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Small science refers (in contrast to big science) to science performed in a smaller scale, such as by individuals, small teams or within community projects.
Bodies which fund research, such as the National Science Foundation, DARPA, and the EU with its Framework programs, have a tendency to fund larger-scale research projects. Reasons include the idea that ambitious research needs significant resources devoted for its execution and the reduction of administrative and overhead costs on the funding body side. However, small science which has data that is often local and is not easily shared is funded in many areas such as chemistry and biology by these funding bodies.
Small Science helps define the goals and directions of large scale scientific projects. In turn, results of large scale projects are often best synthesized and interpreted by the long-term efforts of the Small Science community. In addition, because Small Science is typically done at universities, it provides students and young researchers with an integral involvement in defining and solving scientific problems. Hence, small science can be seen as an important factor for bringing together science and society.
According to the Chronicle for Higher Education, James M. Caruthers, a professor of chemical engineering at Purdue University, data from Big Science is highly organized on the front end where researchers define it before it even starts rolling off the machines, making it easier to handle, understand, and archive. Small Science is "horribly heterogeneous," and far more vast. In time, Small Science will generate two to three times more data than Big Science. [1]
The American Geophysical Union stresses the importance of small science in a position statement. [2]
Many historical examples show that results of Small Science can have enormous impacts:
Research is "creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge". It involves the collection, organization and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular attentiveness to controlling sources of bias and error. These activities are characterized by accounting and controlling for biases. A research project may be an expansion on past work in the field. To test the validity of instruments, procedures, or experiments, research may replicate elements of prior projects or the project as a whole.
The Cornell University Center for Advanced Computing (CAC), housed at Frank H. T. Rhodes Hall on the campus of Cornell University, is one of five original centers in the National Science Foundation's Supercomputer Centers Program. It was formerly called the Cornell Theory Center.
Science policy is concerned with the allocation of resources for the conduct of science towards the goal of best serving the public interest. Topics include the funding of science, the careers of scientists, and the translation of scientific discoveries into technological innovation to promote commercial product development, competitiveness, economic growth and economic development. Science policy focuses on knowledge production and role of knowledge networks, collaborations, and the complex distributions of expertise, equipment, and know-how. Understanding the processes and organizational context of generating novel and innovative science and engineering ideas is a core concern of science policy. Science policy topics include weapons development, health care and environmental monitoring.
Big science is a term used by scientists and historians of science to describe a series of changes in science which occurred in industrial nations during and after World War II, as scientific progress increasingly came to rely on large-scale projects usually funded by national governments or groups of governments. Individual or small group efforts, or Small science, are still relevant today as theoretical results by individual authors may have a significant impact, but very often the empirical verification requires experiments using constructions, such as the Large Hadron Collider, costing between $5 and $10 billion.
E-Science or eScience is computationally intensive science that is carried out in highly distributed network environments, or science that uses immense data sets that require grid computing; the term sometimes includes technologies that enable distributed collaboration, such as the Access Grid. The term was created by John Taylor, the Director General of the United Kingdom's Office of Science and Technology in 1999 and was used to describe a large funding initiative starting in November 2000. E-science has been more broadly interpreted since then, as "the application of computer technology to the undertaking of modern scientific investigation, including the preparation, experimentation, data collection, results dissemination, and long-term storage and accessibility of all materials generated through the scientific process. These may include data modeling and analysis, electronic/digitized laboratory notebooks, raw and fitted data sets, manuscript production and draft versions, pre-prints, and print and/or electronic publications." In 2014, IEEE eScience Conference Series condensed the definition to "eScience promotes innovation in collaborative, computationally- or data-intensive research across all disciplines, throughout the research lifecycle" in one of the working definitions used by the organizers. E-science encompasses "what is often referred to as big data [which] has revolutionized science... [such as] the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN... [that] generates around 780 terabytes per year... highly data intensive modern fields of science...that generate large amounts of E-science data include: computational biology, bioinformatics, genomics" and the human digital footprint for the social sciences.
Research funding is a term generally covering any funding for scientific research, in the areas of natural science, technology, and social science. Different methods can be used to disburse funding, but the term often connotes funding obtained through a competitive process, in which potential research projects are evaluated and only the most promising receive funding. It is often measured via Gross domestic expenditure on R&D (GERD).
The sociology of the history of science—related to sociology and philosophy of science, as well as the entire field of science studies—has in the 20th century been occupied with the question of large-scale patterns and trends in the development of science, and asking questions about how science "works" both in a philosophical and practical sense.
A grant is a fund given by an end entity grant – often a public body, charitable foundation, a specialised grant-making institution, or in some cases a business with a corporate social responsibility mission – to an individual or another entity, usually, a non-profit organisation, sometimes a business or a local government body, for a specific purpose linked to public benefit. Unlike loans, grants are not to be paid back.
The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (CFAT) is a U.S.-based education policy and research center. It was founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1905 and chartered in 1906 by an act of the United States Congress. Among its most notable accomplishments are the development of the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association (TIAA), the Flexner Report on medical education, the Carnegie Unit, the Educational Testing Service, and the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education.
Citizen science is scientific research conducted with participation from the general public. There are variations in the exact definition of citizen science, with different individuals and organizations having their own specific interpretations of what citizen science encompasses. Citizen science is used in a wide range of areas of study, with most citizen science research publications being in the fields of biology and conservation. There are different applications and functions of citizen science in research projects. Citizen science can be used as a methodology where public volunteers help in collecting and classifying data, improving the scientific community's capacity. Citizen science can also involve more direct involvement from the public, with communities initiating projects researching environment and health hazards in their own communities. Participation in citizen science projects also educates the public about the scientific process and increases awareness about different topics. Some schools have students participate in citizen science projects for this purpose as a part of the teaching curriculums.
This glossary of education-related terms is based on how they commonly are used in Wikipedia articles. This article contains terms starting with P – R. Select a letter from the table of contents to find terms on other articles.
The Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) is a high-speed computer network serving United States Department of Energy (DOE) scientists and their collaborators worldwide. It is managed by staff at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
The military funding of science has had a powerful transformative effect on the practice and products of scientific research since the early 20th century. Particularly since World War I, advanced science-based technologies have been viewed as essential elements of a successful military.
Open science is the movement to make scientific research and its dissemination accessible to all levels of society, amateur or professional. Open science is transparent and accessible knowledge that is shared and developed through collaborative networks. It encompasses practices such as publishing open research, campaigning for open access, encouraging scientists to practice open-notebook science, broader dissemination and engagement in science and generally making it easier to publish, access and communicate scientific knowledge.
The Census of Marine Life was a 10-year, US $650 million scientific initiative, involving a global network of researchers in more than 80 nations, engaged to assess and explain the diversity, distribution, and abundance of life in the oceans. The world's first comprehensive Census of Marine Life — past, present, and future — was released in 2010 in London. Initially supported by funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the project was successful in generating many times that initial investment in additional support and substantially increased the baselines of knowledge in often underexplored ocean realms, as well as engaging over 2,700 different researchers for the first time in a global collaborative community united in a common goal, and has been described as "one of the largest scientific collaborations ever conducted".
Open data is data that is openly accessible, exploitable, editable and shared by anyone for any purpose. Open data is licensed under an open license.
m ELIPS - European Programme for Life and Physical Sciences in Space and applications utilising the International Space Station started in 2001 and was intended to cover the activities for the following 5 years. This Microgravity Programme at the European Space Agency (ESA) is an optional programme, with currently 17 ESA member states participating. The ELIPS programme prepares and performs research on the International Space Station, and other uncrewed mission platforms like Sounding Rockets, in fundamental and applied life and physical sciences. ELIPS is the continuation of the earlier European microgravity programmes EMIR 1&2, and the Microgravity Facilities for Columbus, MFC.
NCSA Brown Dog is a research project to develop a method for easily accessing historic research data stored in order to maintain the long-term viability of large bodies of scientific research. It is supported by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) that is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
The Flatiron Institute is an American internal research division of the Simons Foundation, launched in 2016. It comprises five centers for computational science: the Center for Computational Astrophysics (CCA); the Center for Computational Biology (CCB); the Center for Computational Quantum Physics (CCQ); the Center for Computational Mathematics (CCM); and the Center for Computational Neuroscience (CCN). It also has a group called the Scientific Computing Core (SCC). The institute takes its name from the Flatiron District in New York City where it's based.
Science and technology in Armenia describes trends and developments in science, technology and innovation policy and governance in Armenia.