This document discusses trends and importance of research in the current scenario. It discusses connecting research to oneself, one's institute, society and industry. It also discusses the concept of a "connected researcher" and trends related to collaboration, social media, and alternative metrics for measuring research impact. Connected researchers leverage tools like social media to build networks, get feedback, and disseminate their work more widely.

1. Trends & importance of research in
current scenario :
Connect research &
Connected researcher
S G Deshmukh
ABV-Indian Institute of Information Technology &
Management Gwalior
FDP on
Multivariate Data A alysis for Ma age e t Research
14 June 2013

2. Acknowledgement
This presentation is based on extensive
discussions/brain storming sessions with
– Prof R P Mohanty Prof S S Yadav, Prof Ravi Shankar, Prof M K
Tiwari, Prof R S Deshpande, Mr N Ratnaliikar, Dr Jitesh Thakkar
– Thankful to numerous research scholars and faculty
members from various institutes for making us realize
the trends and importance of research in current
scenario
2

3. Prelude
As a prelude, You may look at the presentation
given by me on 23 July 2012 at FDP on Multivariate
Data Analysis for Management Research at ABV-
IIITM Gwalior.
Available at
http://www.slideshare.net/SanjeevDeshmukh
/trends-inmgmtresearchjuly2012sgd
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4. Speaking points..
Imperatives
About Research
Part I : Connect Research
– Connecting with oneself, institute, society
Part II: Connected Researcher
– Trend 1 : Collaboration
– Trend 2 : Emergence of social media
– Trend 3 : Alternative Metrics
Closing remarks..
4

5. ARC view of research
• Attributional
• Relational
• Classificational
• “our e: Deshpa de ‘ “, I stitute for “o ial & E o o i Cha ge, B lore
5

6. Research in pursuit of knowledge
• Attributional:
– Attributing a measurement (definition) to a
particular Concept.
• Growth, Leadership, Managerial Efficiency
• Relational:
– Relating a phenomenon with its determinants
• Explaining behaviour
• Classificational:
– Understanding by categorizing on the basis of some
indicators
• Taxonomy, Innovators Vs Followers, Leaders Vs Laggards
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7. Some basic feature of research
process
• Always involves bringing together three sets of things:
 some content that is of interest
 some ideas that give meaning to that content, and
 some techniques or procedures by means of which those ideas and content
can be studied.
• These three sets of things more formally, as three distinct, though interrelated
domains:
 The Substantive domain, from which we draw contents that seem worthy of
our study and attention;
 The Conceptual domain, from which we draw ideas that seem likely to give
meaning to our results; and
 The Methodological domain, from which we draw techniques that seem
useful in conducting that research.
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8. Stepping into research
• Method and Methodology
– Method refers to the techniques and Methodology to the strategy
• Logic as an Essence of Philosophy
– Inference depends on the law of Causation
– Deductive and Inductive are methods Non Exclusive
– Structuralism as the holistic approach
• Why Philosophy?
– In Search of Knowledge, Understanding of Nature and Meaning of
Universe.
– Creation of Theories OR Universality about Basic things.
– In-depth knowledge of a phenomenon
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9. Two models : AROHA and AVAROHA
A - Algorithm
A – Approach V - Variables
R – Review A - Arrangement
O - Objectives R - Results
H - Hypothesis O - Objectivity
A - Analysis H – Humanistic
A – Analytical Rigour
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Source: Deshpande R S, Institute for Social & Economic Change, B’lore

10. How to get into a research topic?
• Searching for new evidence from facts and
concluding with a new hypothesis.
• It should be net addition to the existing
knowledge or at least a new interpretation of
that.
• It should be crystal clear in its meaning.
• It should have a hypothesis which is not a
statement of existing facts.
• It should be empirically analyzable.
10

11. How it Should be?
• It should be amenable to the resources at the
control of the researcher.
• It must match with the time and budget of the
researcher.
• It must allow critical appraisal and stand to the
rigourous testing.
• Debate on a topic is different from research, former
poses two different points of views whereas, the
later provides test of a hypothesis.
• It should be ethically correct.
11

12. 15
12
Some aspects of boundary
• Discipline Boundary
• Time or Resource Boundary
• Information or Data Boundary
• Contextual boundary
• These boundaries may affect
connectivity !

13. Observation:
Researchers and research quality
• The profile of researchers in the country is by
and large not very promising
• There is a disconnect between researcher and
his research
• Disconnect between researcher in India and
the Global community
• Not able to penetrate into high quality
original/novel research as recognized by the
international community

14. Current scenario..
• Collaborative focus
• Interdisciplinary push
• Immediacy factor
• Need for visibility
• Suited to addressing socio-economic
imperatives
• Openness (process, findings, outputs)

15. Starting points.
• E er thi g is o e ted to e er thi g else
• Connected world view
– E a led i tri si desire to e o e ted
– Enabled by research
– Enabled by IT

16. Two views..
• Classical view
– Research in isolation
– Research is
compartmentalized
– No sharing
• Contemporary view
– Research is connected
– Research cannot be
done in isolation
– Research has to be
connected to society?

17. Connecting with oneself
• Identify your strengths
• Leverage these strengths
• Develop your research theme
• Develop your glossary
• Develop/use appropriate methodology
• Internalize research (RS must absorb deeply
into the process so that the topic becomes
part of his genetic code or DNA )

18. Connecting with institution/university
• Understand the research profile of your
institute/university
• Develop friendship /affiliation with other
researchers of the institute/university
• There is an established repository of
knowledge and systemic procedure
embedded in the institute: follow that
• Attempt to fit yourself in the bigger picture

19. Connecting with industry
• Transfer of knowhow from you to industry
• Understand and appreciate needs of industry
• Establish a dialogue with industry
– E a ple of Vipul Gupta s Ph D ith JK T res
• Invest in some confidence building exercises
• Get feedback and give back your deliverables

20. Connecting with society
• What is the relevance of your research to
society
• Societal view ?
• Ask some embarrassing questions
– Is my research really relevant to society ?
– Is my research going to change quality of life?
• Keep reflecting on these questions and you
yourself will come out with answers, may be
after getting Ph D !

21. Part II
Connected Researcher

22. Trend 1 : Collaboration !
• Sharing of information
• Institutional
collaboration
• Professional networks
• Social networks

23. Implications
• Sharing of information/Knowledge made easy
• Ope sour e paradig
• You must collaborate
• Your collaborator may be anywhere in the
globe!
• Be comfortable with power & influence of
social media !
• ‘esear h . ?

24. Remark..
New digital technologies are
predisposing scholars to an open
scholarship of content, knowledge and
lear i g (Katz, 2010).
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25. Types of scholarly resources
• E-journals
• Reviews
• Pre-prints and working papers
• Encyclopedias, dictionaries, and annotated content
• Data
• Blogs
• Discussion forums
http://www.arl.org/sc/models/models-pubs/search-form.shtml
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26. Trend 2: Social media
• Social media are tools for social interaction using
Web-based and mobile technologies (Wikipedia).
• These technologies, often referred to as Web 2.0 ,
provide services that support users in generating
and publishing their own content.
• The social interactions developed as a result of
this activity can support engagement with
communities of practice through networking and
other co-operative and collaborative practices.

27. Connected researcher and social
media
• Idea of o e ted resear her is ot alie -
Researchers have always exchanged, shared and
disseminated information through various media:
brain storming sessions, conferences, workshops,
symposiums, doctoral consortia etc,
-Researchers have always built a network of peers,
friends, seniors
• Range of social media tools to facilitate and
support existing behaviours and practices –
– easy and free to use, user friendly !

28. Social media and researchers
• Use of social media becoming more
widespread amongst researchers
- Social Media : a guide for Researchers
published in February 2011 by RIN -
Digital Researcher Days run by Vitae at the
British Library

29. Why use social media? ..1..
• Help to build your research profile – sho ase ourself
and your work thus facilitating visibility
– Allows to build network, Help to explore and leverage research opportunities
Help to get early feedback
– Facilitate your online visibility
• Enhances research - according to CIBER (2010)
– Disseminating findings, Identifying Research Opportunities
– Finding collaborators
• “o ial edia prese ts so e opportu ities for etter,
faster resear h a d disse i atio CIBE‘
CIBER. 2010. Social media and research workflow? http://www.ucl.ac.uk/infostudies/research/ciber/Charleston-2010.pdf
Brabazon, T. 2010. A community of scholars.
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=413384
Cann et al. 2011. Social Media: a guide for researchers. http://ht.ly/3TWiR

30. Why use social media? ..2..
• The connection with:
– Other researchers and Ph D students, both
internal and external
– Research community
– Experts
– Industry
– Society
• Growing need to communicate research
findings to public – these tools make it easier

31. Why use social media? ..3..
• May save time – use it to har est the isdo of
ro ds a d fi d resour es through our et ork
• It a help o er o e the s dro e of isolatio of
doi g resear h
• Engages you with a community that cares about
what you care about and in turn share with them
We do t ha e a hoi e o hether e do social
media, the question is how well we do it”. –
Erik Qualman

32. How to do it:
Your digital identity
 Ha e a o li e prese e or digital footpri t
 Institutional – e.g. information on
institute/university webpages (www.iiitm.ac.in)
 Professional – e.g. LinkedIn profile, Academia ,
 ReserarchGate
 Social media - e.g. Facebook, Twitter
 Slideshare , Authorstream

33. Digital Identity
• A hypothetical example
• Dr TechnoWatch
• Joined xxx in 1995;, a huge multinational.
• Technowatch Community (Leader since 2000 focusing on emerging trends, technologies, and
business issues.
• Current Title: Principal Resesrch Consultant - Social Insights, Corporate Market Insights
• My Identity
 Profile = LinkedIn
 Community =TechnoWatch
 Blogs : Typepad = hhh ; Tumblr = pppp
 Twitter ID = Technowatch
 Facebook = pppzzz
 Scopus Author Code : 17181009

34. Online presence considerations
• Use social media for your online identity
• Lots of tips available (e.g. Online Research
identity blog post)
• Google scholar citation profiles

35. Example: Blogs
Blogs are a great way to share information
–Test your ideas out with a wide audience
–Learn from others
–Form new relationships
–Build / manage your online personal brand
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36. Mendeley : Useful tool
• Mendeley is a free reference
Manager and academic social network that can
help organize research, collaborate with others
online, and discover the latest research.
– Automatically generate bibliographies
– Collaborate easily with other researchers online
– Easily import papers from other research software
– Find relevant papers ased o hat ou re readi g
– Access your papers from anywhere online
www.mendeley.com 36

37. Characteristics of CR
• Connected researcher is IT savvy
• Connected researcher spend more time online
compared to an average researcher
• Connected researcher responds positively to
criticism
• Connected researcher is positively engaged
with the topic
• Connected researcher is also a Contended
researcher
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38. Connected research community
Amar Amik Garg
Bakshi
KVS Rao
Sharad
Tripta
Anandan Prof. Sastry
Venkie
Prof Ajit Verma
Prof. Brahma
Prrof Biswas
Prof. G Kaushik
Dr. A D Garg
Ravi
R S Dalu
Avneet
Vipul
Prof. Vargheese
Ramamoorthy
Murali
Prof. Nirmal
Prof. Prateek
Jyoti
Shankar Prof. Subramanyam
Prof. Veni
Research Schola

39. How Emerald measures impact*?
• Citations
• Usage
• Inclusion of research in courseware/
Training material
• Media comment
• Implementation in Practice
• Transformation of Research for new audience
• Awards
*Source http://www.emeraldinsight.com/authors/impact/index.htm

40. Impact zones of research
Source: Emerald Insight

41. Trend 3: Altmetrics
altmetrics is the creation and study of new metrics
based on the Social Web for analyzing, and
informing scholarship. www.altmetrics.org
• Supplement to traditional peer-reviewed metrics
• Looks at downloads
• Crowdsource peer-re ie
• Many tools currently available:
– Google Scholar Profile/citations
– Mendeley
– Total-Impact
– ReaderMeter

42. Mobile apps for researchers
• Research will go mobile
• ZappyLab is pioneer in creating an ecos-
system which is useful, practical and foolproof
• Currently for medicines..
• http://www.authoraid.info/resource-library
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43. Closing remarks..
• To be effective researcher, one must be able
connect research with
• Oneself
• Institute
• Industry
• Society
• In contemporary world, researcher must also
be connected . For this Social media offers an
interesting scope
43

44. References
Bozalek V, N’gambi D & Gachago D (in press) Emerging Technologies in South
African HEIs: Institutional enables and constraints
Eysenbach G (2011) Can Tweets Predict Citations? Metrics of Social Impact Based
on Twitter and Correlation with Traditional Metrics of Scientific Impact. Journal of
Medical Internet Research 13(4). Available at: http://www.jmir.org/2011/4/e123
Thorin SE (2003) Global changes in scholarly communication. In SC Hsianghoo, PWT
Poon and C McNaught (eds) eLearning and Digital Publishing. Dordrecht: Springer.
Available at http://www.springerlink.com/content/w873x131171x2421/
Waldrop M (2008) Science 2.0: Great new tool, or great risk? Scientific American.
Available at: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=science-2-point-0-
great-new-tool-or-great-risk

45. References
• Digital Researcher http://www.vitae.ac.uk/researchers/315321/Digital-
Researcher.html
• Cann, A., Dimitriou, K., Hooley, T., "Social Media : A guide for researchers",
(February), 2011
http://www.rin.ac.uk/our-work/communicating-and-disseminating-research/social-
media-guide-researchers
• Pegrum, M., "'I link therefore I am': network literacy as a core digital literacy", E-
learning and Digital Media 7(4), 346-354 2010 doi:10.2304/elea.2010.7.4.346
• Research Information Network, "If you build it, will they come? How researchers
perceive and use web 2.0", 2010
http://www.rin.ac.uk/our-work/communicating-and-disseminating-research/use-
and-relevance-web-20-researchers
• iGoogle http://www.google.com/ig
• Google Reader http://www.google.com/reader
• Fellowship Down http://my.rsc.org/blogs/73 45

46. Thank you
deshmukh.sg@gmail.com
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