1. www.scispace.net Scispace.net: Exploring the use of social network tools to support collaborative working Martin Dove University of Cambridge

2. www.scispace.net 2 Do we need a Facebook for scientists?

3. www.scispace.net 3 Technology timeline 19801990200020051995198520102015 www.bbc.co.uk (1996) tcp/ip internet (1983) world wide web (1992) myspace/facebook (2003) flickr (2004) YouTube (2005) iPod (2001) iTunes music store (2003) iPhone (2007) IBM PC (1981) Google dominance (2000) UK broadband (2000) Wireless LAN (1999) Google maps (2005) Wikipedia (2001) 2G mobile phones (1991) Blogging (1998) Podcasts (2004) Dotcom bubble Free dialup internet connection from home Browser war won by Microsoft Instant messaging (1998) From school to graduation

4. www.scispace.net 4 Time constant for adoption 198019902000200519951985 email web powerpoint Social network tools for scientists may have a generation-scale time constant 4

5. www.scispace.net 5 Facebook and its like Proven to be good for: ‣ Friends to keep in touch – comment walls, messages, “what I’m doing” ‣ Friends to share photographs ‣ Broadcasting and stalking ‣ Fun traditional email is almost redundant amongst some young people

6. www.scispace.net 6 Cambridge eLearning tool Proven to be good for: ‣ Document sharing ‣ Information broadcast Doesn’t entirely work: ‣ Colleagues don’t fully understand ‣ Students don’t engage with the cool tools You can lead a horse to water...

7. www.scispace.net 7 Nature network

8. www.scispace.net 8 Tools for collaboration Instantaneous...

9. www.scispace.net 9 Tools for collaboration Documented... email wikis forums

10. www.scispace.net 10 email... Urgghhh!!! ‣ No structure ‣ Not inclusive ‣ Too much noise ‣ No long-term control ‣ No shared history email is designed for communication, not collaboration http://scispace.net/martin/weblog/120.html

11. www.scispace.net 11 The SciSpace experiment Can we use social network tools to support collaborative research? ‣ Who would benefit (use cases)? ‣ What tools are needed? ‣ What special features are needed? You can lead a horse to water...

12. www.scispace.net 12 Scispace.net ‣ Built on the elgg white-label, open-source software package (http://elgg.org/) ‣ Provides many standard tools: blogs, comments, wikis, messages, profiles, comment walls, friends, tags, search, bookmarks, messages, RSS feeds and aggregation, personal pages, file upload + other tools ‣ Ability to form communities and groups ‣ Fine-grained access controls

13. www.scispace.net 13 Scispace.net

14. www.scispace.net 14 Access controls On-line collaborative research needs fine- grained access control ‣ SciSpace lets you form communities that have the same functions as individuals ‣ Communities can be open or closed ‣ You can also form your own groups of ‘friends’ ‣ Access to any content can be private to communities or groups, or more open

15. www.scispace.net 15 Use example 1 Geobrowsers open community ‣ Open community for users of web-based geographic tools ‣ Used for discussion and publicity

16. www.scispace.net 16 Use example 2 Scientific research ‣ Scispace used to document results as they are obtained ‣ Discussions on the interpretation was documented and open to all team members ‣ Result was a paper in the journal Science

17. www.scispace.net 17 Use example 3 Research documentation ‣ Scispace used to document progress ‣ Better than email for keeping collaborators in touch with progress ‣ Very helpful for research team leaders ‣ Access control important

18. www.scispace.net 18 Use example 4 Writing proposals and papers ‣ Community tools such as wiki and blog (with discussion) are good for pulling ideas together ‣ Wiki and upload tools good for pulling content together ‣ Access control is critical ‣ Gives good management as deadlines approach

19. www.scispace.net 19 What have we learned? ‣ Lots about usability issues! ‣ Close link between development work and users is important ‣ It may not make sense to everyone ‣ Users have no time for things that take effort – scispace has to make few demands ‣ email remains a magnet, but is a very poor alternative You can lead a horse to water...

20. www.scispace.net 20 Going forward ‣ SciSpace is growing steadily and appears to be useful ‣ So far we have had no explicit funding, but are committed to maintaining Scispace into the long-term future ‣ Elgg is being redesigned from scratch, which may require a big effort ‣ We haven’t yet had a major publicity effort

21. www.scispace.net 21 Joining SciSpace.net ‣ Anyone can join, either by being invited or by requesting membership ‣ Membership reaps benefits when you join with your collaborators: it is not a social network like Facebook ‣ When you join alone, a lot of the content will be invisible... ‣... but there is enough open content to get a flavour

22. www.scispace.net 22 Summary ‣ Social networking tools play a unique role in supporting scientific research ‣ The impact may be as revolutionary as the introduction of email ‣ So far scispace.net has been an experiment, but we are committed to maintaining and developing it as a service ‣ The role of user guidance is critical for such tools to become useful

23. www.scispace.net 23 Follow-on discussion ‣ Please email me at mtd10@cam.ac.uk for more information ‣ You can see Scispace for yourself at http://scispace.net (from the home page you can get more information) ‣ Get this information from the on-line archive of this talk

24. www.scispace.net 24 The SciSpace team Toby White Ian Frame Dan Wilson Kat Austen Mark Calleja NIEeS

25. www.scispace.net 25 Acknowledgements ‣ Colleagues who have provided feedback and advice on usability ‣ Other colleagues who were happy to act as guinea pigs ‣ Jennifer-Anne Dove for insights and discussions