Hypergraph is a tool for researchers and we want to showcase which researchers use Hypergraph, why, and what they want from future versions. The "Researching with Hypergraph" blog series highlights researchers using Hypergraph for their work. Today we feature Sarahanne Field (@SMirandaField).
Who are you and what kind of research do you do?
I am Sarahanne, a third-year PhD candidate at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. I conduct a mixture of research - my primary project (for my PhD research) is largely qualitative, and features an exploration of the open science community on and offline. My dissertation involves virtual ethnography (to describe the open science community), combined with social network analysis of Twitter data (to explore ties and structure within the community). My side hustles in empirical metascience have a quantitative focus: I research topics of replication and methods of quantifying replication attempts, preregistration/registered reports, and reflexivity in research practise among other fun metascience things.
How would you explain Hypergraph to someone in one sentence?
Hypergraph facilitates a clean, modular approach to science: it helps break up your research work product into manageable pieces for better reproducibility and transparency and easier collaboration and organization.
How did you discover Hypergraph?
I am active on Twitter and have been following Hartgerink's avant-garde approach to science for a while - it was only natural that I would stumble across Hypergraph through Chris's Twitter activity.
How does Hypergraph fit into your everyday research?
It helps organise my workflow, and manage the collaborations I have with others pretty nicely especially when I am coerced to work with Microsoft Word.
What is a pet peeve of yours about everyday research? Does Hypergraph address this?
Sometimes when I am writing a paper and I am in the later stages of the manuscript, it is nice to focus on specific sections at a time rather than the whole document. This is especially true when you're sending around a manuscript for coauthors and people start editing bits they're not meant to. Drives me nuts, especially if it's a supervisor contradicting their earlier feedback! It tends to get worse as a function of the length of the paper too! Being able to direct co-authors' focus to just one or two relevant modules helps prevent well-meant but less-than-ideal thoroughness from collaborators.
Could you elaborate what you get out of using Hypergraph?
I am all for transparent and reproducible science which spills over into my scientific practise and I think it helps me meet that drive very well. Moreover, I am a control freak. In most of my projects I am a very present and hands-on first author, which means that it appeals to me as a tool to facilitate collaboration among co-authors.
If you got to determine the next feature for Hypergraph, what would you prioritise?
LaTeX
integration of some kind without a doubt! I use LaTeX in as many
projects as my co-authors allow, and would like to see some kind of
connectivity between what Hypergraph offers and my preferred
typesetting/word processing approach. I am not hard to please so would
be happy with even a fairly rudimentary incorporation! If I were really
presumptuous and decided to ask for more than one thing, I would ask for
the possibility of being able to organize project modules in the
workspace of Hypergraph under project folders. Some kind of file
organization system like that helps for when you love punishment and hate free time have too many side hustles like I do.
