June 16, 2008

PubMed Faceoff

Back in the 1970s Herman Chernoff experimented with combining facial features to represent multivariate data; more data, bigger nose, for example.

Now fast-forward to 2008 and meet Euan Adie, web-developer with Nature Publishing Group. He has taken Chernoff's ideas, applied them to PubMed search results and created a mock-up called "PubMed Faceoff."

The age of the face represents the age of the article. The height of the eyebrows is the journal impact factor. A frown means the article wasn't cited as much as expected, while a smile means it was cited more than expected. The results are crude but you get the idea. If you could come up with an advanced search with more variables and could sort your results by facial features this could actually work. It really simplifies your search results based on those criteria. If you see a happy face with high eyebrows grinning at you that would tell you the article was highly cited and published in a high impact journal. If the face was young it would be a recent article. Simple and to the point. I like it but put some hair on the heads of those faces!

Posted by swortman at 04:47 PM | Comments (0)

June 10, 2008

Twitter, anyone?

Found a link from the Chronicle Daily Report to an interesting post called Twitter for Librarians: The Ultimate Guide. I confess, Twittering is something I cannot get into. I'm sure it's like Facebook, you need an active community to make it worthwhile. At any rate this guide put together by Christina Laun at College@Home lists some interesting ideas that may get me to give Twitter another try.

Her suggestions include using Twitter to:

* Keep in touch with librarian friends and colleagues
* Keep up with the latest news by getting Twitter feeds from BBC or CNN
* Get conference information
* Share resources
* Use it for a notepad
* Post library announcements

If Christina doesn't motivate you enough to try Twitter, check out this older post from Des Walsh on Twittering where he talks about guides to Twitter. The concept of Twittering is simple but sometimes it takes reading a guide for people become aware of the whole concept of microblogging.

Want to learn more about Twitter? Come to the ML2SIG brownbag panel discussion on Twittering at Hatcher, room 100, from 12-1. Who knows, it might even be held in Twitter...

[forgot to mention the DATE of the panel discussion - Monday, June 16.]

Posted by swortman at 08:02 AM | Comments (0)

June 07, 2008

Great New Wiki of Digital Research Tools

Here's another one of those, "Why didn't I think of that?" ideas that may be helpful to people. DIRT, Digital Research Tool is a wiki created by a group of librarians from Rice and Sam Houston Universities. Their goal is to organize short reviews of software to "help researchers--professors, students, think-tankers, corporate intelligence gatherers, and other inquisitive folks--do their work better."

The wiki is well organized from the start. The front page lists the types of tools they reviewed based on what you want to do. Want to edit images? There's a link to a page listing seven different titles for helping you do this, with direct links to each title. Want to network with other researchers? There's a link for that, too with a list of suggestions like Ning, Academici and Pronetos Professor's Network.

These librarians have obviously put a lot of work into this wiki and best of all - it IS a wiki so it can be updated and you can add content yourself. They are using PBwiki which is very simple to use. If you do want to contribute you will have to contact Lisa Spiro at lspiro@rice.edu to get editing access to the wiki but she says they welcome contributors.

Posted by swortman at 10:29 AM | Comments (2)

June 06, 2008

Peer-Reviewed Web Sites?

Certifying Online Research by Gary A. Olson in today's Chronicle of Higher Education, Chronicle Careers
Olson discusses the dilemmas of some disciplines and scholars being more accepting of what he calls "e-scholarship" while others insist on the traditional interpretation of getting published for decisions involving promotion and tenure.

The author recommends a process for reviewing online content, by which I assume he means non-commercial content which would include the following process or steps:

* The major professional and scholarly organizations in each discipline should devise a certification process in which a site owner can apply to have a site reviewed and recognized, perhaps for a nominal processing fee. The site would be subjected to a formal and rigorous review by peers in the disciplinary area covered by the site.

* Only those sites meeting the highest standards should be awarded certification.

* Once a site wins certification from the national scholarly society, it should be permitted to display that stamp of approval prominently.

* The certification should remain in effect for a specific and limited amount of time (since a site can change rapidly and without notice). The site should regularly seek renewal of its certification.

* Each disciplinary organization should issue a resolution recommending that departments construe certification of a site as indicating that it has met the highest standards of scholarship.

* Each organization should maintain an online registry of certified sites.

This is a noble idea but what's in it for the organizations? Right now they're making money, theoretically, on scholarly, peer-reviewed journals and have a vested interest in keeping the status quote. Is the author expecting these professional organizations to review this content out of the goodness of their hearts? Internet content springs up like mushrooms daily. This would be an impossible task.

I agree, self-regulation is not the answer but scholarly communication is changing but evaluation of this communication doesn't have to change that much just because the media changes. There will always be tiers of scholarship, including the highest tier of reputable works of rigorous scholarship. What form the media takes will not change the most reputable publications but other levels have already changed. Look at how Wikipedia is changing scholarship. It is not considered the highest level of research but as long as people are willing to invest the time writing articles which include citations to scholarly materials and as long as these materials have been vetted or can be traced what's the harm in using it as a starting point?

Collaborating scholars should be able to make much more progress on their research than in the past, with the ease of international communication and instant re-visioning of wikis and other online tools but as long as publishers can make money from research and as long as tenure and promotion decisions have to be made the peer-reviewed process will remain.

Posted by swortman at 02:25 PM | Comments (0)