Survey says! 250+ research tools and counting, welcome to a world of data intensive research tools.
Written by David F. Flanders during #MozSprint.
As Research Community Manager for the University of Melbourne, the most frequent conversation I have with researchers goes something like this:
Researcher: “Hey Flanders, thanks for the training your team did on <ResearcherToolXYZ> the other day; but have you heard of this new tool called <ZYX>?
Flanders: [Loading the tool on my tablet ad hoc] “Oh wow, this new researcher tool looks brilliant, how are you using it for your research?!”
Researcher: “I’d love to use the tool but I need help to get it working so my research team can collaborate in using it together.”
Flanders: “You’ve come to the right place, let’s figure out a way to bring like-minded researchers like yourself together to start using this tool collaboratively; and I’ll talk to our dev team to get it up on our Research Cloud!”
I’ve had the above conversation over and over again, and it is only increasing in frequency. Though don’t take my word for it! - Check out this growing list of Research tools on Wikipedia (via our DVCR, thanks Liz!)!
In addition, we ran a survey at the beginning of the year (as part of our “Research Bazaar” conference) where we surveyed over 400 researchers througout Australia (early carreer, average age 33) asking them “what next generation digital research skills (aka tools, apps, datasets) are you working with right now?”
Below, over 200+ posters by researchers (ECRs) listing the current tools they are using for their research:
The most popular “next gen digi res skills” training at ResBaz:
Having worked in the sector for over 15 years (accross three contients and dozens of instituions) I was blown away by this researcher response, where we not only saw well over 250+ tools mentioned but also saw a massive crying out for more opportunites to work in cross disciplinary environments.
[Go on, step out of your castle/cathedral on campus and visit us in a common marketplace of next gen digi res skills - welcome to the bazaar!]
Stay tuned to the ResBaz News Channel (aka Twitter hashtag) for more tactical thinking on how we can support researchers as they use more and more data intensive research tools in the cloud.
Preview of future post: We run an OpenStack Cloud which allows us to do the heaving lifting of new research tools+data via our DevOpps team! With the tools installed on our cloud we then bring researchers together in collaroative team training situations so new skills can be shared and new friends (co-authors) can be made.
