Science Ajar

The future of research: are you ready?

Jeremy G. Frey ProfeChem

15 March 2013

Jisc Digifest

Jisc Digifest11/03/2014

Jisc Digifest

Intelligent Open Access to Data 11/03/2014

mediated

Much of Science is a “long tail” enterprise

Traditionally mediated asynchronously through the literature

11/03/2014 Jisc Digifest

Jisc Digifest

StructureGate

11/03/2014

Methods are as important as the data

Jisc Digifest

THE NARRATIVEWhat is the story? What is the why?

11/03/2014 6

Jisc Digifest

Faraday’s laboratory notebooks are also remarkable in the amount

of detail that they give about the design and setting up of

experiments, interspersed with comments about their outcome

and thoughts of a more philosophical kind. All are couched in plain language, with many vivid phrases of delightful spontaneity….

Peter Day, ‘The Philosopher’s Tree: A Selection of Michael Faraday’s Writings’

11/03/2014

Scientific Narratives

RESOURCING

11/03/2014 Jisc Digifest

Talk Themes

• Co-sourcing

• In-Sourcing

• Out-sourcing

• Net-Sourcing

• Open Sourcing

• Single-Sourcing

• Crowd Sourcing

11/03/2014 Jisc Digifest

IDCC 2014 Meeting San Franciscohttp://www.dcc.ac.uk/events/idcc14/programme-presentations

11/03/2014 Jisc Digifest

The samples you need may already be available

11/03/2014 Jisc Digifest

Jisc Digifest

Subversive and furtive sharing &

exploitation of data in virtual

space RDF

OAI Taxi

E-

user

LabsDigital Repository

Data11/03/2014

Some projects need large amounts of data from the literature: access can be an issue

Someone will be able to do the experiments you need –

Perhaps better than you can

11/03/2014 Jisc Digifest

DISSEMINATION IS PART OF THE RESEARCH

Bringing dissemination in to the lab… use and re-use of data… the digital research notebook

11/03/2014 Jisc Digifest

Jisc Digifest

Smart Tea Project

11/03/2014

P2 - Plans & Provenance

Jisc Digifest

MoreTea: Tablet Interface and RDF World11/03/2014

11/03/2014 Jisc Digifest

LabTrove: Easy Communication

Images and sketch commenting

Highly inter-linked report

Digital and Physical Worlds

11/03/2014 Jisc Digifest

ElectronicLaboratoryNotebooks

ELNs

Comparison with traditional paper

notebooks

Communication Collaboration

SharingLinking

Curating

• Higher Quality Record• Natural linking to data

and external resources• Easier Collaboration• Improved planning

• Improved discussions• Efficiency gain in

production of presentations/reports

• Change the nature of Professor/Student

interactions

Impact on researchers

11/03/2014 Jisc Digifest

Jisc Digifest

Open Notebook Science• Certainly not always the way to work!

– IPR, Commercial, long term projects, recognition issues, etc

• But

– Makes connection much easier if the data and processes are “Open”

– Easy to export & access of “Linked-Data”

11/03/2014

It is not necessary to change.

Survival is not mandatory.W. Edwards Deming

Jisc Digifest11/03/2014

LabTrove Open Notebooks Mat Todd’s PZQ Project

Jisc Digifest

Validation

• Increasing the value of data

• How to bring all the necessary information together to enable appropriate validation

• Increasingly difficult & expensive to achieve

• Need provenance and context

• Essential step otherwise just a collection of items

11/03/2014

Publication@Source

This is a picture – why has the data been lost?

11/03/2014 Jisc Digifest

Jisc Digifest

Unavailable Information• Not just lots of data but why are many of

the structures unpublished so certainly unavailable?

• The E-Crystals and E-Bank Project looked at how to address this issue

• Is making data availablethe same as depositing a copy with someone else?

11/03/2014

BACK TO PLANS & PLANNING

11/03/2014 Jisc Digifest

Jisc Digifest11/03/2014 27

“In theory, there is no difference

between theory and practice.

But, in practice, there is.”

Unknown (possibly Yogi Berra or Manfred Eigen)

P&E Ontology: Planning• Prospective

provenance

• Describes a scientific experiment that will be enacted (in the future)

• Three entity types:

– Plan– Plan Stage– Plan Object

11/03/2014 Jisc Digifest

P&E Core Ontology: Enactment• Retrospective

provenance

• Describes a scientific experiment that was enacted

• Three entity types:

– Run– Stage– Object

2911/03/2014 Jisc Digifest

11/03/2014 Jisc Digifest

Graph/Network provides intuitive

navigation

WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM LEGO

11/03/2014 Jisc Digifest

Jisc Digifest

Change in the whole way we design and build

11/03/20143D Printers: A radical change to the experimental

section of a paper!

Jisc Digifest

Thanks & Acknowledgements

• UK e-Science & Digital Economy Programmes

• RCUK: EPSRC, BBSRC & TSB, JISC/ HEFCE, Microsoft & IBM, for funding and support

• Southampton Colleagues and Students from Chemistry, Electronics & Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics/Statistics, iSolutions and the Library

• Colleagues at Bath/UKOLN, Oxford/OeRC, STFC, Reading, Penn State, Cornell, PNNL, UNSW, USyd

11/03/2014

Jisc Digifest

Trust me Mort - no electronic communications superhighway, no matter how vast and sophisticated,

will ever replace the art of the schmooze

Thank you for listening

11/03/2014