Scientists love and hate academic web tools

March 16, 2014 Leave a comment

The survey on which web tools scientists use for their research activity and its dissemination shows a very clear results: professors and researchers use web mainly tools for the analysis process (48%), and it couldn’t be otherwise. And then use dissemination tools (27%) such as social media platforms and repositories because of the increasing pressure of getting citations for their publications.

Scientists love and hate academic web tools

Which web tools do you use (or are necessary) for your research activity and its dissemination?

It’s striking that individually the type of web tools most used are directories of journals (take that!), which is a pretty clear indication of the concern of scientists for publishing in well indexed or listed journals. The problem is that there are hundreds of directories and databases, almost one for each country and area of ​​knowledge.

  • Good news, because sometimes I wonder if it makes sense a social network such us Gaudeamus, complementary to journal directories, which helps academics to network with journal editors and to share information and problems with other scientists when publishing their research …

But back to the poll, sometimes it’s not clear which specific use make researchers of some of the web tools and to what stage of the research process correspond:

  1. For example, the academic social websites, such as Researchgate or MyScienceWork, though are primarily used to share publications, they are also helpful in part to find collaborators and peers, at least in theory.
  2. Or citations and metrics and tools, because I use them just to see how my publications go shared, but they also serve to find references, specifically Google Scholar, usefull at different stages of the research process.

On the other hand, it is also worth noting that there are many tools for the research activity, we could see in the Graph that they are widely dispersed, and that it’s required a particular tool for each specific activity: to search information, share and organize documents, analyze data or then present the results.

In short, though scientists love academic web tools, it seems to me that they also represent the new slavery for scientific research, the typical love-hate relationship, don’t you think?

* The poll was posted in February 2014 in many academic discussion groups. Around 900 answers were collected.

Filed under Polls, Publishing in general Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

POLL: Scientists, web tools and social networks

February 9, 2014 1 Comment

Scientists, web tools and social networksInternet is assumed to help university professors and scientists, but there are so many web tools and social networks that often turn against researchers and academics, overwhelming them and eventually making them to use partially only a couple of them.

If we dig a little deeper, we see that for each stage of the research process there are specific tools. It is true that many of them try to cover all the processes, but in the end have only an advantage in just one activity in particular, which makes us perceive that these tools are duplicated for the same functions, or solve the same problem for scientists; and because the research process is complex and varied in itself, as you can see in the high-level scheme that I usually use:

  1. Research project definition, funding and collaboration
  2. Research activity
  3. Write the paper and publish in journals
  4. Share your publications

So I’m interested in what Internet academic tools and social networks you are using in the production process of your research and when publishing them in academic journals; it’ll be worth to learn and continue update our management and organizational research skills.

And get ready because they are quite a few, and I’ve only listed the most important ones…

* It can be chosen several answers

**Comments are highly encouraged

Filed under Polls, Publishing in general Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

%d bloggers like this: