Overview

Open Research Overview and Mini-Project Proposal

Dr A.Aitken (Curtin University of Technology) & Prof. M.Shepperd (Brunel University)

Introduction

In general, academic research is usually undertaken in a closed fashion (e.g. limited collaboration and the results and details are generally only made public when the research is complete and published).

In contrast, in the software development world much work is now done in an open and collaborative fashion (generally involving anyone who wants to be involved).

Greater Problem / Research Question / Hypothesis

This research will consider the greater problem of whether research, generally speaking, can be undertaken in a more open and collaborative way (in a similar way to open source software development).

Issues to be considered and investigated (in the long term) include:

• How to determine methods (e.g. protocols) for the open research?

• How to determine and recognise contribution within open research?

• How to handle differing opinions and approaches (forks) within a research project?

• What sort of infrastructure is needed to support such research (and does it already exist)?

The overall research question / hypothesis will be: Is open research a feasible alternative to the traditional research paradigm?

Specific Problem / Research Question / Hypothesis

An initial research project will look at one type of research (systematic reviews) in one domain (software engineering) to help investigate some of the issues mentioned above.

The specific research question / hypothesis will be: What are the advantages and disadvantages of doing a systematic review in software engineering within an open research framework?

Current (Mini-)Project

Within this research project an initial mini-project will be undertaken.  This will involve developing an overview of the workflow involved in an open-research based systematic review and sketching what the result of such research would look like (a prototype research project).