My committee members have asked me to write up my research question.

The difficulty I have with expressing my research is deeply related to the latency I have permitted myself with describing my practice.

For me, research is synonymous with learning. In the social sciences and arts, 'discovery' is not as it is in basic science, or even applied science.

For a scientist, whose 'method' is nailed down by 100+ years of reified practice, research is experimental design, execution, and reporting.

For a social scientist who is trying to play the part, method is less adulated, venerated, and gilded calflike. It is various, not homogenous. It is a big question-mark.

If naturalism, empiricism, scientifism are not the basis of your method, what approach offers an adequate foundation?

Long ago I began exploring phenomenology and more recently have been trying to understand how it can be used as method.

So, I have decided to stop whining about how the tools 'just are not there' or 'just have so many shortcomings'.

From now onward, I am building a system - a dependable (ok, ill settle for pretty reliable and mostly stable) environment within which tailored workflows can be semi-automated to the best of my ability, and to the furthest extent possible with the available tools...

So after a very long hiatus, I am back blogging.
Im so excited about what I am doing now, that I can hardly type. My brain keeps running ahead to all the posts I want to write.
But lets start with where I am right now.
I have just picked up an old project and started a few new ones.

Wow.

I just remembered I have Zotero installed.

I had deactivated it because it was interfering with my RIS harvesting into Reference Manager 11 (RefMan).

I would love to compare the efficacy of retrofitting crappy Google Scholar RIS using cut-and-paste methodology from more fully indexed sources; vs. ignoring the RIS import altogether and getting Zotero to scrape it all for you.

I cant do that if Zotero gobbles up all my RIS files...So i figgured out how to make Zotero leave them alone.