If you build it, will they come? How researchers perceive and use web 2.0

Over the past 15 years, the web has transformed the way we seek and use information. In the last 5 years in particular a set of innovative techniques – collectively termed ‘web 2.0’ – have enabled people to become producers as well as consumers of information. It has been suggested that these relatively easy-to-use tools, and the behaviours which underpin their use, have enormous potential for scholarly researchers, enabling them to communicate their research and its findings more rapidly, broadly and effectively than ever before. This report is based on a study commissioned by the Research Information Network to investigate whether such aspirations are being realised. It seeks to improve our currently limited understanding of whether, and if so how, researchers are making use of various web 2.0 tools in the course of their work, the factors that encourage or inhibit adoption, and researchers’ attitudes towards web 2.0 and other forms of communication. Context: How researchers communicate their work and their findings varies in different subjects or disciplines, and in different institutional settings. Such differences have a strong influence on how researchers approach the adoption – or not – of new information and communications technologies. It is also important to stress that ‘web 2.0’ encompasses a wide range of interactions between technologies and social practices which allow web users to generate, repurpose and share content with each other. We focus in this study on a range of generic tools – wikis, blogs and some social networking systems – as well as those designed specifically by and for people within the scholarly community. Method: Our study was designed not only to capture current attitudes and patterns of adoption but also to identify researchers’ needs and aspirations, and problems that they encounter. We began with an online survey, which collected information about researchers’ information gathering and dissemination habits and their attitudes towards web 2.0. This was followed by in-depth, semi-structured interviews with a stratified sample of survey respondents to explore in more depth their experience of web 2.0, including perceived barriers as well as drivers to adoption. Finally, we undertook five case studies of web 2.0 services to investigate their development and adoption across different communities and business models. Key findings: Our study indicates that a majority of researchers are making at least occasional use of one or more web 2.0 tools or services for purposes related to their research: for communicating their work; for developing and sustaining networks and collaborations; or for finding out about what others are doing. But frequent or intensive use is rare, and some researchers regard blogs, wikis and other novel forms of communication as a waste of time or even dangerous. In deciding if they will make web 2.0 tools and services part of their everyday practice, the key questions for researchers are the benefits they may secure from doing so, and how it fits with their use of established services. Researchers who use web 2.0 tools and services do not see them as comparable to or substitutes for other channels and means of communication, but as having their own distinctive role for specific purposes and at particular stages of research. And frequent use of one kind of tool does not imply frequent use of others as well

How are topics born? Understanding the research dynamics preceding the emergence of new areas

The ability to promptly recognise new research trends is strategic for many stake- holders, including universities, institutional funding bodies, academic publishers and companies. While the literature describes several approaches which aim to identify the emergence of new research topics early in their lifecycle, these rely on the assumption that the topic in question is already associated with a number of publications and consistently referred to by a community of researchers. Hence, detecting the emergence of a new research area at an embryonic stage, i.e., before the topic has been consistently labelled by a community of researchers and associated with a number of publications, is still an open challenge. In this paper, we begin to address this challenge by performing a study of the dynamics preceding the creation of new topics. This study indicates that the emergence of a new topic is anticipated by a significant increase in the pace of collaboration between relevant research areas, which can be seen as the ‘parents’ of the new topic. These initial findings (i) confirm our hypothesis that it is possible in principle to detect the emergence of a new topic at the embryonic stage, (ii) provide new empirical evidence supporting relevant theories in Philosophy of Science, and also (iii) suggest that new topics tend to emerge in an environment in which weakly interconnected research areas begin to cross-fertilise

MORMED: towards a multilingual social networking platform facilitating medicine 2.0

The broad adoption of Web 2.0 tools has signalled a new era of "Medicine 2.0" in the field of medical informatics. The support for collaboration within online communities and the sharing of information in social networks offers the opportunity for new communication channels among patients, medical experts, and researchers. This paper introduces MORMED, a novel multilingual social networking and content management platform that exemplifies the Medicine 2.0 paradigm, and aims to achieve knowledge commonality by promoting sociality, while also transcending language barriers through automated translation. The MORMED platform will be piloted in a community interested in the treatment of rare diseases (Lupus or Antiphospholipid Syndrome)