OR2012 Developer Challenge: The Winners!

Jul 12, 2012 by kpitkin

 
 
After much deliberation, the winners of the DevCSI Open Repositories 2012 Developer Challenge have been decided…
 

Winner

 
Patrick McSweeney, University of Southampton
 
 
 
 
 

Idea:

 
Data Engine
 
McSweeney’s idea involves a set of tools which turn a repository into a data management and visualisation suite with a simple provenence model.

The suite would provide conversion tools to convert scientific data from lab equipment into CSV. CSV can be loaded into a temporary database where querys can be run through a web front end to create derived CSVs from existing data. The repository would catalog how files were derived from source data and what queries were used to do this. CSV can then be visualised in the suite using a range of visualisation tools, including D3 JS. He demonstrated a number of these visualisations in his pitch.
 
Patrick gave us a quick video interview describing his idea…

This video is also available on Vimeo.
 

Judges Comments:

 
This was new and cool, and sits along side a number of other efforts in this area, so the judges hope to see this developed further along with some standards.
 

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Runner Up/Microsoft Challenge

 
Keith Gilbertson and Linda Newman
 

Idea:

 
MATS: Mobile Audio Transcription and Submission?
 
Gilbertson’s original idea involved an electronic device to be used by historians, archivists, and others who work with audio transcripts. The device would record an audio file, and then deposit it into a repository, where it is automatically transcribed. After speaking with other developers, the idea was refined to extend last year’s SWORD mobile phone app. Users will be able to choose between Microsoft Research MAVIS and Amazon Mechanical Turk Transcription to automatically transcribe the audio recording.
 

Judges Comments:

 
This entry not only showed something of general repository community, it also embodied a lot of what we wanted to see around the challenge. They came with an idea, talked to other developers to flesh it out and then presented it. The idea also made the best use of a Microsoft technology, so it won the Microsoft Challenge prize of a .Net Gadgeteer kit.
 

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Honourable Mention

 
Mark MacGillivray and Richard Jones, Cottage Labs
 

Idea:

 
Getting Academics Closer to Repositories
 
MacGillivray and Jones proposed a javascript widget that can be easily embedded by an academic on their own web pages that automatically tracks their submissions to their repo, and provides useful statistics whilst also linking out to other cool sources of information. They demonstrated the basics of this, and described how they would develop this further.
 
Mark gave us a quick video interview describing the idea in more detail…

This video is also available on Vimeo.
 

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Honourable Mention

 
Ben O’Steen and Cameron Neylon, Cottage Labs and Science and Technology Facilities Council
 

Idea:

 
Is this research readable?
 
We spend a lot of time arguing over whether people have access, should have access, would have access if they knew how to get it. Why don’t we actually just find out whether people really do have access to the published literature from where they sit when they’re doing their work? O’Steen and Neylon have designed a survey in which we functionally check whether a human being thinks they have access to a given work we can look at how access, and its lack, effects the daily work of people interested in research. This will provide a dataset on access that can be used to support policy development and further technical work.
 

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Featured image by Adam Field