The SOKI wiki. A new tool for enhanced engagement and collaboration in Southern Ocean ecosystem research
Jess Melbourne-Thomas1,2, Andrew Constable1,2, Stuart Corney1, Sarah Jacobson2, Troy Robterson2, Mike Sumner2
1 Antarctic Climate and Ecosystem Co-operative Research Centre
2 Australian Antarctic Division
Wikis are emerging as important tools for knowledge sharing, engagement and collaboration. They provide a dynamic environment for the development of ideas and projects, and can be used to capture evolving and cumulative bodies of knowledge on particular topics. The Southern Ocean Ecosystem Change group at the Australian Antarctic Division has developed a wiki – the Southern Ocean Knowledge and Information (SOKI) wiki – as a tool for capturing and sharing knowledge on Southern Ocean ecosystems. While we are now seeing a broad array of data portals and other tools for accessing and sharing data, our wiki is novel as it emphasises sharing new ideas, providing syntheses on topics of interest and facilitating access to cumulative knowledge. Through the establishment of an editorial board we are also developing a process where pages can be peer reviewed, published (with a DOI) and cited.
We describe the development process and purpose of the wiki, and provide a short tour of its main spaces. We then present three examples of how SOKI is being used in different contexts: as a dynamic tool for sharing and capturing ideas during workshops or to allow remote collaboration in the development of papers and reports, as a tool to engage students both passively and through their contributions, and as a tool to inform ecosystem modelling. In this last example the information within SOKI is used in both the parameterisation and evaluation stages of model development and testing.
Finally, we present the newly launched public version of the wiki, hosted through the Southern Ocean Observing System (SOOS) website. This part of SOKI contains pages that have been peer reviewed (with a citeable DOI) and thus can be used as a repository of current knowledge on Southern Ocean ecosystems. SOKI can be found at: www.soki.aq