Reviews
"Research area reviews" are ways we work to grow and organize our shared information on a topic area on Public Lab. Every three months, we collaboratively review a topic (a.k.a. research area) with the goal of synthesizing and refreshing relevant resources so that they are as current as possible and useful to members of the community. On a topic’s wiki page, you’ll find information on how to get started in research, tool development, and advocacy for that topic, and some next step challenges that remain. You’ll also find many ways to share your ideas, questions, and findings with the Public Lab community.
Featured topics on Public Lab are listed here. Visit the research area review tag page to see the latest review-related posts on Public Lab, and get updates on reviews by following the #research-area-review tag:
Research area review events
A key part of a research area review is getting together to talk and connect with each other on a topic and relevant tools! Below, you’ll find recordings from the most recent public event for a research area review, plus links to resources shared on the call.
March 31, 2021: Soil contamination research area review
Our latest quarterly deep dive into research areas on Public Lab wrapped up with two public events on community science and soil contamination, attended by folx all over the world.
First, we shared highlights from our research area review on soil contamination, including activities to get started with investigating your soil, an overview of methods for testing and remediating polluted soil, and some next step challenges in tool development. People on the call also shared their questions, reflections, and local concerns on soil contamination.
A summary of the research area review on soil contamination is here, including some of the ongoing questions and challenges discussed on the call.
Resources shared:
- LES Breathe in NYC: https://eastriverparkaction.org/breathe/
- Wateristic: an underwater bioluminescence detector: https://publiclab.org/wiki/wateristic-and-underwater-bioluminescence-detector
- Public Lab tag page for soil: https://publiclab.org/tag/soil
- Public Lab wiki page with background and resources on soil: https://publiclab.org/soil
- Public Lab wiki on soil remediation: https://publiclab.org/wiki/soil-remediation
- The "Healthy Soil Healthy Communities" project at Cornell has resources for urban gardeners with a focus on metals: https://blogs.cornell.edu/healthysoils/healthy-gardening/. They also have a handout on metals in urban soils: https://ecommons.cornell.edu/bitstream/handle/1813/48147/Metals_Urban_Garden_Soils.pdf
Second! We had the great fortune to co-host a virtual tool demo with Jackie James (@jjcreedon) and Mike Rosenberg (@Mike_CSCR) of Citizen Science Community Resources, who showed us their Soil Sampling Toolkit. You can watch the recording and read a summary of the demo here.
Past research area reviews
Click here for an archive of the research area reviews listed below, including video recordings and all links shared on the call.
December 16, 2020: Air quality research area review
Click here to see this review in the archive
September 23, 2020: Microplastics research area review
Click here to see this review in the archive
Who does research area reviews?
Anyone can help with a research area review! As the research coordinator at Public Lab, @bhamster organizes and runs a regular cycle of reviews to make sure we’re keeping our topic areas up-to-date. If you’re interested in helping out or offering ideas, please get in touch by leaving a comment on this post.
What happens during a review?
Currently, research area reviews involve:
- Choosing a topic to review.
- People with interest in or experience with the topic contributing and shaping the review by:
- Posting or answering questions
- Sharing knowledge in research notes
- Relating experiences and stories in conversations and community calls
- Documenting methods and tools and their uses
- Digging deeper into leads from conversations by gathering information and resources from beyond Public Lab.
- Organizing and synthesizing materials from Public Lab and beyond, covering methods and tool development; community stories and projects; relevant regulations, policy, and advocacy; next step challenges.
- Updating the topic’s wiki page and creating new research notes.
- Hosting an open online event to share stories, questions and answers, highlights from the review, and to welcome all to research the topic whether they are newcomers or seasoned researchers.
- Posting summaries of events and the review.
Another approach:
The review process outlined above built upon previous thinking on research area reviews (here and here), which can also be broken down into more distinct phases and distributed tasks in the following way:
Phase 1: Information Gathering
In Phase 1, the goal is to sift through and update all the existing resources on PublicLab.org related to a topic. This could include checking in on other projects' updates as well, and if there's been a previous review, that's also a great place to start.
Phase 2: Convening
Phase 2 involves hosting an Open Call to bring folks together, to go through the collected materials from Phase 1, identify gaps and plan next steps.
Phase 3: Synthesizing
In Phase 3, the notes from the call and the newly collected materials, shared goals, and tasks are organized and shared on PublicLab.org, tying the review together in a single post.
This table gives more details on the tasks and can serve as a template to organize the phases of a more distributed research area review:
| Phase | Task Type | Who can do this | Difficulty | Task | I'll do this! |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Garden | Anyone | Easy | Go through posts in the area and make sure they are properly tagged | LINK |
| 1 | Share | Anyone | Easy | Post questions on the topic area you have, or that you’re not able to find answers to on Public Lab. | LINK |
| 1 | Garden | One person | Medium | Make sure the wiki page has clear format | LINK |
| 1 | Research | Anyone | Hard | Help find answers to unanswered questions | LINK |
| 1 | Facilitate | Anyone | Hard | Invite, listen to, and record new stories related to the topic | LINK |
| 2 | Share | Anyone | Easy | Attend the open topic call and collaborate | LINK |
| 2 | Facilitate | One person | Medium | Host the public online meeting for group to collaborate to: Highlighting findings, ID gaps in available resources, highlight challenges in this research area | LINK |
| 3 | Synthesize | Anyone | Hard | Review existing material and call summary and write an update post on it with materials gathered | LINK |
| 3 | Research | One person | Hard | Follow up on gaps identified from the group and post materials to help support information around those gaps. | LINK |
Want to talk about a topic outside a research area review?
Anytime! We want to hear from you. Join us for an Open Call, hosted every Tuesday at 12 pm PT / 3 pm ET. These informal calls are a great way to connect with Public Lab community members on projects, ideas, and questions. You can find more info on Open Call and how to join here.
And you can learn more about other kinds of Public Lab events and check out our events calendar here: publiclab.org/events