Information and Discovery in Neuroscience IDN

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Information and Discovery in Neuroscience(IDN)

• Carole Palmer
• and
• Melissa Cragin
• Graduate School of Library and Information
  ScienceUniversity of Illinois at
  Urbana-Champaign
• 29 April 2003

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Project logistics

• Personnel
• Carole Palmer, Associate Professor
• Melissa Cragin and Tim Hogan, Doctoral research
  assistants
• Location
• Information Systems Research Lab, GSLIS,
  UIUChttp//www.isrl.uiuc.edu/neuro/
• Funding agency
• NSF, Computer and Information Science and
  Engineering / Digital Technologies and Society
  - Grant No. 0222848

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Research Questions

• What information conditions are associated with
  significant progress and problems during the
  course of research?
• How does information contribute to
• discoveries, breakthroughs, intellectual
  advancements
• What elements help / hinder the research process?
• newness, mobility, scatter, boundaries . . .

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Concerns for Information Science

• Mix of information and activities supported has
  important influence on what new knowledge canbe
  generated.
• Research communities value and apply information
  in different ways.
• Interests of researchers need to be represented
  to larger community of information system
  developers.

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Focus of research program

• Domain analysis
• Fields that serve as models of information
  dynamics
• distribution, integration, exchange,
  heterogeneity
• Interdisciplinarity
• Structures and strategies of information work,
  barriers
• Digital library development
• Customization and cross-domain inquiry and
  collaboration, knowledge integration

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Pre-Arrowsmith associations

• Computational project that builds on Don
  Swansons theoretical work on disconnected
  literatures
• Papers that discuss potential applications of
  Swanson and Smalheisers tool
• identifying new information
• mobilizing scattered information
• easing information work across boundaries

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The Logic of Arrowsmith

• Arrowsmith is built on the premise that
  discoveries might be made by linking findings
  from disconnected literatures.

Intermediate Literatures B
AB
BC
B 1
Source Literature C
Target Literature A
B 2
B 3
A
?
C
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Links to Arrowsmith project
Invited by Neil Smalheiser to consider using
field testing efforts to continue my studies of
the role of information in advancing research and
collaboration. Arrowsmith proposal Aim
1 test whether Arrowsmith analyses are
feasible and useful for assessing research
issues in field tests of neuroscientists working
as part of large multi-disciplinary groups
have investigators from large multidisciplinary
groups look actively for opportunities to
conduct Arrowsmith analyses that arise naturally
from research carried out by their
group... http//arrowsmith.psych.uic.edu/arrowsm
ith_uic/
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Key factors for IDN project
Naturalistic test sites in compelling
field extensive and complex knowledge base high
level of informatics activity Monitoring of
information searches represent ongoing
research projects already established,
therefore more awareness and less intrusive
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Proposed Arrowsmith scenarios

• 1. Finding pieces of the puzzle in different
  disciplines
• (i.e. nutrition and psychiatry)
• 2. Assessing significance of finding relative to
  literature
• 3. Non-expert searching
• Do these fit with your labs work?
• Other scenarios?
• Non-Arrowsmith tasks?

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Arrowsmith and scope of IDN project

• Range of information activities, tools and
  resources
• literature and data - gathering, using, sharing
• High-impact information
• points of progress and problemsimportant
  contingencies, combinations, functionalities
• Boundary work
• information from outside core specialization or
  expertise
• modes of collaboration and information sharing

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Testing previous results

• Modes of research
• relationships between information practices and
  strategies for building research base
• Major boundary work difficulties
• searching far afield vocabulary
• learning anew core maintenance
• export
• - Palmer, Carole L. (2001). Work at the
  Boundaries of Science Information and the
  Interdisciplinary Research Process. Dordrecht
  Kluwer.
• - Palmer, Carole L. (1999). "Structures and
  Strategies of Interdisciplinary Science." Journal
  of the American Society for Information Science
  50, no. 3 242-253.

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Objectives

• 1) Document when information is needed and used
  in daily research activities.
• 2) Develop profiles or scenarios of
  information-based advances and problems.
• 3) Identify effective combinations of
  information activities and resources.
• 4) Analyze boundary-crossing information work.

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Methods
Arrowsmith Diary information logs search logs
Field Observation information work workspace
Qualitative Interviewing project-based critical
incidents
Document Analysis citations content
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Human subjects protocols
Informed consent Confidentiality Data
aggregation for reporting Limited use of
verbatim text
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Cross-case analysis

• We look for conditions that promote progress.
• Identify stages / modes of research and
• Assess related information sources, channels,
  activities
• - high-impact information
• - significant information problems
• - effective information combinations
• - levels of scatter
• - influence of information from subdisciplines
• - searching and management techniques, needs

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Additional analysis

• Typology of information activities and key
  resources
• Articulation of information problems unique to
  neuroscience
• Profiling of requirements for transfer and
  exchange of information between specializations

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Applications

• Refinements and functionalities for Arrowsmith
• Recommendations and requirements for new tools
  and resources, upgrades for existing
• Prioritization for digital library development
• federation, meta-data, and interoperability
• Mapping and supporting the fault lines of
  discovery
• New directions for national libraries and
  information specialists

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QUESTIONS? COMMENTS? RECOMMENDATIONS? (always
welcome)