Plone has growing reputation within research for working as an important component in international scientific collaboration infrastructures. In this panel session researchers shall present and answer questions on both their experiences in using Plone in a scientific context and on their research of studying Plone in use by scientists. Attendees will leave with a better conception of what is needed for international scientific collaboration and what Plone can offer as an e-collaboration tool to support research infrastructures. The panel participants will bring in expertise on computer supported collaborative work (CSCW) to stimulate use and development of Plone applications for such use cases. Panel headlines: - Exchange experiences with Plone in research environments (use cases) - Requirements for Plone in research environments: what's available, which extensions or modifications do we need? - Coordinate actions around Plone products for scientific use - Promote the use of Plone in scientific environments - Confront conceptions of collaborative research processes with Plone implementations of such models
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Paul Henning Krogh A New Dawn For E Collaboration In Science
1. Plone panel, Naples 2007
A new dawn for
e-collaboration in science
Panelists
Marcin Davies Telecommunications Research
Center, Vienna, Austria
Niels Steen Krogh Zitelab, Denmark
Jonathan Callahan Mazama Science, Washington
Paul Henning Krogh University of Aarhus, Denmark
2. Presentations
11:05 P. H. Krogh Conceptions of collaborative
research processes
11:12 M. Davies Plone for Research:
Requirements Revisited
11:19 J. Callahan Science in the Trenches:
Can Plone Help?
11:26 N. S. Krogh DANBIO
The Danish experience using Plone as the core
tool building af nation-wide research database
in health care (Rheumatology)
11:33 Discussion
3. Panel objectives
• What is needed for international scientific
collaboration?
• What can Plone offer as an e-collaboration
tool to support research infrastructures?
5. Why a special CMS application for
Science?
• Science is forced to be done in geographical
separation by individuals and teams
• Science, too, is under fierce pressure to increase
its capacity to innovate – this calls for
collaboration and efficient knowledge and
document handling
• Science encounters, too, the problem of loosing
the capacity to share tacit knowledge when not
face-to-face
6. The CMS and the research projects
must enter into a dialogue
CMS Research project
7. General aims of a CMS
for research projects
• Increase research performance
• Ensure research objectives are met
• Aid project management
• Stimulate exchange of ideas
• Sharing of knowledge
• Support teams
• Increase visibility for insiders and outsiders
• Bridging different domains: handle cross disciplinarity
• Creating a common social identy – loyality to the project
team and aims
8. The ecology of a research project
S
co cie
rs
m nt
e
ld
m ifi
un c
o
A research project is living
eh
ity
in an environment where it
ak
communicates by:
St
exchanging information
and knowledge and
receiving feed-back.
The project
The ICT infrastructure
delivers the communication
channels and interfaces
lic
Sp
b
on
pu
s or
e
Th
9. A new dawn for a scientist
• Chat, e-phone and meet on your common project
portal
• Get the data of your colleague now!
• Information and literature searching – watch what
your colleagues have watched
• Paper - and bookreading – keeping in pace with
state of the art of her knowledge domain
• Doing experiments and investigations
• Do your analyses using rpy Plone products
• Paper co-writing on your portal
10. Crucial questions
Ritterskamp & Prilla (2006):
”the question of how ICT design paradigms may affect a
system’s success within an organization usually receives
less attention”
So, what is actually the Plone® design paradigm and is this
particularly supportive for scientific use?
Do we have an adequate conceptual model of the scientific
working processes?
11. Forschungszentrum Telekommunikation Wien
Plone for Research:
Requirements Revisited
Plone Conference 2007, Naples, Italy
Marcin Davies <davies@ftw.at>
Telecommunications Research Center Vienna (ftw.), Austria
12. Introduction and motivation
~ 3 years of planning and development of ICT-
platforms within research projects at the
Telecommunications Research Center Vienna (ftw.)
Motivation for master’s thesis about this topic [1] -
some of the results/concepts are presented here
[1] Davies, M: Towards a Knowledge Portal for European Research Projects,
Vienna University of Technology, 2006 (available from: http://marcin.davies.at).
2
13. Problem domain
European research situation
• Characterized by a strong fragmentation of activities,
which is a major handicap to Europe’s competitiveness
• Framework programmes (FPs) try to address these
weakness by implementing large, international research
projects:
Scientific collaboration in general
• A multitude of complex requirements has to be met to
enable successful scientific knowledge sharing
• Organizational requirements: awareness, funding, etc.
• Technical requirements (too many to mention here...)
• Limiting factors for cooperation:
• Cooperative and structural factors (group diversity/size...)
• Scientific recognition (competition, trust)
• Technology acceptance (design challenges)
• Scientific collaboration is not well-structured...
3
14. Deficits of current approaches
Organizational problems:
• No re-usable framework
• Late start of building ICT-infrastructure
Technical deficits:
• Scattered and isolated system components lead to a lack
of user acceptance and high maintenance efforts
• Functional deficits: missing possibilities for
• personalization: e.g. subscriptions, notifications
• interaction: e.g. contact search, messaging, ratings,
comments, presence awareness, working
environments
4
15. Plone for scientific knowledge
portals
Plone and Zope are fitting nicely:
• Rich set of advanced functions out of the box
(SmartFolders, WebDAV access, LiveSearch, etc.)
• Rich user interface
• Many add-on products available to implement functions of
a scientific knowledge portal
Custom (scientific) content types: Archetypes, ArchGenXML
•
Version Control: CMFEditions
•
Ratings: ATRatings, Subscriptions: PloneSubscription
•
many more...
•
• Highly customizable and extendable - integrates well into
existing installations
• Standards-based, technology-neutral
• With Zope/ZEO: performance, flexibility, and scalability
• Works well with other open-source components to build a
robust infrastructure (Apache, OpenLDAP, etc.) - no
licensing costs
5
16. Nice, but...
From our current experiences, building a scientific
portal based on Plone still needs significant effort
and expertise.
Many components are there, but integration and
coherence are suboptimal
We need a common set of specific products like
done with the Plone4Artists package
(Plone4Scientists?)
But before we need a:
• Wider assessment of currently used applications
• Refinement of requirements based on more extensive end
user participation (and input by site integrators) etc.
6
17. What can you do?
Please subscribe to our dedicated mailing list:
scientific@lists.plone.org
Participate & spread the word!
7
18. Science from the Trenches
(Can Plone Help?)
Jonathan Callahan
Mazama Science
22. What do scientists do all day?
► Design experiments
► Search for existing data
► Collect new data
► Assemble new and existing data
► Analyze data
► Create data visualizations
► Write results
23. Experimental Design
New Style
Old Style
► Individual effort ► Group effort
► Small context ► Big picture
► Goal = ► Goal =
journal article sustained, multi-
decade effort (trends)
► Web based tools
24. Data Discovery
New style
Old style
► Friends ► Friends
► Meetings ► Meetings
► Searchablerepositories
► Web based tools
25. Data Collection
New style
Old style
► Individual ► Group
► Custom instruments ► Shared resources
► Collaboratories
► Web based tools
26. Data Access
New style
Old style
► No versioning ► Data repositories
► FTP from friends ► Internet access
► No standards ► Standard formats
► Web based tools
27. Data Analysis
New style
Old style
► Custom code ► Institutionalsoftware
► Custom algorithms ► Vetted algorithms
► Desktop only ► Web based tools
28. Data Visualization
New style
Old style
► Home grown code ► Institutionalsoftware
► Graphics designers ► Scientist generated
► Desktop only ► Web based tools
29. Writing up Results
Current style
Old style
► Email MSWord docs ► Email MSWord docs
► Versioning? ► Versioning?
31. DANBIO
The Danish experience using Plone as the core
tool building af nation-wide research database in
health care (Rheumatology)
Niels Steen Krogh, ZiteLap ApS
www.zitelab.dk
32. DANBIO: www.danbio-online.dk
• Danish, nationwide registry since 2000
• Covers 92% of all treatments
• All departments of rheumatology in Denmark
are reporting on a regular basis
• Online registration and feedback
• Efficacy (outcome of treatment)
• Safety (drug safety)
33. Cohorts (the patients and the content objects)
• Biologic treatments
– Reumatoid arthritis: 3.900 treatment series
– Ankylosing spondylitis: 700 series
– Psoriatic arthritis: 500 series
– Other diagnoses: 400 series
• Early RA: 1200 pts
• Conventional treatments: 3.000 pts
• 45.000 visits (Content objects)
34. AIM
• To present some of the factors that we
consider important for the success of a clinical
registry
• A central point to remember: The user is at
the same time
– a researcher
– responsible for the treatment of the
patients
– An emploee who must document his
outcome (efficacy).
35. Why open source in life science research?
• Share methods across borders - similar to
international research processes
• Learning processes across different academic
fields – medicine, statistics, IT
• No licensing costs – cheaper, more flexible
• Complex, integrated solutions
• Rapid development circle
• No lock-in
36. DANBIO registry
• Based on Plone (2.1.2 and 3.0.1.) and other open
source IT solutions
• Combine quality development and research in one
registry
– Feed back at the patient level
– Feed back at the department level
– Electronic CRF in clinical trials
– Easy access to additional open source tools
• Statistics (R-project)
• Imaging (CDMedic-PACS X-ray server)
• Kiosk/Touchscreens for the patient (via Firefox)
37. Conclusions
• Plone is usable as the core tool in the treatment of
patients and as a research tool at the same time
• With Plone we can have very successfull
implementations if we can have positive impact on the
core of the academic interests of the researcher
• Plone is international and will be put into production in
Hospitals in Norway, Sweden and Finland during the
coming months.
• Hospitals from all over the world are welcome for
collaboration.
• Time for Screenshots and questions