Infozine S2: Surfing versus drilling in the modern scientific world

The Infozentrum is preparing the second Infozine Special Issue S2 on information use behavior.

There is only so much earth you can shovel in a day. If you dig deep, you dig narrow. If you dig wide, you dig shallow. The rule certainly applies to gardening, but also to the scientific world – and to life in general.

A key ability of good students, teachers, and academic or industry researchers is to find the right balance between drilling, when the nuggets are hidden deep below the ground, and surfing when the nuggets are widely spread just under the grass. Drilling is time-consuming and often lonely, but it brings depth, quality, and insight. Surfing is comparatively faster and easier, and it brings overview, throughput and interactiveness.

Infozine S2 will consist, once again, on short, personal opinion articles from students, researcher in academy and industry, professors, lecturers and representatives from publishing industry and software providers.

Infozine S2 will published by Prof. Philippe Hünenberger, Dr. Oliver Renn and Dr. Joachim Schnabl (ETH Zürich) and will be made freely available online by fall 2018. More information can be found here.

Infozine Special Issue S1, published December 2016, focused on Metrics in Research (PDF).