WEI, Jian’s blog

Be organized certainly helps. Nowadays, with the help of computers, things could be organized much more efficient. As a lab researcher, I find some database tools very useful and hope that similar software could see more and more usage for research groups and even departments.

Since 2004, I’ve been using phpbb forum to write down my thoughts and interesting ideas, also other things like modifications of the major equipments I was responsible for, and stuff related to some of our papers, like from which Origin file the figure was exported, and useful comments by others etc.

The phpbb forum is an open source software created in 2000. A friend of mine (Lifeng) first used it for the Chinese student community at Rutgers, and then I followed him to become the administrator of the forum in 2002. It is based on mySQL database and people can search the posts by keyword, by user name, and can also limit the range of search.

After playing with phpbb for a while, and become comfortable with php programming, I started to using it as my online lab notebook since 2004. After I graduated from Rutgers and started a postdoc at Northwestern, I paid $4 a month for a commercial webhosting service to continue my online notebook.  With commercial webhosting, the setting is much easier, and actually there are a lot other software available but I do not have time to explore them.

I’ve noticed that some groups are using internal wiki to keep useful information. From my point of view, phpbb forum is better than wiki for the purpose of a searchable notebook.  Although wiki is also based on database, you can only search for the entry words, not all the words in the posts. That is not what I wanted and I believe other researchers would also prefer to search the whole posts.  The wiki is more useful when people want to record the changes that had been done for editing the entries, which maybe important for a dictionary but not important for a lab notebook.

Comparing to online blogging software, again phpbb forum is more suitable for note saving.  In a phpbb forum, you can have a quite complicated hierarchy structure, like several different categories and then many forums under each category, and can set different privileges for users, and set the forums private or public accessible. For example, in a sub- forum of one particular equipment, other people in your group can also start a topic, e.g., about recent maintenance of the equipment, or some recent accident with the equipment etc.  In comparison, blogging is most of time a one man show and not very useful if you want more involvement from other group members. Also I am not sure about the searching function of the blog software.

Although phpforum is better than wiki and blog, I am not fully satisfied with it. It by all means was not designed for a scientific lab notebook. The ideal software for a lab notebook that I was hoping to find, should combine all the important things, like the links to device fabrication details, the links to devices SEM images, and test results, and other related comments for each single sample. And when I need the information for that sample or need to compare parameters for all related samples, the database will help to sort that out.

So far I haven’t found such software. Maybe it is already available for big companies. I’ve played with some open source software that available on the hosting website, like a Coppermine online photo album and a 4images online photo album (both similar to phpbb but designed for better handling of images) to store device images as well as some photos of instrument during maintenance.  However, they are not as useful as the phpbb forum for me since those images are not well linked, e.g., to the device description and data.

 Most professors probably have spent quite some time on how to store their group’s data and how to organize them, and many students and postdocs probably have the experience of struggling with poor documented equipments. I am wondering, is it feasible that the University can provide each group some database service like the phpbb forum I’ve been using, but maybe more powerful. That would certainly improve the productivity of the research and has also other benefits like prevent scientific misconducts because all the data are in the database and nobody can say that his databook was eaten by mice or lost to nowhere.

In fact, at Rutgers before I left, I’ve noticed that the administration have made a better university homepage and tried to standardize all the department homepages, and also started a new myRutgers portal for every student with integrated services like email, calendar, course registration etc. That portal service probably could be modified and be useful for a research group.  However, since the service is provided by a department within the administration, I am not sure whether they could be as efficient as commercial service provider, although they may provide more customized service.   At Northwetsern, I’ve noticed that the old university email system has been replaced with service by gmail, which is very helpful because gmail has a large mailbox and has database functions like search and categorization etc.

Another useful and very simple tool for a group is an email listserv. I’ve been the listserv administrator for Chinese student Association at Rutgers from 2000 to maybe 2004, so I am also familiar with this tool.  With a listserv, the group members won’t need to collect a bunch of email addresses and each individual can also change their email address without worrying about missing emails.  I noticed some professors with a large group are using this tool, e.g., Tobin Marks’ group at NWU, http://chemgroups.northwestern.edu/marks/directory.html.

Some departments have used event calendars, research description, and alumni info etc, based on database.  One of the exceptional is the UIUC chemistry department; they even have nice photos of every faculty members, http://www.scs.uiuc.edu/chem/.  I think that is a very good strategy in terms of recruiting new students and new faculty members.

In summary, I think that using database software can help individual researchers, research groups, and departments to be better organized.  And I believe better organized means improved productivity and more chance to success.