Research 2.0

So what is "research 2.0" exactly? In order to answer this question we must look at what "research 1.0" is.

Research 1.0 projects are typically undertaken in top-secret corporate research centers or in the academia. For convenience's sake (and also because I had been a university student for such a long time), I'll just look at aspects of research taking place in the academia.

A typical academic research project typically starts with the writing of a grant proposal. In the proposal, the lead researcher (whom I shall address as "prof" from now on) outlines what the research is all about and what she hopes to accomplish at the end. The grant proposal then gets sent to an organization that will provide funding to the prof, this organization maybe the university itself, the government, the corporate world, a charitable foundation, or very rarely from the the prof herself (like when she has won the lottery), in which case she may forgo the writing of the said grant proposal ;-).

With the funding in place, the prof then goes about, hiring goons...err...grad students who will do her bidding, buying lab equipments, getting the latest MacBook Air, etc. And finally gets the show on the road. Lots of paper research takes place, experiments are performed, computer simulations run, mice killed, test tubes broken, and, most important of all, papers are published. After a set period of time, usually a few years, the prof shows all the published papers to the funding organization, who will then be convinced that its money had been well-spent. As for the prof? -- mission accomplished!