Author:: oasislab.pubpub.org
Full Title:: Knowledge Synthesis: A Conceptual Model and Practical Guide
Category:: articles Joel Chan knowledge synthesis workflow
Outline:
Notes:
Related:
It is forged in practice, and adapted from other practices, but also with an eye to being as theoretically grounded as possible. Creative knowledge work is my area of research, after all, and knowledge synthesis is an inherently creative act.
Note: this is such a paragraph pleasant to read. forged in practice/ adapted from other practices/ with an eye to being as theoretically grounded as possible/ an inherently creative act
My initial audience for this document is researchers who struggle with knowledge synthesis (aka a “real” literature review"), which is the nebulous “black box” in between
Note: I feel like this is reeeeaaaallllly me. I have found a bunch of papers to read and I have read and collected information from these literature for my research (experiment) problem!
Notice how the second example creates something new, greater than the sum of its parts, namely the explanation for the origin of species. This is a core aspect of synthesis: the construction of a new point of view from a set of observations, that directly advances knowledge and/or opens up a path to advancing knowledge.
Note: I still don't fully understand what is synthesis and what is paraphase. The example of Darwin's theory seems convincing but how to distinguish paraphrase and synthesis, especially when we are reading articles.
This is a future that I want: a research group can confidently aim their sights at a complex, interdisciplinary problem area, and construct an effective synthesis together with minimal "busywork overhead”: they can just focus on the core task of synthesis, instead of fighting to extract the “trapped data” (Knight, Wilson, Brailsford, & Milic-Frayling, 2019) in PDFs and long documents! The results and intermediate products of their synthesis work also provide a stronger foundation for themselves and others in the future to build on.
Note: 作者的终极目标更宏大一些，他希望建立一套有效的整理机制，团队里的每个人都学会了这个整理机制，这样在团队合作（跨学科探讨中）能高效的整理出一份有效的文件。（我猜测是这样的）
Question notes, which express an open research question
Synthesis notes, which express a single, generalized idea, such as a claim
Observation notes, which express a single, highly contextualized and specific observation that, together with other observation notes, can form the basis of a synthesis note
Context snippet notes, which help to ground and contextualize observation notes.
Note: Q - notes: an research question haven't been discussed or fully discussed yet S - notes: a generalized idea, a claim after reading a bunch of words or collecting a bunch of observations. It might be a conclusion, a theory, a high level argument or a problem O - notes: a highly contexttualized and specific observation, with other observation we can get a S - note (a generalized idea) C - notes: background information for O - notes
Synthesis notes articulate a single, generalized idea, such as a claim (e.g., “Inspirations that are of intermediate distance from the problem domain strike the best balance between benefits for novelty and quality of ideas”). In some cases, a synthesis note can encapsulate a more complex single idea, such as a theory (e.g., “Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection”), high level argument (“Scientific observations are theory-laden”) or problem (e.g., “The demarcation problem in philosophy of science”)
Synthesis notes can be mapped to citation statements in academic publications, which are typically generalized and drawing on more than a single source.
Note: 这里说S - notes 可以被映射到学术文章中，对参考文献的概括陈述，大概类似于一两句话概括另一篇文章的内容，优缺点然后引出接下来的分析？ 我还是不太懂什么是S - notes，但是一共只有四种notes，其他三种都比较好理解，那么剩下的应该就是S - notes？但是这还不够，关键是怎么把S - notes做好? 不要做无效的笔记
The intuition is that observation notes should be as close to “the data” as possible. They should be similar to how results are described in results sections of academic publications.
Contextual details is a broad term, but generally includes things like specific figures, data items, tables, or quotes that are the basis for an observation, as well as metadata (e.g., authors, year, publication) and methodological details that are important for understanding and evaluating an observation note.
A synthesis note that “Children are approximately half as likely to contract COVID given equivalent exposure”An observation note from a paper (Somekh et al., 2020) that “in an exhaustive contact tracing study of 13 families in Central Israel, the COVID secondary attack rates for children < 10yo was ~2x lower than adults”. This observation note supports the synthesis note.
Note: ? 我不明白，难道Somekh本人在文章里没有得出这个S - notes 结论么？
Finally, let me illustrate how this is instantiated in RoamResearch, which provides many rich affordances for linking granular information items.
Distinguishing between observation notes and synthesis notes helps prevent me from rushing too quickly to generalizations, and allows for careful, nuanced questioning of past claims (e.g., does X really not work?), and consideration of possible syntheses between opposing claims. Directly including context snippets also allows me to have crucial details “on hand” that are necessary for this nuanced questioning.
This is important, because the devil/diamond is in the details, and details fade over time from memory. I suspect that synthesis notes and systems that omit details (or at least make it hard to access details later), will have a much shorter half-life.
Note: 保留例证细节的重要性
If I’m right that these sorts of notes are more shareable, then I should be able to distribute the process across a team of people. Hopefully this also means we get to substantially reduce the time needed to do effective synthesis. I am testing this hypothesis right now with my lab, and hope to get others to join me. Stay tuned on this!
Note: I wonder how did it go?
A video walkthrough + template might be more helpful for this!If you are trying to implement this and would like more feedback or examples, I would be open to showing you around my Roam database and/or talking with you about issues you encounter. If this sounds useful to you, please email me at joelchan@umd.edu
Note: I might contact Joel someday for the following questions: