Research Artifacts Research Articles

Understanding the Hawthorne effect in wound research-A scoping review.

The Hawthorne Effect (HE) is considered a methodological artefact in research, although its definition and influence on research outcomes lack consensus. This review explored how this term has been mentioned and discussed in the area of wound research. A scoping review was conducted on ProQuest Central, Scopus, EbscoHost, and online databases of indexed wound journals using the methodological framework by Arksey and Malley. A review protocol was applied to detail key terms, truncation and Boolean operators, and inclusion and exclusion criteria. Search findings were reported using PRISMA guidelines. A total of 38 articles reporting primary evidence were identified. Three themes emerged from the review: wound researchers' awareness of HE, the acknowledgement of the existence or otherwise of HE, and the mentioning of HE in passing. These results reflect a lack of attention to and understanding and awareness of the HE in the area of wound research. It is suggested that the HE receives more attention as a methodological concern, and its potential influence is considered and mitigated when planning future studies. Recommendations are provided to minimise the impact of the HE on the rigour of the research and confidence afforded to research findings.

Desperately Seeking the Information in Information Systems Research

Throughout its history, the information systems (IS) discipline has studied a wide range of phenomena. Many IS researchers support the notion that our interest in the IT artifact - defined as "bundles of material and cultural properties packaged in some socially recognizable form such as hardware and/or software" (Orlikowski & Iacono, 2001, p. 122) - unites the IS discipline. In "Desperately Seeking the 'IT' in IT Research-A Call to Theorizing the IT Artifact," Orlikowski and Iacono (2001) argued that the IS field is "premised on the centrality of information technology in everyday socio-economic life...[yet] the field has not deeply engaged with its core subject matter-the information technology (IT) artifact" (p. 121). In their review of articles that had been published to date in Information Systems Research, nearly 25 percent did not discuss technology and most had simplistic views of technology: The outcome is that much IS research draws on commonplace and received notions of technology, resulting in conceptualizations of IT artifacts as relatively stable, discrete, independent, and fixed. As a consequence, IT artifacts in IS research tend to be taken for granted or assumed to be unproblematic. (Orlikowski & Iacono, 2001, pp. 121-122) Orlikowski and Iacono's (2001) article drew attention to our need to focus on the core of who we are as a discipline. It also created an important turning point. As an unintended consequence of the article, the IS discipline began abandoning its consideration and discussion of information. As a result, IS researchers focused more heavily on technology and the IT artifact, and information became implicit in our research. In this editorial, we expand upon Orlikowski and Iacono (2001) and draw the IS discipline's attention to its abandonment of that other central component in information systems research - information.

Benefits and relevance of International Standards in a design science research project for process assessments

One critical challenge in IT Service Management (ITSM) process assessment is the issue of transparency in the way ITSM processes are assessed. A Design Science Research (DSR) project was executed to design, develop and evaluate an artefact in order to conduct software-mediated process assessments in ITSM. International Standards were used to validate the design, development and evaluation of the research artefact in order to demonstrate that the artefact is relevant to practice. Studies relating to the use of International Standards to validate DSR artefacts are scant regardless of broader adoption of the DSR studies and acceptance of the International Standards in practice. DSR studies in particular are required to maintain a balance between research rigor and relevance by reporting artefacts that solve a class of problems based on scientific justification and practical evidence. International Standards provide bodies of knowledge that ensure products, services and processes are of acceptable quality and relevant to practice. Our DSR project confirmed that the external validity of an artefact can be improved with the use of International Standards. Using three International Standards, process assessment ISO/IEC 15504-330xx series, IT Service Management ISO/IEC 20000 series, and System and Software Quality Models from ISO/IEC 25010, this manuscript presents an account of a DSR project with three evaluation sites where the artefact was tested in real organizational contexts. The project demonstrated the significant role of International Standards to confirm research relevance during artefact design, development and evaluation.

Introduction: The role of fiction in screenwriting (as) research

Here the authors discuss the role of fiction in screenwriting practice research. The screenplays included in the ‘Screenplays as Research Artefacts’ special issue of TEXT present a range of stories, worlds, characters, visual scenarios and dialogue exchanges that function as vessels for theories and ideas. These eleven screenplays all use creative practice approaches to research across a wide variety of discourses. All of the works embrace fiction as an important method to convey their respective critical concerns, which, the authors argue, evidences an emerging hallmark of screenwriting (as) research when compared with associated forms in the creative writing and screen production disciplines: fiction as a staple of its storytelling, creative practice and research methodology. The authors suggest that the use of fiction to perform research and present findings illuminates the ways that knowledge can be affective, not merely textual or verbal, something that is exemplified in the selected screenplays.

Considering the social impacts of artefacts in information systems design science research

Design science research (DSR) is a distinct research paradigm in the information systems (IS) field that encourages the creation and evaluation of artefacts as a means for research. Yet, design science researchers often create and evaluate artefacts that tend to be techno-centric. By also considering the social impacts of a design science artefact throughout the creation and evaluation process, the researcher develops an artefact with a greater potential to thrive when the artefact is instantiated and implemented. Furthermore, the purposeful consideration of social impacts in the design science creation and evaluation process supports the researcher in developing a more complete contribution to the IS field, a field whose core foundation relates to information, technology, and social interactions. In this paper, we discuss the importance of identifying social impacts of artefacts as well as an expanded notion of artefacts in DSR. We provide guidelines for design science researchers on how to incorporate the social impacts of artefacts throughout the DSR process. Using vignettes, we demonstrate how researchers have incorporated social impacts and demonstrate the value of considering social impacts as design science researchers seek to create and evaluate artefacts to address a research problem.

Method for Designing Scalable Microservice-based Application Systematically: A Case Study

Microservice is a new transformation of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) which is gaining momentum in both academic and industry. The success of microservice began when giant companies like Netflix used them as a service architecture for the purpose of serving customers. Monolithic architecture used by Netflix previously was no longer able to cope with business development and it is difficult to scale to meet user demands. Although Netflix has been successful with microservice architecture, there is no systematic method introduced to produce microservice. Academic studies related to microservice are still in the early stages and have not yet reached maturity. Microservice is seen to require a method that helps organizations to systematically design microservices and replicate the success achieved by Netflix. In forming a method for this systematic microservice then the methods for building an existing microservice are studied. Based on the Design Science Research method, two research artefacts have been produced. The first artefact is a systematic design of microservice that has four main steps. The second artefact is the instantiation by applying the proposed microservice design method to the case studies, namely, MyFlix. Next the evaluation is made on the new method produced by obtaining expert opinions through the process of demonstration and interviewing. The expert assessment results found that the proposed method was able to produce a systematic microservice design based on the six proposed principles and the four main steps. This method can also produce a complete feature microservice such as cohesive, loose coupling, distributed and decentralized that will contribute to the production of scalable system.

Shybo – Design of a Research Artefact for Human-robot Interaction Studies

This article discusses the role of Design Research in the field of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). Notably, the Research through Design (RtD) approach is proposed as a valuable method to develop HRI research artefacts due to the importance of having a physical artefact, a robot, that enables direct interaction. Moreover, there is a growing interest in HRI for design methodologies as methods for investigation. The article presents an example of a design process, focused on hands-on activities, namely sketching, 3D modelling, prototyping, and documenting. These making practices were applied to the development of Shybo, a small sound-reactive robot for children. Particular attention has been given to the five prototypes that led to the definition of the current solution. Morphological, behavioral, and interaction aspects were investigated throughout the whole process. Each phase of the design process was then documented with the intent of sharing potentially replicable practices and contributing to the understanding of the role that RtD can play in HRI.

"Meta-analyses and P-curves support robust cycle shifts in women's mate preferences: Reply to Wood and Carden (2014) and Harris, Pashler, and Mickes (2014)": Correction to Gildersleeve, Haselton, and Fales (2014).

Reports an error in "Meta-analyses and p-curves support robust cycle shifts in women's mate preferences: Reply to Wood and Carden (2014) and Harris, Pashler, and Mickes (2014)" by Kelly Gildersleeve, Martie G. Haselton and Melissa R. Fales (Psychological Bulletin, 2014[Sep], Vol 140[5], 1272-1280). In the article, all p-curve analyses examining the Context Moderation Hypothesis Prediction mistakenly included the p-value from Little, Jones, Burt, & Perrett (2007) Study 2 for the simple effect of fertility on attraction to facial symmetry in a short-term relationship context (p < .001). The analyses should have instead included the p-value for the fertility X relationship context interaction (p = .011). In addition, the p-curve analyses examining exact two-tailed p-values for the Cycle Shift Prediction should have included an additional p-value from Provost et al. (2008) Study 1 for the main effect of fertility on attraction to gait masculinity. The reported p-value for this effect was .05, making it ineligible for inclusion in p-curves of reported p-values. However, the exact recalculated two-tailed p-value was .049, making it eligible for inclusion in p-curves of exact p-values. The corrected p-curve of exact two-tailed p-values evaluating the Cycle Shift Prediction and Context Moderation Prediction (displayed in Figure 2) now includes a total of 15 p-values (N = 1442) is no longer significantly right skewed χ²(30) = 41.25, p = .08. The corrected p-curve of exact two-tailed p-values evaluating the Cycle Shift Prediction, Context Moderation Prediction, and Partner Qualities Moderation Prediction (displayed in Figure 3) now includes a total of 21 p-values (N = 1707) and continues to be significantly right skewed Χ²(42) = 69.83, p = .004. As part of this correction, the online supplemental materials have been updated. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2014-35938-003.) Two meta-analyses evaluated shifts across the ovulatory cycle in women's mate preferences but reported very different findings. In this journal, we reported robust evidence for the pattern of cycle shifts predicted by the ovulatory shift hypothesis (Gildersleeve, Haselton, & Fales, 2014). However, Wood, Kressel, Joshi, and Louie (2014) claimed an absence of compelling support for this hypothesis and asserted that the few significant cycle shifts they observed were false positives resulting from publication bias, p-hacking, or other research artifacts. How could 2 meta-analyses of the same literature reach such different conclusions? We reanalyzed the data compiled by Wood et al. These analyses revealed problems in Wood et al.'s meta-analysis-some of which are reproduced in Wood and Carden's (2014) comment in the current issue of this journal-that led them to overlook clear evidence for the ovulatory shift hypothesis in their own set of effects. In addition, we present right-skewed p-curves that directly contradict speculations by Wood et al.; Wood and Carden; and Harris, Pashler, and Mickes (2014) that supportive findings in the cycle shift literature are false positives. Therefore, evidence from both of the meta-analyses and the p-curves strongly supports genuine, robust effects consistent with the ovulatory shift hypothesis and contradicts claims that these effects merely reflect publication bias, p-hacking, or other research artifacts. Unfounded speculations about p-hacking distort the research record and risk unfairly damaging researchers' reputations; they should therefore be made only on the basis of firm evidence. (PsycINFO Database Record

Everware toolkit. Supporting reproducible science and challenge-driven education.

Modern science clearly demands for a higher level of reproducibility and collaboration. To make research fully reproducible one has to take care of several aspects: research protocol description, data access, environment preservation, workflow pipeline, and analysis script preservation. Version control systems like git help with the workflow and analysis scripts part. Virtualization techniques like Docker or Vagrant can help deal with environments. Jupyter notebooks are a powerful platform for conducting research in a collaborative manner. We present project Everware that seamlessly integrates git repository management systems such as Github or Gitlab, Docker and Jupyter helping with a) sharing results of real research and b) boosts education activities. With the help of Everware one can not only share the final artifacts of research but all the depth of the research process. This been shown to be extremely helpful during organization of several data analysis hackathons and machine learning schools. Using Everware participants could start from an existing solution instead of starting from scratch. They could start contributing immediately. Everware allows its users to make use of their own computational resources to run the workflows they are interested in, which leads to higher scalability of the toolkit.

Wicked, Open, Collaborative: Why Research through Design Matters for HCI Research

Abstract In contrast to the first and second wave of Human Computer Interaction, the third wave grapples with wicked problems. However, re-solutions to wicked problems embodied in artifacts frame and change the understanding of the problem itself. Research through Design (RtD) is a constructive methodology to understand this interplay of problem framing through designing artifacts. RtD is also suited to resurface the theory within those artifacts through annotation. These annotations expose and emphasize qualities, values and assumptions held within artifacts by its creators. In addition to those modes for annotation, we will suggest two additional abstract frames through which RtD artifacts can be further annotated: Open Research Agenda and Interdisciplinarity. We will apply both frames to one research artifact, Loaded Dice to distill qualities from this artifact’s framing. Through this we will show how creating and deploying an artifact can change its environment which also includes its creators.

Research on Big Data – A systematic mapping study

Big Data has emerged as a significant area of study for both practitioners and researchers. Big Data is a term for massive data sets with large structure. In 2012, Big Data passed the top of the Gartner Hype Cycle, attesting the maturity level of this technology and its applications. The aim of this paper is to examine how do researchers grasp the big data concept? We will answer the following questions: How many research papers are produced? What is the annual trend of publications? What are the hot topics in big data research? What are the most investigated big data topics? Why the research is performed? What are the most frequently obtained research artefacts? What does big data research produces? Who are the active authors? Which journals include papers on Big Data? What are the active disciplines? For this purpose, we provide a framework identifying existing and emerging research areas of Big Data. This framework is based on eight dimensions, including the SMACIT (Social Mobile Analytics Cloud Internet of Things) perspective. Current and past research in Big Data are analyzed using a systematic mapping study of publications based on more than a decade of related academic publications. The results have shown that significant contributions have been made by the research community, attested by a continuous increase in the number of scientific publications that address Big Data. We found that researchers are increasingly involved in research combining Big Data and Analytics, Cloud, Internet of things, mobility or social media. As for quality objectives, besides an interest in performance, other topics as scalability is emerging. Moreover, security and quality aspects become important. Researchers on Big Data provide more algorithms, frameworks, and architectures than other artifacts. Finally, application domains such as earth, energy, medicine, ecology, marketing, and health attract more attention from researchers on big data. A complementary content analysis on a subset of papers sheds some light on the evolving field of big data research.

Explicating the Characteristics of STEM Teaching and Learning: A Metasynthesis

This metasynthesis focused on STEM teaching and learning practices in middle and high school classrooms and in informal settings. Research artifacts between 2005 and 2012 were examined. Fifty-eight unique artifacts were classified into four categories: reform-based teaching and learning, informal education, teacher factors, and technology use. Promising pedagogical reform-based practices included inquiry-based learning, engineering design, project-based learning, problem-based learning, and hands-on practices. The most common intervention identified was increasing teacher content knowledge. Even though STEM informal activities attempt to recruit underrepresented or low achieving students, the reality is that access to informal STEM activities is often based on students’ expressed high interest, prior academic achievement, teacher recommendation, time and travel availability and flexibility, and overall levels of ambition or motivation. Positive outcomes, due to technology, appeared to covary with other factors such as teacher content knowledge, the presence of campus support, or active engagement within a learning community.

Effects of scaffolded intensive reading on students’ reading comprehension performance

This research sought to explore the connection between a small-group intensive reading comprehension project and students’ performance in two sample English national exit exams (ENEEs) developed by the Ministry of Public Education, Costa Rica. The data were gathered from an intervention plan that combined the theoretical principles of schema theory, scaffolded reading comprehension, and intensive reading. The study adopts an action-research approach and uses a mixed design that combines quantitative and qualitative data in the analysis and interpretation of results. Participants included twelve students from a public high school in the Western Area of Costa Rica who needed special preparation for the ENEE, which narrows the research scope down to this population only. The data collection techniques included two sample ENEEs, field notes, and research artifacts. Findings reveal positive effects of scaffolded reading comprehension on student ENEE performance, but also it is warning that the generalizations to larger populations is not possible. The study sets implications at theoretical and practical level, and it calls for further investigation as a way to tackle the limitations identified.

Artifacts in knowledge management research: a systematic literature review and future research directions

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to assess the role of artifacts in the knowledge management field in the past 18 years (1997-2015) and to identify directions for future research. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted a systematic literature review of 101 articles published in seven journals retrieved from EBSCO and Google Scholar online research databases. The framework for analysis included 13 codes, i.e. author(s), title, year of publication, typology, theoretical lens, categorizations, methods for empirical work, relevancy, level of analysis, keywords, findings, research themes and future research directions. Codes were analyzed using qualitative and quantitative methods. Findings The findings lacked cumulativeness and consistency in the current knowledge management debate. Empirical works outnumbered conceptual contributions by two to one, and the majority of papers focused at the organizational level of analysis. Knowledge management systems, knowledge sharing and digital archives were the major research themes connected to artifacts, together with other closely aligned concepts such as learning and online learning, knowledge transfer and knowledge creation. Research limitations/implications This study has temporal and contextual limitations related to covered time span (18 years) and journals’ subscription restrictions. Originality/value This paper is a first attempt to systematically review the role of artifacts in knowledge management research and therefore it represents a primary reference in the knowledge management field. It provides directions to future theoretical and empirical studies and suggestions to managerial practices.

Voice in the agentic assemblage

In this article, we explore how a posthumanist stance has enabled us to work a different consideration of the way in which voice is constituted and constituting in educational inquiry; that is, we position voice in a posthuman ontology that is understood as attributable to a complex network of human and nonhuman agents that exceed the traditional understanding of an individual. Drawing on the work of Deleuze and Guattari, Barad, and Bennett, we present a research artifact that illustrates how this posthuman voice is productively bound to an agentic assemblage. The reconfiguration of a posthuman voice with/in an educational research artifact further enables us to explore various analytic questions: What happens when voice exceeds language and is more than (un)vocalized words emanating from a speaking subject? If the materiality of voice is not limited to sound (i.e. self-present language emitted from a human mouth), how do we account for it? That is, how might the materiality of voice be located in the space of intra-action among human and non-human objects? We conclude with implications for thinking qualitative methodology in education differently.

Report from the "What Is Open?" Workgroup

The scholarly community’s current definition of “open” captures only some of the attributes of openness that exist across different publishing models and content types. Open is not an end in itself, but a means for achieving the most effective dissemination of scholarship and research. We suggest that the different attributes of open exist along a broad spectrum and propose an alternative way of describing and evaluating openness based on four attributes: discoverable, accessible, reusable, and transparent. These four attributes of openness, taken together, form the draft “DART Framework for Open Access.” This framework can be applied to both research artifacts as well as research processes. We welcome input from the broader scholarly community about this framework.OSI2016 workgroup questionThere is a broad difference of opinion among the many stakeholders in scholarly publishing about how to precisely define open access publishing. Are “open access” and “open data” what we mean by open? Does “open” mean anything else? Does it mean “to make available,” or “to make freely available in a particular format?” Is a clearer definition needed (or maybe just better education on the current definition)? Why or why not? At present, some stakeholders see public access as being an acceptable stopping point in the move toward open access. Others see “open” as requiring free and immediate access with articles being available in CC-BY format. The range of opinions between these extremes is vast. How should these differences be decided? Who should decide? Is it possible to make binding recommendations (and how)? Is consensus necessary? What are the consequences of the lack of consensus?

Content-based Configuration Management System for Software Research and Development Document Artifacts

Because of the properties of software such as invisibility, complexity, and changeability, software configuration management (SCM) for software artifacts generated during software life-cycle has been used for guarantee of the quality of the software. However, the existing SCM system has only focused on code artifacts and software development document artifacts such as Software Requirements Specification (SRS), Software Design Description (SDD), and Software Test Description (STD). Moreover, software research-oriented project comes out late the code artifacts and the software development document artifacts. Therefore, there is a need for trace and management of software research document artifacts composed of highly abstracted non-functional requirements like ‘the purpose of the project’, ‘the objectives’, and ‘the progress’ before generation of the code artifacts and the software development document artifacts for a long time. Nevertheless, the existing SCM system cannot trace and manage them. In this paper, we propose content-based configuration management system comprised of the relevance link generation phase and content-based testing phase to trace and manage them. The preliminary application results show applicability and feasibility of the proposed system.

The neglected paraphernalia of practice? Objects and artefacts in social work identity, practice and research

Artefacts, objects and paraphernalia and their relationship to social work practice and identity have attracted little attention in social work despite their ubiquity in all aspects of our lives. This article introduces some theoretical perspectives on the qualities of artefacts and the nature of relationships between the material and social worlds; and considers the ways in which artefacts have been understood in social work research to date. It concludes by suggesting that noticing when and how social workers engage with artefacts may contribute to the development of our understanding of social work’s relationship with the non-human world and offer new insights into aspects of social work identity and practice.

The stories of supervision: creative writing in a critical space

ABSTRACTSupervising PhD candidates is a story in itself. Like a novel or screenplay, there are protagonists and antagonists, emotional transformations, dramatic twists and turns, and nearly always rising tension – especially in the domain of creative practice, where methodologies and research artefacts are still debated and contested. Voiceover narration comes into play, too, from both the candidate (‘Does my supervisor know what I'm trying to do?’) and the supervisor (‘Does my candidate really think this is research?’). And hopefully there is always a happy ending – or at least happy subject to minor revisions. There is a growing body of literature about PhD supervision. Here we seek to expand on this work by drawing specific attention to the supervision of the Creative Writing PhD in the contemporary academy in the Australian and British contexts, and in a form that befits this vibrant research discipline. In this paper, then, we make connections between theory and practice by presenting a series of fictionalised vignettes drawn from our collective experiences of supervising candidates. By being playful ourselves, we offer a creative-critical exploration of the creative practice research space that illuminates some of the challenges and opportunities for supervising in the discipline.

Repeatability in computer systems research

To encourage repeatable research, fund repeatability engineering and reward commitments to sharing research artifacts.