the end(s) of e-research

April 11, 2023

The End(s) of e-Research

Ralph Schroeder, Professor, MSc Programme DirectorEric T. Meyer, Research Fellow, DPhil Programme Director

@etmeyer

e-Research is defined as:

research using

digital tools and data

for the distributed and collaborative

production of knowledge

End 1: The e-Science Programme

e-Research is not a separate entity; it consists merely of computational support for other disciplines, and these are where the real research is taking place.

Source: Meyer, E.T., Schroeder, R. (2009). Untangling the Web of e-Research: Towards a Sociology of Online Knowledge. Journal of Informetrics 3(3):246-260

End 2: Accidental e-Researchers

We are all becoming e-Researchers; successful e-Research will become so mundane and expected that it will disappear from daily notice, like other

infrastructures.

End 3: The March of Progress

Grid computing (the original incarnation of e-Science) was displaced by web services, then by the cloud; the cloud is now giving way to ‘big data’, which will no doubt be replaced by something else.

Research computing

The Grid

Supercomputing

Clouds

Big Data

Web 2.0

Research computing

The Grid

Supercomputing

Clouds

Big Data

Web 2.0

Emergent Foci

Number of academic articles including mentions of computational approaches to research in their title,abstract, or keywords. Source: Scopus queries by the authors. * 2012 only includes data through September.

Emergent Foci: Media Framing

Number of news articles including mentions of big data. Source: Lexis/Nexis queries by the authors.

Cloud computing: 3k-4k per month

Styles of Science

Hacking: styles of science (after Crombie)1. taxonomic

2. statistical3. modelling4. observation and measurement5. historico-genetic development 6. mathematical postulation+7. laboratory(+8. algorithmic?)

Styles of science, but also mathematization and other forms of symbolic manipulation via cataloguing, image analysis, etc.

Disciplinarityand the Uneven Distribution of Computation and Scientization

Sciences: algorithms across the styles (modelling, statistics,…), data deluge,...

Social Sciences: statistics, image analysis, mapping,…

Humanities: patterns in words, numbers, images, sounds,… (ie. Google Books)

Arts: audience engagement, new forms of performance, …

Source: CERN, CERN-EX-0712023, http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1203203

Particle Physics and EGEE: The world’s largest e-Science collaboration

Social Sciences: Growing influence of new tools and approaches

Ackland, R. (2010), "WWW Hyperlink Networks," Chapter 12 in D. Hansen, B. Shneiderman and M. Smith (eds), Analyzing Social Media Networks with NodeXL: Insights from a connected world. Morgan-Kaufmann.

VOSON (NodeXL version)

Social Sciences: Search engine behaviour

Waller’s analysis of Australian Google Users

Key findings:- Mainly leisure- < 2% contemporary issues- No perceptible ‘class’ differences

Novel advance:- Unprecedented insight into what people

search for

Challenge:- Replicability- Securing access to commercial data

V. Waller, “Not Just Information: Who Searches for What on the Search Engine Google?”, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 62(4): 761-75, 2011.

Humanities: Large-scale text analysis

Michel et al. ‘culturomic’ analysis of 5 Million Digitized Google Books and Perc analysis of the same data

Key findings:- Patterns of key terms- Industrialization tied to shift from abstract to concrete words

Novel advance:- Replicability, extension to other areas, systematic analysis of cultural materials

Challenge:- Data quality

Fig. 1 Culturomic analyses study millions of books at once.

Published by AAAS

J. Michel al. Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books. Science: Vol. 331 no. 6014 pp. 176-182. 2010.

Evolution of popularity of the top 100 n-grams over the past five centuries.

Perc M. (2012) Journal of the Royal Society Interface doi:10.1098/rsif.2012.0491

See: http://goo.gl/2URVT

©2012 by The Royal Society Slide from John Lavagnino, King’s College London

Digital transformations of research

Computational Manipulability +

Research Technologies(Mathematization)

Socio-Technical Organization

(Computerization movements)

Transformations of Research Front

(For different fields)

Big DataAccessing and Using Big Data to Advance Social Science Knowledge

See http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/research/projects/?id=98

Oxford Internet Institute

With support from:

Eric T. Meyereric.meyer@oii.ox.ac.uk

http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/?id=120@etmeyer

Ralph Schroederralph.schroeder@oii.ox.ac.uk

http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/?id=26