Julia Bullard

Software in the scientific literature: Problems with seeing, finding, and using software mentioned in the biology literature

Software is increasingly crucial to scholarship, yet the visibility and usefulness of software in the scientific record are in question. Just as with data, the visibility of software in publications is related to incentives to share software in reusable ways, and so promote efficient science. In this article, we examine software in publications through content analysis of a random sample of 90 biology articles. We develop a coding scheme to identify software “mentions” and classify them according to their characteristics and ability to realize the functions of citations. Overall, we find diverse and problematic practices: Only between 31% and 43% of mentions involve formal citations; informal mentions are very common, even in high impact factor journals and across different kinds of software. Software is frequently inaccessible (15%–29% of packages in any form; between 90% and 98% of specific versions; only between 24%–40% provide source code). Cites to publications are particularly poor at providing version information, whereas informal mentions are particularly poor at providing crediting information. We provide recommendations to improve the practice of software citation, highlighting recent nascent efforts. Software plays an increasingly great role in scientific practice; it deserves a clear and useful place in scholarly communication.

Always somewhere, never there: using critical design to understand database interactions

Structured databases achieve effective searching and sorting by enacting sharply delineated category boundaries around their contents. While this enables precise retrieval, it also distorts identities that exist between category lines. A choice between Single and Married, for example, blurs distinctions within the Single group: single, perhaps, merely because same-sex marriage is not legal in ones locality. Sociologists Susan Leigh Star and Geoffrey Bowker describe such residual states as inevitable byproducts of information systems. To minimize residuality, traditional practice for descriptive metadata seeks to demarcate clear and objective classes. In this study, we use critical design to question this position by creating information collections that foreground the residual, instead of diminishing it. We then interrogate our design experiments with solicited critical responses from invited experts and student designers. Inspired by the anthropologist Tim Ingold, we argue that our experiments illuminate a form of interacting with databases characterized by notions of wayfaring, or inhabiting a space, as opposed to notions of transport, or reaching a known destination. We suggest that the form of coherence that shapes a wayfaring database is enacted through its flow, or fluid integration between structure and content.

Warrant as a means to study classification system design

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of warrant in daily classification design in general and in negotiating disparate classification goals in particular. Design/methodology/approach This paper synthesizes classification research on forms of warrant and uses examples of classification decisions from ethnographic engagement with designers to illustrate how forms of warrant interact in daily classification decisions. Findings Different forms of warrant, though associated with incompatible theories of classification design, coexist in daily classification decisions. A secondary warrant might be employed to augment the primary warrant of a system, such as to decide among equally valid terms, or to overturn a decision based on the primary warrant, such as when ethical impacts are prioritized above user preference. Research limitations/implications This paper calls for empirical research using the application of warrant as an object of analysis. Originality/value The paper connects a ubiquitous and observable element of classification design – the application of warrant – to longstanding divisions in classification theory. This paper demonstrates how the analysis of daily classification design can illuminate the interaction between disparate philosophies of classification.

Motivating Invisible Contributions: Framing Volunteer Classification Design in a Fanfiction Repository

Contributions from the crowd are not just content-sustainable systems require ongoing behind-the-scenes infrastructural work. In this paper, I explore potential strategies for motivating volunteer contributions to large-scale collaborative projects when volunteer contributions are procedural in nature and largely invisible in the published project. I use a user-driven classification system for a large, established, and growing fanfiction collection as an example of a successful project of this type. I compare the challenges and possibilities to those established in the study of open source, wiki, and citizen science projects, which share with classification design a need for distributed human contributions to procedural tasks. Textual analysis of recruiting and training documents, informed by prolonged engagement in the community, reveals strategies that diverge from other HCI research on motivation, such as a focus on work rather than fun and insider rather than public recognition.

Learning from Elitist Jerks: Creating high-quality knowledge resources from ongoing conversations

Online‐community management is commonly presented as the facilitation of conversation and contributions, especially converting readers to contributors. However, the goal of many discussion communities is to produce a high‐quality knowledge resource, whether to improve external task performance or to increase reputation and site traffic. What do moderation practices look like when the community is focused on the creation of a useable knowledge resource rather than facilitating an inclusive conversation? Under what conditions is this style of moderation likely to be successful? We present a case study from online gaming—Elitist Jerks—in which aggressive moderation is used to transform a conversational medium into a high‐quality knowledge resource, using the strategy of open censorship. We present a content analysis of moderator comments regarding censored messages. Our analysis revealed differences in types of contributor mistakes and the severity of moderator actions: infractions that interfered with both conversation and resource quality were punished harshly, whereas a set of infractions that supported conversation but undermined resource quality were more respectfully removed. We describe a set of conditions under which moderators should intervene in the conversion of conversation to knowledge resource rather than the conversion of lurkers to contributors.

Translating Texture: Design as Integration

This conceptual essay uses the notion of texture to articulate the relationship between data infrastructure (the attributes and value parameters that give data its shape) and data environment (the mode of implementation in which data is stored and manipulated). We take experimental datasets that we authored with unorthodox, weird data infrastructure and translate those datasets from one data evironment to another. In performing these translations, we surface integration as a design activity. Integration work is often tedious, mundane, and technical--but it is nonetheless design. We show how texture arises from the integration of material components, demonstrating the effects of integration work upon user experience.

Crowdsourcing approaches for knowledge organization systems: crowd collaboration or crowd work?

Development of Internet technologies has empowered ordinary users to create, contribute, share and connect with other members of the community. As users learn to exploit the potential of networked communications, they participate in a process, which facilitates a shift from individual to collective contributions and introduces an opportunity for multi‐vocal and multi‐faceted representation of cultural heritage. Open access to crowdsourced collections requires reconsideration of the traditional authoritative approach of cultural heritage institutions. The arduous nature of the work rendered voluntarily in cultural heritage crowdsourcing initiatives calls for reconsideration of power relationships and giving power to devoted contributors supported by modern “intelligent” technology to regulate the process of representation and organization. Taking into consideration the fact that crowdsourced data are not without flaws, the question is how to better utilize the collective intelligence to create quality information. In this context, various issues such as power, control, trust, inter‐contributor consensus, heterogeneity of opinions will be raised and discussed by the panelists. Each of the panelists comes from a different field of expertise (Computer science, Information science, Economics, Communication studies, cultural heritage) and various cultural backgrounds and geographical locations (United States, Europe and Israel). This diversity will be reflected in the presented perspectives on the crowdsourcing topic.