Status: This module is currently in development
Rationale
Virtual Research Environments (VRE) are the way of the future in collaboration across continents, time zones and disciplines. While the definition of a VRE may be up for grabs, they provide powerful examples of high-performing modern research tools. In this module you will develop an understanding of collaborative platforms that work today, and how they can greatly enhance your research workflows.
Learning outcomes
- The researcher will become familiar with the range of options available to you to aid greater collaborative research.
- After deciding what works optimally for their workflow, the researcher will be able to use collaborative tools such as GitHub and the Open Science Framework for increased collaboration for the research process, writing/authoring, and sharing your research outputs.
- The researcher will be able to collaborate with colleagues to annotate preprints or other published articles, and share this discussion with the original authors and wider research community.
Resources
Tools
- Mozilla Science study group lessons
- Working Open Workshop, Mozilla Science Lab
- Overleaf, for collaborative writing in LaTeX
- HackMD, can be used to clean up other collaboratively written documents before conversion to markdown files and archived in GitHub
- Authorea, for collaborative writing
- PaperHive, for collaborative annotation
- Figshare, for sharing all sorts of research outputs
- ScienceOpen, a discovery and open science platform
- Hypothes.is, for Web annotation
- Protocols.io, for sharing research protocols
- Open Science Framework (OSF), Center for Open Science (COS)
- ScholarlyHub
- Google docs
- Quartzy, a lab management platform
- Discipline-specific platform examples:
- NMR Lipids Project, Collaboration platform to find a lipid force field that matches NMR order parameters
- Synapse, open source, free to use, goals of enabling open science and collaborative research in real-time, integrates with R/Python via analytic clients, and has advanced data access controls for sharing human subjects data
- Humanities Commons
- Leishmaniasis Virtual Laboratory
- The Open Source Malaria project
- [Benchling](https://benchling.com/
- Tools for open geospatial science course, NCSU
- CRediT, defining contributor roles in research outputs (CASRAI)
Research Articles and Reports
- Virtual research environment collaborative landscape study, Carusi and Reimer, 2010; JISC
- Virtual research environments: An overview and research agenda, Candela et al., 2013
- Creating and maintaining high-performance collaborative research teams: the importance of diversity and interpersonal skills, Cheruvelil et al., 2014
- Collaborative research and development (R&D) for climate technology transfer and uptake in developing countries: Towards a needs driven approach, Ockwell et al., 2014
- Multinational teams and diseconomies of scale in collaborative research, Hsiehchen et al., 2015
- Ten simple rules for establishing international research collaborations, de Grijs, 2015
- Collaborative research and the co-production of knowledge for practice: an illustrative case study, Heaton et al., 2016
- Current reflections on collaborative and engaged research, Rodrigues et al., 2017
Key Posts
- Six new projects on e-Infrastructure for virtual research,environments, European Commission (2015)
- Baby steps for the open-curious, Christie Bahlai