Tag Archives: Organisation

Open Science – The great leaps forward

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For everyone out there who believes that science (i.e. the methods, data and results) should be more open, hear the good news: You are not alone! A whole series of papers published in the worlds most highly ranked journals is on your side – or are they?

Duncal Hull compiled an excellent list of resources.

My personal favorite is the following:

Screenshot of paywall for an editorial that is supposedly about open access

 

 

 

 

Dropbox – deine Dateien, überall

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dropbox is a Web-based Service, that enables you in having access to your files at different places and in sharing them with others. It uses file synchronisation between different computers and users and represents an online data backup.

To use dropbox you have to install the dropbox client. Afterwards a new folder (the dropbox) will be generated in which you can store your files. You have acces to these data by other computers (on which you installed dropbox) as well as you can retrieve them from the Dropbox-Website.

Pro

  • You can create new folders in the dropbox, which you can release for your friends or associates (who have installed dropbox themselves). Now you can share and exchange data or work on projects together.
  • The file synchronisation runs on a server, who saves the data as well. So the involved computers don´t have to be in operation at the same time. The data will be updated, as soon as an involved Computer goes online.
  • Dropbox enables the manual adjusting of the bandwidth, so it won´t engross your hole internet connection.
  • by the defined folders “photos” and “public” you can share files with persons who are not using dropbox
  • Dropbox works with the following operation systems: Windows, Mac, Linux, iPad, iPhone, Android and BlackBerry.

Cons

  • The free version contains an initial storage capacity of 2GB. But by readvertising new members or other actions (like proofing you are a member of an university by your uni emailadress) you can increase your storage capacity.
  • The server performs a AES256-encoding on the files. The users are not able to attach their own code. But there is the opportunity e.g. to synchronize files with Dropbox, that are encoded by TrueCrypt.

ZIS: Sozialwissenschaftliche Skalen/ social sciences questionnaires

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ZIS is an electronic manual containing information about a great number of questionnaires used to measure attitudes and behaviours in the field of social sciences. The program supports MS Windows 3.x, Windows 95, 97, 2000, NT, XP, and 7 (32 and 64 bit).

Audiotranskription mit f4

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Using f4, you can easily create a transcript of your audio- or videorecordings. f4 can be used via keyboard (even within MS Word), can slow down playback speed, can automatically jump back for a few seconds, and can (automatically) create time stamps/ text blocks. f4 is available for MS Windows and MacOS X.

wikis for research-groups

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Two things that are central to research can be facilitated using Wikis:

  1. cooperation between individuals
  2. documentation.

A website that allows the easy creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. (wikipedia on wiki)

While Wikis have the advantage that everything can be searched, structure is important so that users know what they can contribute. A proposed structure for Wikis in research settings the following four categories might be a good start.

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Getting things done (by others) – Collabtive

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If you are working with several others on a project it is one thing to organize yourself and a completely different thing to stay on top of things. Here is where collabtive comes into play.

Collabtive is cloud-based group ware

Easy and efficient for your projects

That  means it runs on a LAMP-server  and is accessible via the internet. It It lets you organize multiple projects around milestones which encompass several tasks that can be assiged to individual users. In my opinion it has the right balance between complexity and features and ease of use. It is open-source software so if you want to add a feature you can – or at least you may.

Features are:

  • Projects, milestones, tasks
  • Timetracking
  • Import of basecamp (a commercial alternative starting at 49$/month) projects

Cons:

  • You need your own server with php and mqsl.
  • The current release is 0.6.5 and has some problems with storing data

Getting Things Done – Task coach

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Have you ever wondered how to keep track of all the effort that went into a certain project? Are you tired of using multiple programms to stay organized and want to have it all under one hood? Then, Taskcoach is a software you might like. It has a nice interface and can manage composite tasks. It is free and open source software and has been translated in several languages. To me the biggest advantage is that it is implemented on and thus can be synced with all major platforms:

  • Linux
  • Mac
  • Windows
  • iOS

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