Shuheng Wu

Research project tasks, data, and perceptions of data quality in a condensed matter physics community

To be effective and at the same time sustainable, a community data curation model needs to be aligned with the communitys current data practices, including research project activities, data types, and perceptions of data quality. Based on a survey of members of the condensed matter physics (CMP) community gathered around the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, a large national laboratory, this article defines a model of CMP research project tasks consisting of 10 task constructs. In addition, the study develops a model of data quality perceptions by CMP scientists consisting of four data quality constructs. The paper also discusses relationships among the data quality perceptions, project roles, and demographic characteristics of CMP scientists. The findings of the study can inform the design of a CMP data curation model that is aligned and harmonized with the communitys research work structure and data practices.

Authority Control for Scientific Data: The Case of Molecular Biology

This article analyzes the authority control practices in molecular biology using literature review and scenario analysis and makes a comparison with bibliographic authority control. The analysis indicates the absence of conceptual authority control model in molecular bioinformatics. In addition to traditional knowledge organization tools, authority control in molecular biology requires the use of reference sequences and version numbers to identify entities and keep track of entity changes. The identified authority control issues are conceptualized as quality problems caused by four sources. This study can inform librarians and educators of the need for and approaches to authority control in molecular biology.

Data curation in scientific teams: an exploratory study of condensed matter physics at a national science lab

The advent of big science has brought a dramatic increase in the amount of data generated as part of scientific investigation. The ability to capture and prepare such data for reuse has brought about an increased interest in data curation practices within scientific fields and venues such as national laboratories. This study employs semi-structured interviews with key scientists at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory to explore data management, curation, and sharing practices within a condensed matter physics community. Findings indicate that condensed matter physics is a highly varied field. The fields work practices and reward structures may impede the development and implementation of highly formalized curation policies focused on sharing data within the broader community. This study is an extension of a larger mixed-methods study to examine the life-cycles of virtual teams and will serve as a foundation for a larger survey of the labs user community.

Studying the data practices of a scientific community

To be effective and at the same time sustainable, a community data curation model has to be aligned with the communitys current work organization: practices and activities; divisions of labor; data and collaborative relationships; and the communitys value structure, norms, and conventions for data, quality assessment, and data sharing. This poster discusses a framework for developing a community data curation model, using a case of the scientific community gathered around the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, a large national lab. The poster also reports findings of preliminary research based on semi-structured interviews with a sample of the main stakeholder groups of the community.

Relationships among category semantics, perceptions of term utility, and term length and order in a social content creation system

While there are increased efforts to extend existing controlled vocabularies through harvesting socially created image metadata from content creation communities (e.g., Flickr), questions remain about the quality and reuse value of this metadata. Data from a controlled experiment was used to examine relationships among categories of image tags, tag assignment order, and users perception of usefulness of preassigned image index terms. Preliminary findings indicate that, on average, Group category terms were assigned first, and were also rated highest in usefulness. Other broad tag categories that were assigned earlier and rated more useful were Human Attributes and People, but others were more variable. However, the study found no correlation between tag length and assignment order, or term length and its perceived usefulness. The studys findings can inform the design of controlled vocabularies, indexing processes, and retrieval systems for images.

Observations of the lifecycles and information worlds of collaborative scientific teams at a national science lab

Team-based scientific collaborations play a key role in the discovery and distribution of scientific knowledge. In order to determine the social and organizational factors that help support a scientific teams successful transition from short-term experiments to long-term programs of ongoing scientific research, this study used observations of teams conducting experiments at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory to determine what teams actually do during these experiments. As part of a larger, ongoing research project using mixed methods, our findings describe the scientific culture of hybrid teams at work, and demonstrate how multiple, overlapping, and nested lifecycles and information worlds play an important role in promoting successful and continuing scientific collaboration. The boundaries between worlds and efforts to span them are particularly important, requiring greater attention. Our future research will develop a model including these factors and add further practical and theoretical implications to those we have already identified.

Data determination, disambiguation, and referencing in molecular biology

Entity and instance determination, disambiguation, and referencing, referred to as authority control in libraries, are essential for scientific research. This study examines the authority control practices and issues in molecular biology using literature and scenario analyses. The analyses imply that the concept of authority control in molecular biology is associated with three tasks: named entity recognition, disambiguation, and unification. The identified authority control issues were conceptualized as quality problems caused by four sources: inconsistent or incomplete mapping, context changes, entity changes, and changes in entity metadata. This study can inform librarians and repository curators of the needs and issues of authority control in molecular biology and other related disciplines.