Research at the University of MinnesotaAHC, IT, CBS, & CFANS

May 2007

Understanding Scientists

Total Participants: 52 Faculty; 18 Graduate Students

AHC:

Department FacultyGrad Students

Biochem, Molecular Biology, Biophysics 2Genetics, Cell Biology, and Development 1Physiology 1Pharmacology 1Neuroscience 1

International Medical Education 1Bioinformatics 1Veterinary Medicine Grad Program 2

Veterinary Population Medicine 1School of Nursing 4Environmental Health 1 5Epidemiology 2 2Public Health Adminstration 1 2Total 17 11

Represented Departments

Institute of Technology

Department FacultyGrad Students

Astronomy 1Chemistry 3 1Civil Engineering 2Computer Science 3Digital Technology Center 1Aerospace Engineering 1Earth Sciences/Geology 9 4Physics 2History of Science 2Total 24 5

Represented Departments

CBS, CFANS

Department FacultyGrad Students

College of Biological Sciences 1Ecology Evolution and Behavior 1CFANS 1

Agronomy and Plant Genetics 1Applied Economics 1Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Biology 2Forest Resources 1Horticultural Science 2Soil, Water, and Climate 2 1Total 11 2

Represented Departments

Library Participants• Linda Watson, PI • Karen Williams, PI• Kevin Messner, Advisory• Jim Beattie, Moderator• Chad Fennell, Moderator• Elaine Challacombe, Moderator• Cindy Gruwell, Moderator• Wayne Loftus, Moderator (2), Data Analysis• Kathy Allen, Advisory• Philip Herold, Moderator• Julie Kelly, Moderator• Amy Hribar, Advisory, Data Analysis• Leslie Delserone, Moderator, Data Analysis• Janice Jaguszewski, Advisory, Moderator• Gary Fouty, Moderator• Kristi Jensen, Moderator (2)• Meghan Lafferty, Moderator (2)• Julie Mitchell, Moderator• Stephanie Ball, Research Assistant, Data Analysis

Major Themes• Discovery and Access:

– Keeping Current– Online Resources

• Interdisciplinary and Collaborative Research– Challenges– Implications for Libraries– Communication and Virtual Space

• Gathering, Organizing, and Sharing– Data Curation

• Role of Library in Research• Preliminary Conclusions

On Keeping Current

• Common methods include daily keyword searches; word of mouth; tips from colleagues and even more so, students; RSS feeds; following chains of references (online). And REPEAT.• Portrait of a Physiology professor:

“I don’t have a lot of opportunities to work in a new field, but there are many chances to learn about related topics.” Varied lit searches: Ovid, PubMed, Google (“surprisingly good, but also lamentably good”) Runs literature searches every few months; receives a few journals and TOCs regularly Does not go to library but uses electronic resources regularly

On Keeping Current

• Portrait of a Computer Science Prof:• “Given the vast area of research, you can’t be a

master in everything”• reads books, talks to colleagues, goes to

conferences• tries to focus on a specific number of areas or

problems• reads papers from most recent top conferences

—”Conference papers and proceedings are good because they are not so polished that there aren’t more things to pursue.”

• conferences present the most cutting edge research

• books and articles are always a few years behind

On Keeping Current

•Pharmacology/Neuroscience: “I look for the most results possible. I would rather be the filter. Funding is so bad right now that I am writing more and more grants. I am more up to date than ever.”

Reads most recent articles in leading journals (intro then follows their bibliographic leads): “It’s kind of like trading in gossip—keeping track of other people’s references.

• Nursing: Staying current is biggest challenge: “There is too much information.”

Keeping Current

• Soil, Water, & Climate: “The hardest thing about my job is keeping up to date. I work in three areas, and there’s not enough time.”

• Agronomy/Plant Genetics: “Keeping current is very hard.”

• Nursing: Uses multiple online strategies: combines databases with Wikipedia; traces references; modifies search terms to get different results; sees Wikipedia as a model that could “revolutionize what researchers are doing” because of potential to add, contribute, comment on information; challenged by amount of key resources not available online

On Online Resources

• 100% dependence on online resources. The greatest common concern among scientists is the online availability of everything they need, whenever they need it. In short, it’s all digital all the time for all participants (however, many still print out what they want to read and store). • Varied use of RefWorks, EndNote, and ProCite• Some use of collaborative writing tools like Google docs (and growing interest)

• Genetics/Cell Biology: “I threw away all my paper journals. They are fancy wallpaper as far as I am concerned. Everything is available online anyway.”

Online Resources

• Some are frustrated by limitations of online holdings:

• Horticultural Science: “It would be great if the Library had ways to put online obscure papers, papers from conferences, or chapters in a book.”

• Soil, Water, & Climate: “I notice from the references in students’ papers that there’s nothing that’s not online, as if nothing happened before 1975.”

Interdisciplinary Research

• Most often based on the backgrounds of individuals working on a common project (formally or informally); often driven by funding imperatives or by problems that need multiple approaches.• Importance of “micro-disciplinary” or “sub-disciplinary” research • Physics: “I am never really starting from scratch”; interdisciplinary research in physics is still physics, broadly, but involves sub-specialties; work isn’t interdisciplinary as far as some are concerned, but it is to those doing it (experimentalists with theorists, etc.).

• Physics: “Interdisciplinary research is working with people who work on different wave lengths.”

Interdisciplinary Research

• Aerospace Eng: “The only thing that makes my research interdisciplinary is that I have to put it in my grant applications to get funding; feedback is used in so may mechanisms: biological, physical, etc.- systems biology mechanics, robots,etc. so it is a naturally interdisciplinary area. It can be hard to find someone that is a “jack of all trades”

• Soil, Water, & Climate: “I work collaboratively so I don’t need to take five years to learn or become an expert in a new area.”

• Horticultural Science: “I work with colleagues who bring to the table what I can’t do or don’t want to do.”

• Forest Resources: “Interdisciplinary research means going and interacting in realms that are outside your area of expertise. It has to be problem-driven—you have a question that demands that you enlist the help of others… a biochemist, a plant geneticist.

Challenges of Interdisciplinary Research

• Common obstacles include: different vocabularies knowing where to find information and publish knowing who to work withmaintaining credibility in core field (especially at the start of a career) knowing enough: “The challenge of interdisciplinary research is “balancing casual versus comprehensive knowledge. As a researcher, you have to demonstrate comprehensive knowledge of your area, but sometimes your casual knowledge is more important—being broad, rather than having depth.” (Bioinformatics, professor)

More Challenges of Interdisciplinary Research

• Vet. Population Medicine: “Picture a diagram with overlapping circles. You have to do research that bridges between 2 and 4 disciplines. And you can’t just contribute in one specific area. You have to take the disciplines and integrate them somehow to create something new. Most of us are trained in a single field, so it’s hard to take what we know and take it to a different level. It’s hard to keep up to date, be fluent in different vocabularies, and to coordinate all the different efforts. There is motivation to do this—from NIH, USDA—not just to be multi-disciplinary but interdisciplinary.”

Virtual Space

• Varied uses of video-conferencing and phone technology (e.g. Skype), and instant messaging, but no centralized source of information or assistance• Little expressed interest in new “social tools” (e.g. Connotea, CiteULike, Faculty of 1000)• Beginning uses of Google docs and other collaborative writing tools

• Bioinformatics: “There is an inherent sex appeal of virtual spaces, but you need human contact. Typing is not quite the same as being in the same room together. You communicate better by talking on the phone or in person. When it’s physically possible, it’s better to meet in person.”

Virtual Space• Interdisciplinary research doesn’t necessarily mean a

physicist working with a biologist. It can be a multi-disciplinary virtual collaboration, a virtual lab in wiki format where people are working on publications together, learning each others’ languages, identifying potential colleagues…” (Public Health)

• Computer Science: “I would like a way to have a portable/semi public memory-stick like service that keeps software information, conference dates, deadlines in a public realm and paper proposals, works in progress, etc… A one-stop shop where I can also find articles.”

Implications for Libraries• “Compartmentalization of knowledge based on discipline can be

problematic in libraries.” (Public Health)• “It’s always so much harder to search outside your discipline, but

no one knows who to ask. The structure for librarians is disciplinary. Collections are disciplinary. It would be great if you could have a collection that was for multiple disciplines, but…” (Computer Science)

• “It’s harder when you are looking at journals outside your own area. You can find them, but you don’t know which ones are the best or what you are missing.” (Soil, Water, & Climate Grad)

• History of Science: “I use the ULibraries subject guides. They are as good a place to start as any other.”

Gathering/Organizing/Sharing• Varied and idiosyncratic data preservation practices: legacy lab notebooks heavily used; data often stored on multiple computers, departmental servers, and flashdrives, general dependence on journals for long-term preservation.•General confusion about data curation and accessibility needs required by grant funders; few standards in place that researchers are aware of or abide by• Some concern about copyright and open-access policies of journals•Lab data organized idiosyncratically and with much duplication; specimen samples often kept until paper is published; little adequate storage space or conditions for long-term preservation

Gathering/Organizing/Sharing•Pharmacology/Neuroscience: “If I died, the data would die with me… I try to teach my students that they have to leave their lab books in such a state that if they were to walk out the door and never come back we would still know what they were working on and how they did it… Sometimes it takes a few years to publish something. Students don’t know why it’s important to keep a lasting record of everything.”•CBS Dean:

keeps files on computer organized by project (saves all PDFs); uses EndNote as archiving too For data: keeps lab books, hard copy of data, and computer files: “There are probably better ways. If there was a workshop on organization and file management, I would go. The Libraries do this so well.”

Gathering, Organizing, Sharing

• Civil Engineering: “I use files and file cabinets.”

• Chemistry Grad: I maintain computer files of articles, email messages, dissertation notes and chapters

• Geology Grad: “I am not very good and staying organized.”

• CFANS Dean: “We are trained in how to collect data, how to write it up, but not how to organize and keep track of everything. Data storage is fundamental to all of us, but it’s not as though there is an IRS rule for keeping it for 7 years.”

Data Curation: A Case

• Genetics/Cell Biology: 90% of data is electronic

legacy data in paper needs to shift to electronic: “What are the standards for making such a shift?”Web-based database for experimental data is available to more than just project/lab membersServes as lab notebook; all participants can contributeWill eventually publish searchable database for open use (based on agreed-upon set of terms of use) Trains students to build database, but “this kind of work is case by case across the university. The Library has a tremendous opportunity to lead this, and to provide ways to interpret, validate, and build on the data produced.”

Role of Library

• Decreased physical use of Libraries• Library buildings as sources of “disclosure” (finding what you already know you are looking for) rather than discovery• Some reliance on Liaison for specific requests instead of general guidance• Residual nostalgia for lost pleasure of stack browsing

• Vet Med Grad Student: “I use the library physically less and less since everything is online. I go to the building when I can’t get something online or when I need a quiet place to work.”

Preliminary Conclusions

• “Primitives” identified in previous assessment of Humanities and Social Sciences (Discover, Gather, Create, Share) are highly applicable to scientific research practices.• Urgent need for online resources, regardless of location of researcher• Scientists have more varied repertoires, especially with regard to types of technology used, but paper is still key, especially when it comes to reading and, to a lesser extent, organizing.• Graduate students enjoy a more structured relationship with advisors than counterparts in CLA--especially in terms of funding, research development, networking, and publishing

For More Information and Project Updates:

www.lib.umn.edu/about/scievalCecily Marcus

marc0082@umn.edu