Webizing Research Communication
Date: May 19, 2020 10AM EST
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Speaker: Sarven Capadisli
Abstract: This talk is about realising Linked Research in context of the Solid ecosystem. The contemporary research communication paradigm operates under a diverse set of sociotechnical constraints, which influence how units of research information and personal data are created and exchanged. Economic forces and non-interoperable system designs mean that researcher identifiers and research contributions are largely shaped and controlled by third-party entities; participation requires the use of proprietary systems. I share my findings on the feasibility of a decentralised and interoperable information space where researchers can control their identifiers whilst fulfilling the core functions of scientific communication: registration, awareness, certification, and archiving. Using the framework of Web architecture, and loosely coupling the four functions, an accessible and inclusive ecosystem can be realised whereby users are able to use and switch between interoperable applications without interfering with existing data.
Link to the dissertation:
https://csarven.ca/linked-rese
Solid specification (development):
https://github.com/solid/speci
Bio: Sarven Capadisli
Sarven has been involved in the evolution of the Solid project alongside Tim Berners-Lee at MIT since 2015. He is a Technical Architect at Inrupt - a company co-founded by Berners-Lee - and leads efforts on the drafting and progression of technical specifications for the Solid ecosystem. Sarven is also the creator of dokieli, a Solid application for decentralised article authoring, annotations, and social interactions tool. He remains involved in advancing Linked Research communication on the Web.
The Socio-Technical Phenomena of Data Integration and Knowledge Graphs
Date: April 21, 2020 2:00PM - 3:00PM
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Speaker: Dr. Juan Sequeda
Abstract: Data Integration has been an active area of computer science research for over two decades. A modern manifestations is as Knowledge Graphs which integrates not just data but also knowledge at scale. Tasks such as schema and ontology matching are fundamental in the data integration process. Research focus has been on studying this phenomena from a technical point of view (algorithms and systems) with the ultimate goal of automating this task.
In the process of applying scientific results to real world enterprise data integration scenarios to design and build Knowledge Graphs from enterprise databases, we have experienced numerous obstacles. In this talk, I will share insights about these obstacles. I will argue that we need to think outside of a technical box and further study the phenomena of data integration with a human-centric lens: from a socio-technical point of view.
Bio: Juan is the recipient of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, received 2nd Place in the 2013 Semantic Web Challenge for his work on ConstituteProject.org, Best Student Research Paper at the 2014 International Semantic Web Conference and the 2015 Best Transfer and Innovation Project awarded by the Institute for Applied Informatics. Juan is on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Web Semantics, member of multiple program committees (ISWC, ESWC, WWW, AAAI, IJCAI). He was the General Chair of AMW2018, PC chair of ISWC 2017 In-Use track, co-creator of COLD workshop (7 years co-located at ISWC). He has served as a bridge between academia and industry as the current chair of the Property Graph Schema Working Group, member of the Graph Query Languages task force of the Linked Data Benchmark Council (LDBC) and past invited expert member and standards editor at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
Code publication and peer review: a discussion of best practices, technological innovations and recognition
Date: March 3, 2020 1:30PM - 2:30PM
Room: 203
Spekaer: Erika Pastrana, PhD Editorial Director at Nature Research, Springer Nature
Abstract: Erika Pastrana will speak about a recent completed pilot where they used container technology for peer review and publication of code at several Nature journals. She will cover best practices and guiding principles that the Nature journals follow when considering papers where custom code is central to the work and the reported results. She will outline the procedures used to ensure the code is properly documented, peer reviewed, cited and shared to ensure reproducibility of the results and recognition of the code as a standalone entity in the paper. Finally, Erika will discuss with the group possible new ways in which journals can use improved technologies to enable sharing and recognizing of code as a valuable research output.
Bio: Erika is responsible for management and editorial direction of Nature journals in applied sciences and chemistry (including Nature Biotechnology, Nature Medicine, Nature Methods, Nature Chemistry and Nature Machine Intelligence). She is part of the senior management group at Nature Research and participates in setting the overall strategy for Nature journals and new launches, as well as in the development of new editorial policies and practices. Erika has worked in editorial roles at Nature Research since 2010, and has spearheaded Nature journal’s policies for peer review and publication of code.
Erika did her PhD on cellular models of axonal regeneration and applications to spinal cord injury in rodents in the University of Madrid. She then worked as a postdoctoral research scientist at Columbia University’s medical center, developing technologies to isolate neural stem cells from the adult rodent brain.
Leveraging the InvenioRDM next generation repository as a foundation for interdisciplinary research and discovery
Date: February 26, 2020 - 1:30-2:30PM
Room: 523
Speaker: Kristi Holmes PhD | Director, Galter Health Sciences Library & Learning Center
Associate Professor, Preventive Medicine-Health and Biomedical Informatics
Associate Director of NUCATS for Evaluation, Northwestern University Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute
Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine
Abstract: Research Data Management (RDM) platforms play a critical role in the research ecosystem to help preserve & share research, enable reproducibility, and empower reuse of datasets, protocols, engagement, or study materials, as well as a wide range of other research products. InvenioRDM is a turnkey RDM being developed as part of a large, multi-organization collaboration in partnership with CERN, birthplace of the World Wide Web and developers of the Zenodo RDM for the European community. Open source InvenioRDM has a modern web architecture and standards that make it easy to deploy, maintain, and use. InvenioRDM is a turn-key research data management platform & index that can be easily deployed in the local environment and is being developed with a wide range of features to streamline good data practice, enhance interoperability, promote interdisciplinary teams, and boost value throughout the research lifecycle.
Work on the InvenioRDM project is driven by user needs and informed by best practices and standards, including those that help define Next Generation Repositories (NGR) as a foundation for a distributed, globally-networked infrastructure for scholarly communication, discovery, and innovation. This presentation will introduce the social and technical aspects of this project and our purposeful efforts to harmonize the two. Most importantly, the global collaboration behind this work will be highlighted along with our efforts to grow a cooperative, interdisciplinary community to support innovation and sustain the platform going forward.
This project is due to be completed June 2020, but you can try out the code and meet the project team now! For more details, visit https://inveniosoftware.org/products/rdm/.
Bio: Dr. Holmes is the Director of Galter Health Sciences Library & Learning Center and associate professor of Preventive Medicine (Health & Biomedical Informatics) at Northwestern University. Her research is focused on the development and application of information standards to support interoperability and data exchange to enhance discovery across basic science, clinical, and community-based research and ultimately, develop new methods for understanding translational impact. Operationalized workflows for the library and beyond have been developed, including a robust evaluation infrastructure for the campus in NUCATS. Holmes is especially enthusiastic about new roles and opportunities for modern biomedical research libraries in an increasingly informatics and data-driven environment.