Guiding Personas for Continuous Science
Understanding the needs, challenges, and motivations of six key groups shaping scientific communication and collaboration.
Contents
Individual Researchers / Research Groups
Individual researchers are at the forefront of scientific discovery. Researchers commonly work towards scientific discoveries together. They share funding to research and publish their work as a collective. They often need streamlined tools to publish and share their findings effectively.
🧍🏻Profile
- Primarily engaged in extensive research projects
- Often affiliated with universities or research institutions
- Regularly publish findings in academic journals (1-2 annually as an individual, 2-10 as a group, 5-10 in draft)
🎯 Goals
- Excel in their field
- Publish research efficiently and broadly
- Enhance the impact and reach of their work
- Showcase their contribution
- Integrate data and findings seamlessly into publications
- Secure future funding or tenure for Lead
😞 Frustrations
- Lengthy, complex and limited control in traditional publication processes
- Collaboration across multiple tools is challenging
- Shift to researcher paying for publishing (openly)
- Difficulty in making research accessible to wider audiences
- Lack of interactive elements in current publishing platforms limits exposure of the breadth, depth and impact of their results
💚 Preferences
- Tools that simplify complex processes
- Platforms that support interactive content
- Solutions that are compatible with existing research workflows, tooling and specific datasets
- Understanding the impact of their work
💭 Behavioral Considerations
- Highly detail-oriented and methodical
- Frequent need for collaboration and feedback
- Varying opinions on the adoption of new tools–some will be keen, while others will be reluctant to disrupt established workflows
📍 Where to Find
- Academic conferences and symposiums
- Open Access (OA) journal submissions
- Other research journals, publications and preprint services
- University and institutional networks
Bringing the Persona to Life¶
Individual researchers are at the forefront of scientific discovery. Researchers commonly work towards scientific discoveries together. They share funding to research and publish their work as a collective.
🪪 Edith
- Age: 35
- Assistant Professor
- Single
- No Plants 🪴
⁉️ Why
- Wanted to be a doctor, then decided she wanted to effect broader change
- Did a stint in industry doing medical and developed a passion for data science
- Wants to help researchers make sense of their huge, complex datasets
🙏 Needs
- Collaborators to produce all the raw data and motivate the scientific drivers, computational infrastructure, data literate students
- Funding for interdisciplinary work, research autonomy, compelling ways to communicate the results, ability to share methodologies in reproducible manner
