10 theses on automation of science management
Information and computerization belongs to one of the current trends in the development of modern science over the past decade. Today, an important problem is not only and so much use of a computer as a tool for research work, but also the use of information technology to improve the effectiveness of scientific management. New technologies can be a major help in areas such as planning and analyzing the results of scientific activities, reporting, processing various routine information, etc.
How to make the automation of scientific work was not just a tribute to fashion, but would really contribute to improving the productivity and productivity of scientists? Below in thesis form are presented some thoughts on this issue.
1. Science is a creative activity, which means unpredictable. When starting a study of a new field, a scientist often has no idea about what results he will receive. The goal of science is to get new knowledge. Assessing the significance and practical value of this knowledge is a matter of the future. Sometimes between the discovery and the awareness of the practical importance of this discovery are tens or even hundreds of years. These arguments indicate that the planning and analysis of the results used in business and engineering activities, it is hardly possible to adapt to the specifics of scientists.
2. Getting new knowledge is a process that cannot be crammed into a narrow time frame. An idea can be born at any time, and most often this moment is not planned in advance. Practice shows that a high-quality scientific product is almost impossible to issue in a timely manner. Good, creative dissertations are rarely defended immediately after graduation, and high-quality scientific articles are sometimes written over the years. Nevertheless, in the management of science, there is still a tendency to uncritical borrowing of planning models from business.
3. Modern science is a complex of heterogeneous disciplines, between which it is often impossible to build conceptual and methodological bridges. In its structure and methods used, the activity of a physicist, for example, is fundamentally different from that of a historian. It is hardly possible to develop a universal model of scientific activity. But the reality is that sometimes, within the same university, representatives of completely different disciplines (for example, naturalists and humanities scholars) fill out standard planning forms in which the specificity of a field is completely ignored.
4. The foregoing does not negate the need to develop models of the research process (in some ways similar to business process models). The development of such models is of great interest for the philosophy and methodology of science, pedagogy, psychology, management theory.
5. A routine component is inevitably present in the activities of a modern scientist: drawing up applications for grants, writing various kinds of plans and reports, and tracking current publications on their subject matter. In modern conditions of exponential growth of information, these tasks take more and more time; Often a scientist spends much more time and psychological resources on their solution than the actual production and dissemination of knowledge.
6. Therefore, the main goal of the automation of scientific activity should be to reduce the share of routine in the activities of a scientist.
7. Reducing the proportion of routine can be achieved by automating the process of tracking current publications. No scientist is able to keep track of everything that appears on issues of interest to him in print and online publications. It takes a lot of time to browse publications that do not contain useful and really necessary information in the work. Automated accounting of publications could well contribute to solving this problem.
8. Reading the journals with postgraduate publications, one cannot but pay attention to the following: many articles do not contain new knowledge and are essentially a repetition of what was written before. One of the reasons for this situation is the impossibility of tracking all publications in the conditions of avalanche-like growth of information. As a result, there is an overproduction of texts. And the time to write unnecessary text can be used much more efficiently.
9. The information system for research automation may look as follows. To create it you can use a solution based on cloud computing (close to that used on the popular music resource Last.fm). It is desirable that all universities, as well as other institutions (in particular, research institutes and libraries) are connected to this system. Each participant enters the system data for each of its publications (title, keywords, output, full text or selected text fragments). Publications may be tagged. According to the statistics of publications of each participant, the system selects a list of publications by other authors (in some ways this procedure is similar to the selection of musical recommendations in Last.fm). Thanks to the automated accounting of publications, each participant can see what has already been done and is doing in this particular field of science, and also draw conclusions about what needs to be added, developed, studied.
10. Structured accounting of relevant information allows you to plan research activities: what to read, what to study, what to write about, what to take into account in subsequent publications. The idea expressed above can be developed: for example, in the form of a search system for conferences, seminars, dissertations, etc. Without a management system and the structuring of scientific information, planning and accounting for the results of scientific activity are hardly possible.
How to make the automation of scientific work was not just a tribute to fashion, but would really contribute to improving the productivity and productivity of scientists? Below in thesis form are presented some thoughts on this issue.
1. Science is a creative activity, which means unpredictable. When starting a study of a new field, a scientist often has no idea about what results he will receive. The goal of science is to get new knowledge. Assessing the significance and practical value of this knowledge is a matter of the future. Sometimes between the discovery and the awareness of the practical importance of this discovery are tens or even hundreds of years. These arguments indicate that the planning and analysis of the results used in business and engineering activities, it is hardly possible to adapt to the specifics of scientists.
2. Getting new knowledge is a process that cannot be crammed into a narrow time frame. An idea can be born at any time, and most often this moment is not planned in advance. Practice shows that a high-quality scientific product is almost impossible to issue in a timely manner. Good, creative dissertations are rarely defended immediately after graduation, and high-quality scientific articles are sometimes written over the years. Nevertheless, in the management of science, there is still a tendency to uncritical borrowing of planning models from business.
3. Modern science is a complex of heterogeneous disciplines, between which it is often impossible to build conceptual and methodological bridges. In its structure and methods used, the activity of a physicist, for example, is fundamentally different from that of a historian. It is hardly possible to develop a universal model of scientific activity. But the reality is that sometimes, within the same university, representatives of completely different disciplines (for example, naturalists and humanities scholars) fill out standard planning forms in which the specificity of a field is completely ignored.
4. The foregoing does not negate the need to develop models of the research process (in some ways similar to business process models). The development of such models is of great interest for the philosophy and methodology of science, pedagogy, psychology, management theory.
5. A routine component is inevitably present in the activities of a modern scientist: drawing up applications for grants, writing various kinds of plans and reports, and tracking current publications on their subject matter. In modern conditions of exponential growth of information, these tasks take more and more time; Often a scientist spends much more time and psychological resources on their solution than the actual production and dissemination of knowledge.
6. Therefore, the main goal of the automation of scientific activity should be to reduce the share of routine in the activities of a scientist.
7. Reducing the proportion of routine can be achieved by automating the process of tracking current publications. No scientist is able to keep track of everything that appears on issues of interest to him in print and online publications. It takes a lot of time to browse publications that do not contain useful and really necessary information in the work. Automated accounting of publications could well contribute to solving this problem.
8. Reading the journals with postgraduate publications, one cannot but pay attention to the following: many articles do not contain new knowledge and are essentially a repetition of what was written before. One of the reasons for this situation is the impossibility of tracking all publications in the conditions of avalanche-like growth of information. As a result, there is an overproduction of texts. And the time to write unnecessary text can be used much more efficiently.
9. The information system for research automation may look as follows. To create it you can use a solution based on cloud computing (close to that used on the popular music resource Last.fm). It is desirable that all universities, as well as other institutions (in particular, research institutes and libraries) are connected to this system. Each participant enters the system data for each of its publications (title, keywords, output, full text or selected text fragments). Publications may be tagged. According to the statistics of publications of each participant, the system selects a list of publications by other authors (in some ways this procedure is similar to the selection of musical recommendations in Last.fm). Thanks to the automated accounting of publications, each participant can see what has already been done and is doing in this particular field of science, and also draw conclusions about what needs to be added, developed, studied.
10. Structured accounting of relevant information allows you to plan research activities: what to read, what to study, what to write about, what to take into account in subsequent publications. The idea expressed above can be developed: for example, in the form of a search system for conferences, seminars, dissertations, etc. Without a management system and the structuring of scientific information, planning and accounting for the results of scientific activity are hardly possible.
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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/123102/
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