Nigel Shadbolt in the Guardian on Open Data in the UK National Health Service

An article in the UK Guardian newspaper by Oscar Williams in which Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt discusses the issue of Open Data in the UK National Health Service (NHS).

http://www.theguardian.com/media-network/2015/may/29/open-data-nhs-healthcare-nigel-shadbolt?CMP=share_btn_tw

The UK government came top in the Open Data Institute’s (ODI’s) recent league table for open data. However, Professor Shadbolt argues that the government could go further, making data which is already collected machine readable and accessible to the public and health care professionals.

When Resources Collide: Towards a Theory of Coincidence in Information Spaces

A research paper by Markus Luczak-Roesch, Ramine Tinati and Nigel Shadbolt on a general theory of coincidence in information spaces. The theory describes interactions between resources using a directed network model. The paper discusses the application of the theory to data from Zooniverse, the world’s largest on-line citizen science platform.

http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/374988/1/2014_SOCM_Flow__Formal__Camera_Ready.pdf

Why Won’t Aliens Talk to Us? Content and Community Dynamics in Online Citizen Science

A paper by Markus Luczak-Roesch, Ramine Tinati, Elena Simperl, Max Van Kleek, Nigel Shadbolt and Robert Simpson describing research into 10 “Citizen Science” projects, in which members of the public are involved in scientific research. The study examined the factors that affect user engagement, the discussions between the citizen scientists and the transference of scientific expertise, with over 50 million activities of 250, 000 users being analysed.

http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/363523/1/document.pdf

Improving on Popularity as a Proxy for Generality When Building Tag Hierarchies from Folksonomies

Designing and building taxonomies (structures for the identification, classification and description of items) for the Web is time consuming and costly. “Folksonomies”, which are created by the website users themselves, have emerged, however, they can be ambiguous and can have an inconsistent structure. This research paper by Fahad Almoqhim, David E. Millard and Nigel Shadbolt, suggests an improved method (based on the Heymann-Benz algorithm).

http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/372077/1/Improving%20on%20Popularity%20as%20a%20Proxy%20for%20Generality%20When%20Building%20Tag%20Hierarchies%20from%20Folksonomies.pdf

Motivations of Citizen Scientists – A Quantitative Investigation of Forum Participation

A research paper by Ramine Tinati, Markus Luczak-Roesch, Elena Simperl and Nigel Shadbolt, describing an analysis of the citizen science discussion forum Galaxy Zoo. Citizen
science is a term which describes the enabling of citizens to participate in research using their own personal equipment. The study investigates the characteristics of people who participate in citizen science and the factors that affect participation.

http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/366339/1/web108.pdf

Collective Intelligence in Citizen Science – A Study of Performers and Talkers

A paper by Ramine Tinati, Max Van Kleek, Elena Simperl, Markus Luczak-Roesch and Nigel Shadbolt, on online citizen science projects, in which volunteers help solve problems in a wide range of scientific areas using their own I.T.

The authors describe a research project to examine whether the volunteers’ participation in online discussion forums influences the likelihood of a solution being found to the problem.

http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/363608/1/ci2014-Zooniverse_tinati_et_al.pdf