Thing 23: The final Thing - A review of the program

In this Thing I will give a review of my experience of the program.

Overall, I've found the 23 Things program a useful endeavour, having been exposed to many new aspects of online and digital professionalism, as well as the many online tools available to help academics. In addition, creating this blog as been a great introduction to the world of blogging - I've enjoyed making it my own and reflecting some of my interests through it. I have been especially intrigued by one the of recent topics that has been covered - crowd sourcing research - as it opens up scientific discovery to the general public which is really cool. 

The hardest thing about writing this blog has been to keep on going, as can probably be seen from the time gaps between some blog posts. For the majority of the tools and subjects that we've covered, I've had no previous experience,  and writing in an informal public professional manner is quite outside my comfort zone. I guess the programme wasn't really what I was expecting though. I had expected that the 'Things' we were to write about would be more scientific, perhaps linked to our research, and less high level. None the less, I'm glad it's complete. 

From here on I think I will take a lengthy secondment from blogging, or perhaps retire. It has been useful to see how easy it is to set up a blog, and see it growing over time, yet I didn't massively enjoy it. This could change if I were to create a blog of my own, on a subject I were passionate about, but presently I've no plans for what that would involve. 

I have enjoyed some aspects of the program though, as I'd previously had no idea they existed. This is certainly the case with crowd sourced research. It's amazing that someone with little or no scientific background can get involved in cutting edge research, like tracing spiral galaxies, or reviewing pelicams (pelican monitoring)! I would like to explore these projects further, not only to see what I can contribute to, but also what I can learn from them. It was also interesting to find out about the Altmetric donut can be used to demonstrate the sources of attention of some particular research - these seem really useful in quickly summarising impact.  Finally, being introduced to Euraxess is useful, as I may consider further academic research after my EngD. 

Several other online tools that I'll use in the future include LinkedIn, Upsplash (for royalty free images), the online scheduling services (such as meet-o-matic), and the online storage services (such as WeTransfer). Perhaps with the exception of LinkedIn, each of these have a use both in professional and personal projects. 

As a result of writing this blog, I will try to maintain a professional online presence. It has helped to teach me that everyone can see your online profiles (Facebook, LinkedIn, Academia, Blogger ect.), and this includes friends, family or prospective employers. Consequently, I will think carefully about being as genuine as I can be in the virtual world, as I can be in real life. In addition, seeing the wealth of freely available academic research (Thing 15) has been very encouraging, and I think that I would like to contribute to this freely available content. 

Well, that concludes the final Thing in this series of 23 Things (and it's only taken 18 months). Thank-you so much for visiting this blog and having a read. The picture below is arguably my favourite animal - the flying fish! (Photo by John Cobb on Unsplash)

"But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish in the sea inform you. Which of all these does not know that the hand of the LORD has done this? In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all -mankind." Job 12: 7-10

Thing 22: Professional Websites

Similarly to the previous post, this Thing is a rather short thing, and is about professional personal websites. 

For self-employed individuals or academics in consultancy, professional websites advertising the individuals business, capabilities, experience and examples of previous work can be very effective as 'online' CV's for prospective clients. 

It is important that these websites are clearly laid out, with the central focus being the profession that the individual is in. Examples of work and collaborations will help the client feel more confident in the business. The Muse has written an article showing some of the most well designed professional personal websites. 

I however do not yet have my own personal website, simply because I'm not entirely sure what direction my career will go on after my EngD. For those in my position LinkedIn profiles can also be used to display you capabilities & experience ect - mine can be found here.

Thanks again for reading - see you next time! 

Photo by Roberto Navarro on Unsplash

Thing 21: *Research and EURAXESS

This Thing is shorter than previous entries, and less general but it is still very useful to researchers. 

The '*Research Professional' company provides a service of information about funding opportunities globally. Typically a university will create an account with them, and then the university and its students can look at what research opportunities are out there. These can range from individual studies to multi-million collaborative projects.  EURAXESS also provides information about funded research projects throughout Europe. The these websites advertise funding opportunities for a range of disciplines. 

That's all for this one, see you next time! Sometimes we can all feel a bit lost in the myriad of research options...

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

Thing 20: File sharing and online storage

In this Thing I will introduce some of the most common online file sharing platforms. 

Working collaboratively has always been important for success in any project, yet now that working from home is much more prevalent, file sharing through online systems is increasingly important. The three main file sharing platforms are Dropbox, Google Drive and WeTransfer, though other platforms (which I will not go into here) include: Send anywhere, Hightail and Slack. 

Dropbox, has been rated the best file sharing system in 2020 (Tech Radar, 2020). To use this service you will need to create an account, and with that account you get 2 GB of free storage. Their paid service starts at $9.99 per month, and allows  2 TB (2000 GB) of storage. Files can be shared using direct links, and these can be downloaded by the recipient without a Dropbox account. Additionally, password protection and time-limits for the files can be applied. 

I used Dropbox extensively at university when working on a design project with other students - It was super helpful to be able to share the same Word document or power point so that we could collectively build the report.

Google Drive is also a great file sharing platform. Here you don't need to create a specific Google Drive account, but do require a gmail address - if you don't have one you'll need to create one to sign up. When you do, you get 15 GB of free file storage, and these files can be sent via email or through a link, however unlike Dropbox, these files cannot be password protected, or timed. To upgrade your storage, plans start at £1.59 per month, giving you 100 GB of storage. 

I've only used Google Drive once, and it was to upload holiday photos to a group drive so that everyone who attended the holiday could see the photos. It was really useful to have them all in one place, and the lack of time limit meant that I could download the lot two years after our trip! (see photo below).   

WeTransfer is easier to use than Google Drive, and you don't even need to create an account (though you will need an email address so that they can contact you - Tech Radar, 2020). Files can be sent through a link, and it stays active for a week.  With a 'Plus' account, you can password protect your files, set other download time limits, and other things - Prices start at 12 euros per month. 

I've used We Transfer through a built-in app in our work email system and its really useful to send secure files to colleagues. Knowing that the email will be deleted after a week is great for security when working on sensitive IP projects. 

That's it for today - thanks for reading! Here's one of the snaps from my Scotland trip in 2018:

Thing 19: Online scheduling and polling

This Thing is about the use of programs which allow for online scheduling and planning. 

With the advent of wide and rapid social communication via videoconferencing, Whatsapp, and many other virtual communication platforms, it is useful to be able to plan both virtual and physical events in an equally paced fashion. 

Doodle, Meet-o-Matic, Google forms, and survey monkey all allow a questionnaire to be constructed, such that those to whom it is sent to can fill it in. The first two are better suited to yes/no questionnaires, i.e. ones where a the availability of a group of researchers may be determined. The latter two are more suited to giving detailed information such as allergies to foods when planning wedding meals, or additional needs when camping.  

Some of these services charge for the premium features, though Google forms does allow for direct downloading of the response data for free (Surrey 23 Things). It should be noted however that these services should not be used for sensitive, confidential or private information. 

Thanks for reading this post - here's a picture of one of my favourite animals; a humming bird! 

A Sparkling Violetear from Antisana Ecuador - Photo by Chris Charles on Unsplash

Thing 18: Webinars, Whatsapp and Videoconferencing

In this Thing I'm going to briefly mention three services that are commonly used for communication in the virtual world. 

1. Webinars: 

Webinars are essentially virtual seminars. Here, a presentation will be given by a live broadcast of a series of presentation slides, or a live video of the speaker simply talking, interacting with the slides, or perhaps writing on a white board. In a comments section those watching the webinar can ask questions and thereby interact with the speaker. Webinars are becoming more popular as they allow access to academic content or discussions without the need to travel - thus increasing the access for researchers globally. 

2. Whatsapp: 

Although first introduced to me as a private messaging service for social purposes only, Whatsapp is also used in academic research. Groups can easily be created to include specific individuals that are working in a team, and it allows for the quick exchange of information to all members of the group, although the type of information shared is best suited to short, brief discussion, and perhaps photos of data. For in depth discussion, and group analysis of data, Whatsapp just isn't suitable.

3. Videoconferencing: 

This is similar to a Webinar, however here all the attendees are visible on the screen and can have an input to the meeting. Skype, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams are all examples of software which uses videoconferencing. With the recent Covid-19 outbreak, these videoconferencing services have proved invaluable for maintaining good communication between research teams and social groups alike.   

That's it for today - thanks for reading. Ever seen a blue lobster before?! 

Photo by David Clode on Unsplash

Thing 17: Crowd sourcing

This Thing is about crowd sourcing for academic research.

Within the last decade or two, with the advent of phones with decent cameras, and widespread access to the internet, crowd sourcing for the use of academic investigation has opened widely.

Virtual historical collections allow individuals to write accounts of family members' activity in the War, or picture family relics, letters and other historical artefacts - then send them directly to a virtual collection (See RunCoCo) - these collections are free to access and provide a wealth of information about life in recent historical periods.

Another avenue of crowd sourcing exists in our (the human brains') ability to recognise patterns, or tell objects apart. There are many research projects in which large data sets of images or graphical outputs are produced, though computer analysis alone is not sophisticated enough to recognise data patterns, and so human intervention is required - an example are the spirals in an image of a galaxy.

To analyse this data by an individual, or even an small team, would be laborious, and dreadfully time consuming, but if the task is simplified to yield the most menial parts, for example, tracing the spirals in an image of a galaxy using an image processor, then anyone can get involved! From the earlier link, there have been over 2000 volunteers.

Other projects include transcribing manuscripts from the anti-slave trade, or spotting and highlighting biological cells in electron microscope images. For someone like me, who has an interest in most things scientific, and more recently things historical, projects such as these give me exposure to real data, real experiments - allowing me, someone with little background in physics, biology, or transcription, to get involved! Personally, I think it's great. Many other interesting 'open source' research projects can be found at Zooniverse. 

That's it for this blog post - I hope you've enjoyed a brief look at academic crowd sourcing. Try not to get sucked in to analysing gravitational waves!

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

Thing 16: Bibliometrics

This Thing is about Bibliometrics and their value in the research community.

Bibliometrics are numerical indicators which are used for two purposes. First, to give an indication of the academic impact of a specific piece of research - i.e. the affect of the research upon the scientific community. Second, to give a measure of the academic output of that research - this is linked to productivity (University of Surrey - 23 Things 2019).

There are several types of metrics that can be used:

1. Impact at the point of publication - this tends to focus on the journal in which the research was published.
2. Impact post publication - here the influence of the research output is considered. Usually 2 years after publication.  
3. Impact from enabling knowledge transfer - this comes from linking dissimilar areas of research, where-by the research publication acts as a knowledge bridge'.
4. Impact through collaboration - this arises when the research is completed with others, perhaps between authors or institutions. 

However, when comparing bibliometrics, the indicators must be normalised. This is done by comparing like-for-like research. Un-normalised indicators include the number of citations, h-indices or Journal Impact Factors. For example, older papers will have had more time to gather citations, while newer papers will not. Additionally a review-type paper will almost certainly have more citations than an experimental paper focusing on a specific subject, however the latter may have a greater impact on the research community.  

Below, some papers used in my research are evaluated using bibliometrics found using Web of Science (WoS), Scopus (Sc), and Google Scholar (GS). The papers are: 

• Belmonte, H. M. S., Mulheron, M. & Smith, P. A., 2007. Weibull analysis, extrapolations and implications for condition assessment of cast iron watermains. Fatigue & Fracture of Engineering Materials & Structures, 30(N/a), pp. 964-990.

• Turgoose, S., 1982. Post-excavation changes in iron antiquities. Studies in Conservation, 27(N/a), pp. 97-101

• Velichko, A., Holzapfel, C. & Mücklich, F., 2007. 3D Characterisation of Graphite Morphologies in Cast Iron. Advanced Engineering Materials, 9(1-2), pp. 39-45.

Only two of the three papers could be found in the three data bases mentioned earlier, and the citations for each paper vary slightly. It is also seen that the oldest paper is receives the most citations, and in all cases, Google Scholar (GS) yields the highest number of citations - this is summarised below: 

• Belmonte et al (2007) - 11 (WoS), 12 (Sc), 17 (GS)

• Turgoose (1982) - N/A (WoS), 85 (Sc), 160 (GS)

• Velichko et al (2007) - 37 (WoS), 41 (Sc), 56 (GS)

There also exists a new feild of Biblimetric data - Altmetrics. These give a measure of how infroamtion is used in differenct media services such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, ect. A rather interesting tool which summarises this data is the Altmetric donut. 

Thanks for reading this blog post :) I've managed to find a picture that rather well sums up my trepidation towards bibliometrics...

Image from Upsplash, by Nariman Mesharrafa

Thing 15: Open Access and Surrey Research Insight

This Thing is about making academic papers freely available, rather than having them accessible only to journal subscribers, or giving access through one-off payments. The information about this has come from the 23 Things Surrey 2019 blog page. 

The benefit of making research papers freely available, i.e. ‘Open Access’,  is that the research can be shared to the world without cost to the reader, and thus making any discoveries found in the research accessible to anyone who would like to know.  In addition, since these papers are widely downloaded (because they’re free!), the paper may receive a greater deal of citations, and the author increase in reputation.

There are two main routes for publishing papers in Open Access; Green and Gold. The Green route is as follows:

• You retain the right to post your accepted version wherever you may do so
• There are no charges to you
• Your own version is posted
• Is will be publicly available immediately, or after an agreed embargo period with the publisher (6 months – 3 years)
• It will be available from your university, and any other repository that the publisher specifies
• Copyright is usually transferred to the publisher, but you retain certain rights

The Gold route however offers a more professional service:

• The publisher makes the published version immediately open access.
• There is a cost of around £1800
• The version is typeset according to the publisher’s standards
• The paper is immediately available – no embargo is given
• The paper will be available via the publisher’s website, and almost any repository
• The paper is published under a creative commons licence, and you retain the copyright
• 
  

I am yet to publish a paper, however so long as I am allowed by my industrial sponsor, and the University, I would like to publish my research as Open Access as I think it will give the greatest visibility to the discoveries. Whether or not its Green or Gold depends on whether we can finance it! 

Many thanks for reading this week’s blog, here’s a picture of green and yellow parrot by Zdeněk Macháček (Unsplash)! 

Thing 14: Sharing research online

In this Thing we will take a brief look at some online sharing sites, namely: Slideshare, Note & Point, and Speaker Deck. Each of these are websites where learning material, mainly presentations, can be shared to the internet community - this allows for much wider access to the content than local publications from the University or conference proceedings.

Slideshare:
I have used slide share many times when looking for information regarding specific scientific topics where I am trying to get a quick, structured overview of something. Since I am a fairly weak reader, I usually struggle with large amounts of text, and so having a multitude of presentations with small digestible chunks is very helpful! I would use this site to share (if allowed) any material I had presented for lectures at a university or academic institution.


Note & Point:
Upon first looking at this site, I was quite impressed. There are three main categories that are immediately shown; Keynote, PDF & PowerPoint - each ways of producing a presentation. What follows are a series of presentations on a variety of subjects (though most seem to be business / entrepreneurial orientated). These are all very well produced and are very easy to learn from. The few presentations I looked at seemed light on content, but that is probably because I am used to hefty, text heavy academic ones, rather than presentations suitable for general public use and learning. One particular one I liked is called 'Stopping the Bite' and is about malaria prevention. I would use this site to share (if allowed) any material I have produced that had a public outlook, and was trying to communicate a simple message. I would also use this site to gain inspiration on formatting a presentation in a way that looks original, professional and appealing!


Speaker Deck:
At first glance, this site seemed similar to Note & Point, with tiles showing a variety of presentations, all of which seemed very well put together. However, these is also a bar along the top which splits the presentations into categories, including: Featured (home page), Business, Design, Education, How-to DIY, Programming,  Research, Science, and Technology. Having had a look at some of the presentations, they seem to vary in quality a fair amount - one that I quite like the look of was Tapes To Digital - a company offering VHS tape to DVD conversion services. There is a pretty major issue though, and it is that a large amount of the presentations are written in Japanese! A problem for me because I can't read or speak it. Overall, the two previously mentioned sites hit the target for what I'd like to produce, and so I wouldn't use this one, unless specifically asked to.

Thanks so much for reading this weeks post! Here's a picture of a cool flower that my granddad has at his house - we're not sure what it is so please comment if you have any ideas!

Thing 13: Data Presentation

This thing is about data presentation.

Data presentation is necessary as it can often be difficult to spot trends or patterns when looking at numbers alone. For example:

1,3,5,7,4,5,3,2,4,5,7,8,6,6,5,7,9,8,6,4,2,2,4,5,7,8,9,8,9,7,5,6,8,9,9,8,5,5,4,7,6,8,8,9,6,4,3,3,2,3,4,4,5,6,7,6,5,4,5,5,6,7,7,8,8,9,8,7,5,4,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,9,7,5,4,3,3,3,3,5,5,6,6,5,5,6,7,8.

This is a series of random numbers (of the range 1-9) that I typed on my keyboard for about 10 seconds; by totalling the number of times each number appears, it can be seen that I seem to have a bias of pressing the number 5 button, followed by 8, 6, and 7. This may result from me placing my hand too often in the middle of the long stretch of numbers along the top of my key board. Given that the majority of the numbers are above 5, this shows that I held my had too long towards the higher end of the keyboard. Visually, this can be seen in the following graph:

Ok, so it's not a brilliant example, but it does show how statistics can be used to spot trends. Google Public Data Explorer, Gapminder, and Tableau Public are three data  processing and visualisation platforms that have been recommended by the university. Having had a play with Gapminder, and read its information page, I can confirm its a pretty interesting website. There are hundreds of data sets available to look at; education, public expenditure, mortality rates, ect. from a verity of countries, with some sets spanning hundreds of years! I have found it very interesting to watch how the populations of various countries have grown.

Any way, that's all for today. Thanks for reading :)

Thing 12: Making and sharing media

This things is about creating audio or video content using fairly simple tools that are readily available to most people with a PC.

Video podcasts can be taken on anything with a video recording capacity, and then edited using inbuilt software on the device (phones / camcorders)  or through applications (Windows Photo editor, or iMovie for Macs). Here's my attempt with that I've got at work...

In addition, screen-casts can also be recorded; these capture the activity on a computer screen and are really useful for tutorials and software demonstrations. There are screen cast tools available to download, but I've recently discovered the PowerPoint can do it:

Any way, that's all for this post! Thanks for your time :)

Thing 11: Finding presentations and podcasts

This Thing is about online learning content from presentations and podcasts.

I really enjoy listening to TED talks; they're often really well put together, and given by experts in the particular field to what the talk is about. Content like this is a really useful way for the average person, like my self, to get a glimpse into many different areas of science. For example, as a mechanical engineer, my knowledge on genetics is pretty awful, but none-the-less, I thoroughly enjoy listed to talks about genetic research, particularity issues relating to drug-resistant bacteria. I often listen to these talks on YouTube but through the TED site is just as good.

The OpenCourseWare from MIT on YouTube, also has some very high quality videos, even ones on musical improvisation (which I plan to check out later!).

For presentations, I've come across Slideshare a few times, and have found it useful for introductory and basic content for a verity of things. That being said, there are often little of no references for the figures of data used in the presentations I have seen, which limits the use of them to the starting point of an investigation into a topic.

More in-depth study can be found from online courses; Coursera and Futurelearn are both good examples of free courses. Corrosion is the crux of my EngD, and sadly only Coursera had a relevant course - 'Protecting the World: Introducing Corrosion Science and Engineering', but still there are many on Futurelearn that seem generally interesting too, such as The Many Faces of Dementia, or a series on learning Jazz Piano! (Also planning on checking that out...)

Thanks for reading, see you soon! Also, here's a picture of a mushroom that I took at the weekend - I think it's a Coprinus comatus!

Picture by Jacob Pimenta-Richardson (c)

Thing 10: Exploring images online

In this blog post we have been asked to take a look at some common online image sharing platforms, namely; Flickr, Pinterest, and Instagram. 

Having never previously come across Flickr, I found it rather interesting; similarly to google images, its great to be able to find photos of any particular subject.  Searching 'Cast Iron' on Flickr, I could soon see many photos of Cast Iron cooking utensils, bridges and other structures; what I particularly like however is the location tag and photograph information section - as a very casual photographer my self (I have a digital camera, sometimes I try and shoot in manual...), its really helpful to be able to see the settings more experienced photographers have used to take a particular shot.

Regrettably, all the cast iron photos I saw were copyrighted with all rights reserved, none the less, I investigated 'The Commons' section of Flickr. Here, I found many more photos of cast iron structures and utensils, but a great deal of these were very old! The Commons section shares photographs from historical records, and there is no copyright licence on them! In another search for Bees within The Commons I found this amazing photo of 'the worlds smallest plane (in 1948), the Wee Bee! 

I've not used Pinterest before but I have seen my friends use it. It seems really cool to have boards and pages dedicated to ideas and creations relating to your interests. If I were to make an account, it would probably consist of pages about cafe racer motorbikes, fish tanks, Lego Technic and nature stuff like birds, bugs and other interesting animals. But that's why I'm not creating an account for now. Truthfully I'm trying to cut down my time spent on social media. It is written that 'godliness with contentment is of great gain', and I think that if I were to create an account, I may spend more time thinking about what I don't have, than what I do! 

I had Instagram for a little while, and enjoyed sharing cool photos of flowers, leaves, other nature stuff that I came across during walks, or even on the university campus - it was nice for my mum to see the photos when away from home. But again, in an attempt to lessen social media time, I've put Instagram on the back-back-back burner - I now send the cool photos to mum via WhatsApp!

In addition to the media sharing platforms mentioned, others include; Google photos, Wikimedia, Commons, Photobucket, SmugMug, Shutterfly and Upsplash. The latter is particularly excellent as all of the photos are high quality and available for sharing!

Thing 9: Exploring Wikipedia

This Thing is about exploring Wikipedia; many who are my age will have memories of losing marks in their coursework for referencing or even directly quoting a Wikipedia page on a particular subject, but its usefulness has not diminished.

Around 10 years ago, when I was finished my GCSE's, Wikipedia was known among my teachers as a generally useful but unreliable source of information about many things. In recent history this has changed slightly as the quality of articles has largely increased due to the sites increased popularity.

There are of course still some erroneous articles out there as pages can be edited by any one, but this is also one of its strengths; from academia, professionals can edit pages from a highly experienced point of view; from recent historical events, eye witnesses can testify to the truth of a situation, or add their own experience.

Overall, Wikipedia is a great source of introductory and sometimes very detailed information. One criticism of mine is that articles often seem to get too complicated too quickly, using terms that the average person may not understand if researching a topic for the first time - I guess this is what text books are for!

For example, I do love gardening, and have recently potted some snow drop bulbs. Immediately from the Wikipedia page, I can discover that 'Galanthus' is their scientific name, which derived from gala (milk) and anthos (flower) in Greek. However, in the second paragraph, a sentence of reasonable complexity is already encountered:

"In the era of molecular phylogenetics this characteristic has been shown to be unreliable and now seven moleculary-defined clades are recognised corresponding to the biogeographical distribution of species."

To me, a very amateur gardener, this mostly goes over my head. None the less, the rest of the article goes on to describe some very useful information;  the general appearance and reproduction of the plants, their natural distribution, Taxonomy, Ecology, Conservation, Cultivation, Toxicity, Medicinal use, and their references in popular culture (one such reference is given at the end of this article!).  This information seems pretty reliable too, using 97 references, several of which are from the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), a reputable organisation.

This all seems like quite a lot of information, but to attain it other wise, I may have to search several books, and even ask some experts - through Wikipedia, the experts can write the articles!

More practical information however, is best found at dedicated gardening websites.

To end, here's a poem by Walter de al Mare called The Snowdrop:

           Now — now, as low I stooped, thought I, 
           I will see what this snowdropis; 
           So shall I put much argument by, 
           And solve a lifetime's mysteries. 

           A northern wind had frozen the grass; 
           Its blades were hoar with crystal rime, 
           Aglint like light-dissecting glass 
           At beam of morning prime. 

           From hidden bulb the flower reared up 
           Its angled, slender, cold, dark stem, 
           Whence dangled an inverted cup 
           For tri-leaved diadem. 

           Beneath these ice-pure sepals lay 
           A triplet of green-pencilled snow, 
           Which in the chill-aired gloom of day 
           Stirred softly to and fro. 

           Mind fixed, but else made vacant, I, 
           Lost to my body, called my soul 
           To don that frail solemnity, 
           Its inmost self my goal. 

           And though in vain — no mortal mind 
           Across that threshold yet hath fared! — 
           In this collusion I divined 
           Some consciousness we shared. 

           Strange roads — while suns, a myriad, set — 
           Had led us through infinity; 
           And where they crossed, there then had met 
           Not two of us, but three.

                                                (Photo from Country file website)

Thing 8: Creative commons licences

For this Thing we have been encouraged to research 'creative commons licences', denoted by (cc). These licences can take six main forms, but are all aimed at sharing work with less restriction than that given by the standard 'all rights reserved' (c).  If this symbol is shown with a creative work of any kind, it means that the work cannot be shared, modified or used for commercial gain without the express permission of the author.

The creative commons licence is rather different. It is designed to foster a culture of sharing creativity and nurturing collaboration. It does away with the prohibition of copying, using or even financially gaining from someone else work. But in order to offer some copyright safety, there are six major types of cc licence. Each specifies the ability or prohibition of being able to copy & publish, attribute, commercially gain from, modify & adapt, and change the licence of any creative works that you use. These are broken down really well in the following image from Wageningen University:

For this bog I've decided to use the CC BY-NC meaning that you can copy, modify and adapt work from this blog, then use whatever CC licence you choose, so long as I am attributed, and that the work is not used commercially.

Thanks for reading  - here's a great picture of a Green dragonfly. It's so amazing how vibrant the color is! Photo by Jude Infantini on Unsplash

Thing 7: Reference management software - helpful or hindrance?

As the title suggest, this Thing is about the use of reference management software, and  I'll admit straight away that I've not really used any (other than the basic one integrated into Microsoft Word). Sadly, I don't have permissions on my work laptop to add any reference management software, so here I'll be discussing how I previously have, and currently do, sort out my references...

The basic referencing software  included in Microsoft Word is what I used throughout my undergraduate degree; it enables you at manually input citations, choose a referencing style (e.g. APA, Harvard, IEEE ...)  and then build a bibliography. Creating a reference in this tool isn't so bad when you only have a handful of references, but its a noticeably slow process when you're when you're trying to write a dissertation with a large amount of references. Fairly often, when merging documents (often at the last minute to make the 4pm Monday deadline), the references included in documents can get lost leading to the frustrating warning: "ERROR! Bookmark not defined".

As much as this software is useful, you have to take real care to import your references into a master list before copying text from separate documents. Additionally, there is no option to change the specific format of the in-text references. For example, for the Harvard style, Word uses an in-text format like (Author, year), however when you want to include multiple  references for a single point you have to stack the citations e.g. (Author1, year1) (Author2, year 2) (Author3, year 3), whereas the correct formating for this would be: (Author1, year1; Author2, year 2; Author3, year 3), which allows for only a single pair of parentheses. This may not seem like a major issue, but I'm aware some publishers are very specific on the citation format.

Aside from actually citing works in a document, my current method of organising references is to place them into folders divided by their topics / subtopics. Then rename each file according to the first authors second name, then year the paper was published e.g. (Pimenta-2020.pdf). In tandem with labeling and sorting, I create a literature-review power point for each folder; on each slide are notes from each paper, images and information about the paper / author / journal. Then, when I want to reference a paper in Word, all the paper details are in the same slide as the notes.

I can imagine that at this point you may be thinking 'he really ought to just use Mendeley or another software ' - well I've thought about it, and I understand that a lot of what I do manually can be done much faster in specific referencing software. Currently, I have a manageable amount of references, and the methods I use seem to work, however as I approach thinking about writing my Thesis, I may change my mind.

Thanks again for reading; this week I've attached a picture of a Swallow - it's my favorite bird! Credit to Vincent van Zalinge on Unsplash.

Thing 6: A short discussion about academic networking profiles

This Thing is about the use of academic networks such as ResearchGate, Academia.edu and Google Scholar. I've introduced my ResearchGate and Academia.edu accounts in a previous blog post (Thing 4), but should you wish to see them, here are the links:

ResearchGate profile & Academia.edu profile

I originally only made my accounts for the aforementioned networks because (I'll be honest...) we were asked to as part of a Research Methods course during my undergraduate degree. However, as a post-grad, I'm starting to understand their advantages. The ability to contact the authors of a particular paper, or view their most up to date research or academic activity, is really useful - and I've certainly benefited from numerous discussion threads on the sites where questions similar to those I'm having with my research, have been answered by very experienced researchers.

Sadly, I've no research to publish yet so I my pages are looking a bit thin, but in terms of exposure to research communities, these sites are so helpful.

I think having a professional space where snippets of research can be advertised, shared or discussed is really useful in developing a professional image. In the future I hope to link my LinkedIn and Adademia.edu & ResearchGate pages in order to present, not only my working history, but also details of the kind of academic research I'm involved in.

That's it for today, but thank-you so much for reading! Below is a great picture of a Mantis Shrimp - this hefty critter can punch so fast that water around its fist-like clubs begins to boil! (Picture from New Scientist)

Thing 5: LinkedIn - a professional networking site

This thing is aimed at developing the our LinkedIn pages. Since my last post, I've actually spent quite some time sorting out my page, including adding a profile picture, banner, writing up-to-date descriptions of the work I'm involved in, and making some new connections!

I've found it really useful to make connections with companies I'm hoping to work with in my research, allowing me to see what the're currently up to.

I also modified my my URL, from:

www.linkedin.com/in/jacobpimentarichardson (followed by some crazy number...)

to:

www.linkedin.com/in/jacobpr

...much more appropriate for a business card.

Any way, that's it for this blog post. Many thanks for reading, here's a pretty cool photo of a red squirrel pretending to be a zombie! Photo by Demi-Felicia Vares on Unsplash

Thing 4: Our online presence

This post is about presenting ourselves online and in social media!

After searching my name in Google and Bing, I found that the most popular results are links to my Facebook, academia.edu, LinkedIn and Research Gate page (in that order). After these, the results on Google are a two websites that mention my name; Pledge music, for supporting my second cousin Bex Pimenta in the release of her new EP, and Just Giving for taking part in a charity badminton tournament. On Bing, most pages are irrelevant; relating to people with a similar second name or first name. 

Overall this search has prompted me to update my Academia, LinkedIn and Research Gate pages. They still need a lot of work and since I've not published any research at the moment, they're pretty empty. Still, you can take a look at them if you'd like: Academia profile; LinkedIn profile and Research Gate profile.

As part of the 23 Things program we're encouraged to join Twitter, if we haven't already. However, I've had twitter account for 5 years now but only used it for the first few months! In fact I just deleted my account... but I've created a new one! The plan is for this to be mainly professional - I'll give it a go until the end of the 23 Things course, then I may delete it if its proving to be a distraction. I think you can find me at @pimentajacob

This concludes Thing 4, thanks for reading! As a reward, here's a picture of a jumping Peacock - pretty cool right? Credit to Vivek Doshi on Upsplash 

Thing 3: (Not really a Thing either)

This, again, is another filler Thing - don't worry my next one will have a proper theme. For this Thing we were encouraged to read some of the other blogs resulting from the 23Things programme. Well, I have, and if I'm honest, I really enjoyed it. Each blog is like a story that's building up week by week, and each theme is different; since I'm a few Things behind I get to see everyone else's take on some of the aspects I'm yet to cover here - its really interesting to see what each person makes out of the tasks.

Any way, that's enough of a filler. Or maybe this is...

Image from ToolStation

Thing 2: (Not really a Thing)

This thing isn't a thing one can really write a thing about; this thing involves registering my 23Things to a University of Surrey thing called the 'Researcher Development Programme' - the only thing is, if  I don't write a blog post for this Thing, then my things will just jump from 1 to 4, so expect another thing between now and then.

(Image from MCArtwork - originally by Dr Seuss.) 

Really, Thing 1 and 2 ought to have been the same blog post...

Thing 1: My first attempt at blogging

So. This is blogging? Pretty new to me, but I've got to start somewhere!

In this post I'm covering social media and my hopes for the 23 Things course. I'll start with private social media.

I'm becoming rather disillusioned with most private social media; admitadley I don't polish my facebook page like I could, nor give instagram every interesting photo I've taken - but I'd rather I invest in close friendships than sparingly sow into seemingly virtual ones; and sharing printed photos with those closest to me is much more rewarding. Mum usually prints a book with our holiday photos in - I've got two on my shelf at home - looking through these, holding the photos in your hands, just makes it seem more real?

Any way, onto professional social media...

My first exposure to professional social media was LinkedIn. For a university module we were asked to create a page for our prospective employers. I was against doing it at first, I'm much prefer face to face interaction, and would rather those interviewing me had their first impression when they met me - of course that assumes I'd get the interview with a well drafted cover letter and finley polished CV (which I guess is pretty much what LinkedIn is...).

Since attending a few job interviews over the past couple of years, I have learnt the value of being able to briefly research someones professional background. It's certainly help to prepare for meeting them and creating topical conversation such as 'Your work with so and so looked really interesting' or 'my [insert family member or friend] went to the same university'.

Now, 'bout that 23 Things thing...

I'm not entirely sure what to expect from an adventure into the professional digital world available to researchers like my self, however I am open to learning about ways to promote research for later in my career and learning about tools to better engage with the wider world (not that I really want to - my office is big enough, I still don't know what everyone actually does...)

Well, that concludes the first blog post on 'Jacobs23Things' - thanks for reading. As a reward, I've included a cool picture of a sea slug my Dad took while scuba diving - enjoy!

                                                Picture by Mark Richardson (c)