Stay connected ... to your research

Nowadays dissemination is acknowledged as an important component of the research process. Crowdsourcing tools, webinar tools, scheduling tools and data sharing tools could all be invaluable in disseminating one's research work.

Crowdsourcing could be useful in the areas of psychology, but not directly in my current research project. In general, engaging the public in the world of science could be interesting and a potentially effective approach. In fact, it means that research community calls the public to be involved in a particular research effort. The concept is: "Let's recognise and incorporate the citizen science into our research".

I regard Webinars and specifically Hangout and Skype as the most important tools to connect researchers, participants and generally all people together. My supervisors, my colleagues and I regularly hold meetings over Skype or Hangout. The distance does not still matter in the age of the Internet. Scientists are able to communicate, stay connected and collaborate with other scientists all over the world.

Online scheduling is also an effective tool to arrange meetings. Recently, my supervisor organized a student lab using Doodle. This makes it easy for scheduling this internal meeting between my supervisor and all her students. 

Storing, editing and sharing data might be even more useful than Reference Management. No, I am only joking! Google Drive is the platform that I trusted for my files and photos. But honestly, I don't feel secure storing and sharing sensitive data in these kinds of platforms.