yet exist.

www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/vre1

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Julian Newman on 4th Paradigm

Julian Newman “Fourth Paradigm,” DPSI Short Talk,

Glasgow Caledonian University, 1 December 2009

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Julian Newman on 4th Paradigm

Conclusions• All of the following will be essential to 4th

Paradigm

• Data Curation

• Good Software Engineering Practice

• Support for Teamwork [infrastructure]

• Critical Thinking

• Analysis of models “built into” instruments

• Explicit attention to Argumentation SupportJulian Newman “Fourth Paradigm,” DPSI Short Talk,

Glasgow Caledonian University, 1 December 2009.

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Suggestions

• VRE architecture – three levels: common, discipline specific, project specific (perhaps based on the DICOM standard used by the medical professions).

• Unified communications (UK MOD: “Network and Information Sciences International Technology Alliance,” IBM UK + 7 UK and 8 US universities)

• Best practices for data and document preparation, storage, and retrieval based on recommendations of the library community.