Scientific Research

Pharmaceutical, Medical, and Scientific Research

Traction software is implemented in a laboratory in the Department of Neuroscience at Brown University. This department is nationally known for its quality, cutting edge basic research in a number of areas, including the neuronal mechanisms of brain development, design of neuroprosthetic devices, and the molecular and cellular bases for neuronal function. This use case was provided by the lead researcher using Traction and applies well to individuals or teams conducting research and experimentation.

The software is implemented as a journal for experimental data and a system to manage scientific information from external sources or co-workers.

A journal to catalogue the data and notes collected during experiments

Traction provides the researcher with an easily updated and searchable electronic record of all experimental details and accompanying information related to the experiments. This solves two problems:

1) Experimental Records: Records are often collected by hand in a notebook or as a document in a word processing program. Putting records into the Traction system instead allows such records to be searchable and to be linked to related experiments;

2) Supplemental Information: Information that supplements the actual data collected in an experiment (e.g. experimental protocols, methods, related scientific articles, subsequent analyses) is often found in disparate locations in a range of formats. Traction allows the researcher to link these pieces of information together, allowing them to be accessed efficiently.

Archive and organize scientific articles and documents related to the experimental work

As of 1997, most mainstream biological sciences journal articles can be downloaded off the web. Such articles can, in most cases, be downloaded in HTML format, and can thus be easily entered into the Traction system.

There are three main advantages to this:

1) Commenting: using the 'comment' function in the Traction software, one can type notes in the document directly where the information being commented on is located, rather than having to take separate notes that refer back to the article;

2) Linking and Labeling: Traction allows the creation of highly flexible and intricate indexing systems, both because articles can be linked directly to one another, and because a single article can be categorized in multiple, overlapping groups; and

3) Search: the contents of the articles will themselves be searchable, which is not the case with PDF or paper versions, which are still most commonly used formats. Because a large part of work in the laboratory requires extensive knowledge of, and frequent access to, the appropriate literature, and due to the volume of articles involved, using the Traction system for collecting, organizing and notating such articles substantially improves efficiency and accessibility of the relevant materials.

Collectively, these features improve the researcher's performance as the information handling tasks are time consuming and, in a non-traction environment, are prone to information losses or lower quality results.