This cookbook is for anyone and everyone whose job it is to work with researchers. It's a tough ole job working with researchers and we want to help you do your job better (ipso facto, enabling researchers to "stand on the shoulders of mere mortals" like yourself, so we can all help contribute to the great research ideas which will make our world a better place). Who should read this cookbook? - You should have a browse of the recipes in this book if:
- your job description includes the words "research support" or your day-to-day job includes talking and working with researchers in situ.
- you are interested in how the world is going to change now that researchers are learning to use the latest digital research skills emerging on the Web everyday (afterall machines are themselves excellent research companions with an incredible capacity to lift information in a single bound!).
The recipes in this book are intended to help you cope with these people called "researchers" (difficult customers as they are, it is worth it). And by "researcher" we mean any and all of the following:
- Senior researchers (those who roam the halls of the ivory tower and often own their own castle/cathedral on campus, usually with titles from the medieval ages such as chancellor, associate professor, deputy associate dean, professor, associate professor, provost, chair and the last but certainly not least the all powerful "reader"!)
- Sixth form (high school) students who are looking to go onto University and change the world. Old souls in young bods who could be the next Stephen Hawking or Rosalind Franklin (did you know most Noble Peace Prize winners had their 'Eureka moments' before the age of 35!)
- Middle carreer researchers, who work day and night, weekends and holidays. The smart kids who are also brainiac endurance athletes, fighting against all odds to attain the unattainable: the title of 'professor'!
- Undergraduates who show promise in their studious behaviour and even have some plausible ideas for experiments which can build on the research work of their professors, maybe even get a publication or two. Some of these brave souls might even have a brilliant idea for a startup making research valuable to the masses!
- Doctoral and Post-Doctoral students who will spend the next 3-7 years of their life on a single topic, desperatly trying to get beyond the conference poster and into that top tier journal so they might have a chance at becoming a slave for another ten years as an ECR ;-)
- Postgraduate students. Masters students struglling with the decision of carrying on to do a PhD, dreams of grandeur with one in one hundred who will change the world with their ideas!
- The rare yet beautiful "Reader" <--yes their is a rank even more important than professor ;-)
As you can see by the above, we do not like to discrimnate on who can call themselves a "researcher" - we value all researcher contributions regardless of age or stage in their carreer. Though, we are somewhat biased on one front: our belief that modern research is usually collaborative. Sure, there is the exception to the rule, but on the whole we do NOT think most researchers are still doing this:
Rather, we believe that great research teams will be a group of richly diverse people whom all have an equally important part in bringing the research idea (via publication of TED talk) to the world... Welcome to the Bazaar (more on why we call this the "research bazaar" (aka #ResBaz later).
The kinds of people who typically read the recipes in this cookbook and contribute their own recipes include (but are not limited to):
- "that geek in the lab" department whom everyone always comes to for 'IT help'.
- IT Support for your local research faculty, way overtasked with way too much to do for all the researchers whom you are responsible for helping.
- Helpdesk or call centre, with a never end barrage of questions, of which the answer is "have you tried turning it off and on again?"
- Librarian who wants to help researchers with the latest digital research tools but not sure where to begin?!
- Or perhaps you are like us: one of the new up and coming central University departments dedicated to helping researchers with digital tooling and data?! (Hint: we help you with all those research tools which are not Microsoft Office).
Ok enough on whom and why you should read this, and onto the ResBaz recipes!
Ah wait, one more thing! This cookbook has been written via a GitHub wiki so that anyone can come along and rewrite it! In fact, we have used the metaphor of "cookbook" so that you can take any of the recipes and rewrite them to fit your organisational point of view. We have licensed this cookbook and all it recipes within it via a "creative-commons-share-alike" license which means you should expect other people to come along and copy your recipes so they can rewrite them as well <-- think about all the lovely new dishes we'll be able to share with one another!
So what are you waiting for, head over to the wiki now and check out the ResBaz Recipes: https://github.com/resbaz/cookbook/wiki