What Faculty Members Want From A Research Information System
What Faculty Members Want From A Research Information System
What Faculty Members Want From A Research Information System
Keeping online profiles up-to-date should require little or no effort and be integrated into the scientists existing workflowresearchers must have an incentive to supply the information and keep it current. [Faculty] regularly invested time updating information in their biographical and professional documents, such as their CVs, biosketches for grants, and faculty evaluation forms. They were highly motivated to do so because these documents must be up-to-date in order to obtain grant funding, provide background information when invited to lecture or consult, and participate in university evaluations such as promotion and/or tenure decisions. There is no such motivation to update online profiles.
T. Schleyer et al. Facebook for Scientists: Requirements and Services for Optimizing How Scientific Collaborations Are Established. J Med Internet Res. JulSep, 2008
Methods
Four, one-hour focus groups consisting of three to five faculty members were led by the authors, a biomedical researcher and an expert on usability. Junior faculty members were selected because they had expressed the greatest need for these systems and because they will be the major users. We generated a list of potential benefits from a research information system and a list of problems encountered with the existing systems.
Conclusions
Faculty members should be consulted early and often about the design and implementation of research information systems. Information, by itself, is not sufficient; there should be tangible output in a form useful for us. Additional clerical work would be very unpopular. Privacy, confidentiality and maintaining priority in scientific discoveries are also major concerns.
Acknowledgements
Dr. Peter Davies, Office of Research, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston Faculty participants in focus groups Drs. Titus Schleyer and Medha Devare