Crowdsourcing for bioinformatics. Good, B. M & Su, A. I Bioinformatics, 29(16):1925–1933, August, 2013.
Crowdsourcing for bioinformatics. [link]Paper  doi  abstract   bibtex   
MOTIVATION:Bioinformatics is faced with a variety of problems that require human involvement. Tasks like genome annotation, image analysis, knowledge-base population and protein structure determination all benefit from human input. In some cases, people are needed in vast quantities, whereas in others, we need just a few with rare abilities. Crowdsourcing encompasses an emerging collection of approaches for harnessing such distributed human intelligence. Recently, the bioinformatics community has begun to apply crowdsourcing in a variety of contexts, yet few resources are available that describe how these human-powered systems work and how to use them effectively in scientific domains. RESULTS:Here, we provide a framework for understanding and applying several different types of crowdsourcing. The framework considers two broad classes: systems for solving large-volume 'microtasks' and systems for solving high-difficulty 'megatasks'. Within these classes, we discuss system types, including volunteer labor, games with a purpose, microtask markets and open innovation contests. We illustrate each system type with successful examples in bioinformatics and conclude with a guide for matching problems to crowdsourcing solutions that highlights the positives and negatives of different approaches.
@article{good_crowdsourcing_2013,
	title = {Crowdsourcing for bioinformatics.},
	volume = {29},
	url = {http://eutils.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/elink.fcgi?dbfrom=pubmed&id=23782614&retmode=ref&cmd=prlinks},
	doi = {10.1093/bioinformatics/btt333},
	abstract = {MOTIVATION:Bioinformatics is faced with a variety of problems that require human involvement. Tasks like genome annotation, image analysis, knowledge-base population and protein structure determination all benefit from human input. In some cases, people are needed in vast quantities, whereas in others, we need just a few with rare abilities. Crowdsourcing encompasses an emerging collection of approaches for harnessing such distributed human intelligence. Recently, the bioinformatics community has begun to apply crowdsourcing in a variety of contexts, yet few resources are available that describe how these human-powered systems work and how to use them effectively in scientific domains. RESULTS:Here, we provide a framework for understanding and applying several different types of crowdsourcing. The framework considers two broad classes: systems for solving large-volume 'microtasks' and systems for solving high-difficulty 'megatasks'. Within these classes, we discuss system types, including volunteer labor, games with a purpose, microtask markets and open innovation contests. We illustrate each system type with successful examples in bioinformatics and conclude with a guide for matching problems to crowdsourcing solutions that highlights the positives and negatives of different approaches.},
	language = {English},
	number = {16},
	journal = {Bioinformatics},
	author = {Good, Benjamin M and Su, Andrew I},
	month = aug,
	year = {2013},
	pmid = {23782614},
	pmcid = {PMC3722523},
	pages = {1925--1933},
}

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