Significant Science

I spend a lot of time thinking about grants in the health sciences and trying to find them and entering them into the site I work on, ScanGrants. Therefore, I find it really fascinating to see what is out there vis-à-vis funding for researchers with projects in mind.

The other day I learned of a study already funded and actually underway and that has led me to think about a myriad of subjects from professional relationships (in this case in the library and information sciences) to how those conducting research can leverage those relationships so as to broadly disseminate their calls for study participants via social media such as Twitter and FriendFeed.

For example, I serve on a committee (the Technology Committee of the Pacific Northwest Chapter of the Medical Library Association) with Emily Glenn.

She is an extraordinarily efficient person. Being such, she was recently awarded a research grant to conduct the study, “Experimenting Outside the Information Center: Non-Traditional Roles for Information Professionals in Biomedical Research.”

The very topic intrigued me, given that Emily and I both have master’s degrees in library science but work in non-library biomedical settings.

What interested me even more was the way Emily used the simple method of emailing to ask me to tweet about her study so as to spread the word about her research so that she could and her co-grantee could recruit more participants. But she also included a link to a sample tweet as well as link to the blog post in which the study is described.

and a survey is provided there for those interested in enrolling as participants.

I found this all very fascinating for several reasons.

First of all, Emily made it very easy for me to help her in the recruitment process. Simple request via email—sample tweet. I tweeted and went the extra mile by also posting news of the study in the medical librarians’ room of FriendFeed. What a boon these social networks are for those trying to recruit study participants in the most cost effective manner (although these methods might skew the results of such studies by creating pools of the most Web savvy, most socially networked subjects).

Second, I was so impressed by the worth of the study that I joined the organization that gave Emily the grant, the Special Libraries Association given that her study seemed of such import and value. “Hmm, this seems like a very worthwhile group—better join it.” And it was really useful to see how the SLA is organized. I not only joined it, I spent quite a bit of time exploring how it is organized and signed up for many of its divisions and caucuses.

Thus, a well-publicized grant-funded research study, advertised via Twitter and a blog, is a recruitment tool for the granting agency as well both for new members and for potential researchers. (I kept thinking as I worked through the quite fascinating questions in the survey, “What a neat study—wish I had thought of that!”).

Additionally, grant-funded research projects are prestige building and reputation enhancing for the grantee’s home institution. For instance, I learned via the research project’s blog this about Emily’s home institution, “She is currently the Information Specialist and Library Services Coordinator at Seattle Biomedical Research Institute (SBRI)…SBRI is the largest independent, non-profit organization in the United States focused solely on infectious disease discovery research.” That is quite interesting.

And the questions on the survey were thought-provoking. I really urge those interested in medical librarianship (this means you, library school students) and the role of the information sciences in medicine to go through the survey. Here are a few of the questions:

Do you contribute to the work of biomedical researchers by providing services in any of the following areas? Check all that apply.

Instruction for local investigators using information resources developed by collaborators outside of your biomedical research setting

Instruction for collaborators on using information resources developed by investigators in your biomedical research setting

Project management

Web-based portal management (including structure, metadata, workflow or information management for online collaboration spaces)

And so on. The survey made me think about not only what I do, but what I probably should be doing and could do. I look forward to the results of the study.

Kudos to the SLA for adding to the knowledge base of the biomedical sciences by funding such worthwhile projects and to Emily Glenn and her co-investigator Betsy Rolland for demonstrating how to harness social networking tools for study recruitment.