Web 2.0 Meets the World of Academic Research
Regular as clockwork, every year brings about a ritual in Research Universities that is dreaded by certain Assistant Professors on the Tenure Track. Welcome to the Tenure Review process, a rite of passage for university professors seeking to attain the ‘Holy Grail’ of tenure and the accompanying permanence of their employment contract at their universities. Originally conceived as a means of guaranteeing academic freedom, the pros and cons of the tenure system are endlessly debated by both academics and non-academics alike.
Regardless of one’s view of tenure, the critical success factor for the tenure process in the majority of schools is research. In Life-Sciences and Engineering, funded research plays a crucial part in the tenure decision, while in the Liberal Arts, Business, and Law, there is a stronger emphasis on published research in refereed journals. Most universities aspiring to the loftier strata of the rankings system place a huge emphasis on research-all kinds of research, whether funded or published.
A recent BusinessWeek interview with Drew Faust, President of Harvard University (Businessweek, 12/10/07) and a follow-up public letter by a group of eleven public university provosts testify to the strength of emotions that research evokes in academia and the competition that exists between universities. The research mission and competition for research funding and accolades are imprinted into the DNA of top-tier and aspiring public and private research universities, as expressed by their university administrators. In 2006, over $47 billion was spent by universities on research and development (NSF, 2007), while competition for top journals was more intense than ever before.
Yet, in this increasingly competitive research climate and culture, there is a marked contrast between lofty research ideals and the conduct of research itself. In this era of the Internet, Web 2.0, social networking, blogging, and instant messaging, the conduct of research in universities has remained essentially the same over the past century. Despite advancements and computerization of the tools used and increasingly sophisticated methodologies, there have not been comparable advances in the organization, reach, and range of research collaborations.
Upon scanning the resume of a typical professor, one would find his/her collaborations to be largely local. In other words, most research professors write articles and grant proposals with other professors who they already know. These include their colleagues and graduate students down the hall, and past colleagues or professors from their own doctoral program. Only in rare cases does the list of collaborators expand to include other researchers they may have encountered at conferences.
Thus, if there is a researcher halfway across the world with strikingly similar research interests, sadly, there is scant hope of the research professor ever actually working with him or her. Even if the first researcher is aware of the other researcher through bibliographies, there is no easy ’social’ means of connecting, short of directly emailing or calling. Of course, few professors initiate contact in this way. Perhaps they think the other researcher may be unwilling to work with them, or perhaps they need more information about the researcher and obtaining this would be too tedious. Most often therefore, it is just easier to go with the ‘known’ quantities of accessible colleagues in what could be called “collaborations of convenience”.
So the obvious questions to ask are: can the Web 2.0 toolset accomplish for academic research what it has done for social and business networking, and what are the tools that might facilitate this transformation? Millions of previously improbable business and social relationships and opportunities have been created through such tools as Facebook and MySpace (social relationships), and LinkedIn and Ryze (business networking). Therefore the question of the potential of Web 2.0 technologies is a relevant one not only for universities looking to add to their arsenals in the research “arms race”.
What would a Web 2.0 portal look like? What tools might be on offer? What changes would be required in the mindset and practices of today’s academic researchers? Are there emerging tools in this category that may foretell the future for the conduct of university research in the near future?
Web 2.0 portals for academic researchers must include elements from the realm of social networking. These would include forums, searchable professional profiles, and various means of communication, such as instant messaging. Blogging would also make a natural addition to the research environment, where researchers could share their professional experiences and ideas. Business networking tools might also contribute meaningfully to portals for research collaboration, through their approaches to contact management, referrals, and communication. In addition, while their knowledge taxonomies for classification of businesses and are somewhat rudimentary, these concepts may be useful in organizing the much deeper knowledge taxonomies essential for the research communities. Perhaps then, instead of collaborations of convenience, researchers might transition to global “collaborations of opportunity”.
While still in their infancy, Web 2.0 research portals are sure to become major tools in the never-ending research “arms race” that characterizes research universities. They offer the benefits of collaborative global research – more extensive and better-fitting global collaborations, better-quality information for researchers, improved content for research papers and grants, and increased volume of publications and grant proposals. In other words, Web 2.0 tools could bring about a complete transformation of the practice of research and with it, major productivity gains.
Modern Web 2.0 research portals such as this allow researchers to collaborate on the site itself, manage actual documents and also network with colleagues and other potential researchers. It enables powerful web-based searches and the classification of results into personal taxonomies.
The portal uses comprehensive knowledge classifications for categorizing users and their research interests and abilities, which translates into being able to find ideal research collaborators with accuracy. It employs forums, blogs, expert article postings, sophisticated project management and news feeds of the latest research news. In addition, it incorporates specialized research tools that academics use most often, such as survey creation/deployment tools, citation tools, bibliography management and many others.
These new web portals seem to point to the way ahead for academic research. As traditional as the academic research culture can be, it seems inevitable that universities will ultimately embrace the sea change brought about by the Web 2.0 paradigm. The challenge for Deans, Provosts, and Vice Presidents of Research is how to change the existing research culture and rapidly adopt these tools for the significant gains they can bring to university research output. The world is flat and new synergies from global collaborations cannot be ignored. Certainly the early adopters will have the potential to advance their research rankings by investing in Web 2.0 toolsets for their researchers. In any event, the influence of Web 2.0 on academic research will be exciting to watch over the next several years.
Bay Arinze, PhD
Founder and Senior Editor
MyNetResearch
Empowering Collaboration™
http://www.MyNetResearch.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bay_Arinze
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