ecollaboration literature review report

eCollaboration in Learning, Teaching and Research
Literature Review Report
Irina Elgort (Lead researcher)
Tony Wilson (Research assistant)

http://akoaotearoa.ac.nz/download/ng/file/group-4/n1381-ecollaboration-in-learning-teaching-and-research---literature-review.pdf

This link is to a report reviewing literature pertaining to e-collaboration discussing trends, virtual research environments (VREs), training needs and how this will impact upon the way scientific research is conducted

Ingrid Masons article

"Virtual Preservation: How Has Digital Culture Influenced Our Ideas about Permanence?
Cbanging Practice in a National Legal Deposit Library" INGRID MASON. Several important issues raised as to the nature of information preservation in the context of a legal library.

Some examples of scientific cyberinfrastructure

World protein data bank http://www.wwpdb.org/ This has been established to enable researchers to utilise data on protein which has been gathered over the years, replicating much of this information is expensive and can take considerable time to do in some cases...

http://www.geongrid.org/ The Geosciences Network is another example of a portal where numerous institutions have collaborated to establish access to data...

http://www.ppdg.net/ Particle physics data grid, physicists and computer scientists collaborating to share data...

http://www.us-vo.org/ US National Virtual Observatory enables researchers to utilise stored experimental data

Sloan digital sky survey http://www.sdss.org/ As stated on the website, a most ambitious project conducted to survey the sky, this website records what has been covered as well as news related to the survey...

http://www.nbirn.net/ Biomedical informatics research network is another case of cyberinfatructure being established to store and enable access to considerable amounts of experiements and data

Although all of the above websites deal with data collected across physical and life science disciplines, some articles within the literature point toward these kinds of approaches being suitable for social sciences and humanities.

Draft hypothesis

Name your Topic of Interest

My topic of interest will be what New Zealand researchers current data curation practice is what what their needs for the future are likely to be, with emphasis on how libraries will facilitate this process

State your Indirect Question

Draft question formulation: Given the considerable amount of data now being created in the course of research, what are New Zealand researchers current data curation practices, and what services are they likely to require in the future. What are some likely services libraries will be able to employ to further enable access to data?

State how Your Answer will help the reader understand something more important

This project will help us understand where New Zealand fits within current initiatives for cyberstructure in terms of what researchers are doing, as well as the main issues they will be confronted by as well as how libraries will be able to assist this process.

State the Significance

The key component will be an exploration of this topic from a New Zealand perspective, having investigated what has been written about overseas as well as looking at some case studies. Exploration of this will be significant as it ties in to strategic direction and government policy pertaining to digital information and storage. New Zealand digital strategy and initiatives such as the KAREN network will be main driving factors for this in the near to distant future.

Identify and state your Sub-problems/Sub-questions and/or Hypotheses

Other sub-problems will be New Zealand's isolation, storage of data, the costs and responsibility of doing so, what researchers feelings are as to the ownership and distribution of data, one hypothesis I have in mind is my hunch that researchers will want the data to be as freely available as possible, however this may be proven wrong depending on some of the information being found...

Some central themes identified

Main themes emerging from the readings include, biodiversity, sustainability, curation, cultural/historical value, economic efficiency, growth, storage, technology/formats, methods of organising and distributing the data, policy, ownership, permissions...

DISC-UK project

DISC-UK project within the JISC website provides details of a collaboration between four UK universities as to the management of data relating to social sciences. Edinburgh, Oxford, London school of economics and Southampton, will combine efforts to promote data resources, and the importance of supporting data, as well as sharing information. It will be an exciting case study for those interested in the area of social sciences to follow in seeing what will emerge from this for related disciplines.

Bringing information together in the blog

This weekend has been spent doing quite a lot more background reading into digital preservation in general, particularly what is being done overseas. Much of the literature between projects initiated by the Digital Curation Centre and JISCPOWR deal with interwoven issues. Numerous blogs and articles also bring these resources together for the information of the reader. I have found excellent articles raising most of the key issues as to why data preservation will be so vital in the years to come. Economic (limited resources of various organisations, why not share data, rather than going to the expense of replicating it?), importance and relevance of Cultural issues, historical value of data across all disciplines, economic value in itself, biodiversity, interoperability, sustainability. Some of the challenges identified include, where this data will be stored, speculation that vast quantities of data are continually lost, more data created than there is physical and electronic storage space, Intellectual property, the roles of each individual organisation (or individual) to take responsibility for preservation of data, formatting the data, long-term accessibility, the organisation and classification of the data, amongs many other issues.

Checking in

Felt I should diarise the fact that I've found more literature over the past few days, notably the exploration of landcare research's website. One of the articles I found details numerous examples of how scientists have managed their data, as well as information about specific projects they have been working on. I am beginning to formulate the theme and structure that my literature review will take. I am discovering quite a few New Zealand initiatives for how the manage data and the sorts of databases which are being created to do this. Landcare research provide access to considerable amounts of information through the databases, accessible through the website.

Diary

Just checking in and have been rereading the text and set readings for the course, I've been really ill for a few weeks now, but have been going through quite a lot of the background of what people are writing about biodiversity and data curation overseas. I have found valuable powerpoint presentations, which I will put links up to on this blog. The DCC website is a wealth of knowledge and resources, in particular the many blogs they have set up, the legal blog makes for interesting reading in the way the law is interpreted in the UK concerning the use of data. This is something I will have to find out more about in a New Zealand context.