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Your Project

Today is for discussion and reflection. In the afternoon we will have time to work on your own projects.

How to start organizing your own project

  • Formulate your research question
  • Describe which data you need to answer the research question
  • Describe how you want to gather relevant data to study
  • How will you analyse these data?
  • Which digital tools do you require?
  • Are there already tools to help you answer your question? If so, which tools?
  • If not, how would you develop such a tool? What features does it need? Which features are 'need-to-haves', and which features are 'nice-to-haves'?
  • Try and estimate how long you would need to develop these features: this is very difficult to do accurately, but thinking about it in this way forces you to look at your features with a critical eye. After all, if you have to develop the functionality yourself, you must consider if you have enough time to do it within the timespan of your project.

Where to find existing research software?

There are several places where you might start looking for existing tools developed by other researchers or engineers. Below we will list several, in no particular order. Keep in mind that existing open-source software can be a starting point for your solution, it does not need to be perfect. You can always fork it and start developing it yourself!

  • Zenodo: A public platform for sharing publications, software, datasets, presentations, you name it. You can filter on software after searching for a term. This site definitely contains the most software.
  • The Research Software Directory (eScience Center): a directory that is used by several academic institutions, mostly in Europe and North America.
  • Ineo (CLARIAH): tools developed by the CLARIAH consortium (NL).
  • Through your own research: if you find a publication that uses a method that you find inspiring or even perfect for your research question, see if the paper has a repository link attached, or if any of the researchers have accounts on Github and see if they have made their software open-source. If not, you can always reach out to them; most researchers that do not publicize their code have simply forgotten, or think nobody will be interested in it.