G13 International Conference on Grey Literature
Science-Forums.net
Communities for Science Colleagues
Tweet Comments or Questions:
@L_Vowell
@LynnJD
#GL13ScienceForums
#GL13conf
Lance Vowell
Program Manager
Contractor to DOE/OSTI
Information International Associates (IIa)
Lynn Davis
Program Liaison, MLS
DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI)
Motivation/Justification
Hypothesis that Web 2.0 technologies can promote:
• Collaboration
• Information exchange
• Global networking among scientists (peer-to-peer)
• Scientific discovery and innovation
BACKGROUND
Motivation/Justification (cont'd)
We believed that scientific researchers would want to collaborate in a different manner than that provided by the typical social network such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Second Life or Twitter
We also wanted the system to support a broad range of both published and grey information types such as technical reports, theses, research notes, research papers in progress
BACKGROUND
Primary Goal
Speed the diffusion of scientific knowledge by enabling improved web 2.0 communications among scientific and research communities.
• Ease implementation of peer-to-peer communications
• Enable informal content creation of both comments and discussion
• Create formal published and grey literature
• Provide mechanisms to access, import, share, view, and cite other published and grey literature
PHASE I
Other Potential Benefits
• Facilitate retrieval of scientific and technical information by librarians and other information professionals
• Apply concept to traditional government research agencies, universities, pharmaceutical companies, and all organizations involved in scientific research
PHASE I
User/Subject Matter Expert Input Sought
• Interviewed hand-selected Focus Group
• Identified larger group to provide periodic feedback
PHASE I
Major Focus Areas
During 3 years of research:
• Determined high-level requirements for system
• Simplicity and ease of use
• Information security
• Conducted survey of commercial off-the-shelf/open source systems
• Produced prototype for evaluation
PHASE I
Prototype Development
• Noted considerable change in landscape of peer-to-peer collaboration between Phase I and Phase II surveys
• Determined significant number of shareware or open source products were highly customizable and would meet many of the project requirements out-of-the-box
PHASE II
Technology
• Platform: Considered Ning, Drupal, Mambo, Joomla!, Taverna and SupportMaster; Drupal was chosen
PHASE II
Technology (cont'd.)
• Web-based content management system: Research and development led to building a system to enable self-forming groups, where researchers can create useful web-based communities around scientific topics of interest to those groups
PHASE II
Technology (cont'd.)
• Open Access Standards: Chosen to import documents to the Library since a primary function of the system is a repository (library) for scientific research information
PHASE II
Beta
•"Science-Forums.net": The name given the website and system by the Project Team
PHASE II
Be sure to Tweet Comments or Questions:
@L_Vowell
@LynnJD
#GL13ScienceForums
#GL13conf
Science-Forums.net (beta) website
Science-Forums.net (beta) website
Science-Forums.net (beta) website
Science-Forums.net (beta) website
Science-Forums.net (beta) website
Science-Forums.net (beta) website
Science-Forums.net
Communities for Science Colleagues
Tweet Comments or Questions:
@L_Vowell
@LynnJD
#GL13ScienceForums
#GL13conf
Lance Vowell
Program Manager
Contractor to DOE/OSTI
Information International Associates (IIa)
(865) 576-2087
VowellL@osti.gov
Lynn Davis
Program Liaison, MLS
DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI)
(865) 241-6435
DavisL@osti.gov
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