The mindsponge & BMF analytics project


AISDL Team
Email: aisdl_team@mindsponge.info

(First published: June 22, 2022; Last updated: March 12, 2023)

This website is built by the creators of the mindsponge conceptual framework, the bayesvl R package, and the BMF analytical approach to innovative thinking in humanities and social sciences research. The aforementioned elements—now constituting the so-called SM3D knowledge management system—have helped us and other colleagues develop numerous primitive thoughts into serious research problems, perform qualitative and quantitative studies, and lead to quality publications (as well as citations to them, later on). This will become clear when you browse through articles on the site. It is noteworthy that the resources help achieve the results without huge investments in costly datasets, expensive computing systems, and time-consuming long meetings. Therefore, we trust that sharing the SM3D will give a shot in the arm to many Early Career Researchers (ECR), especially those living and working in the developing world. All the basic resources required to perform research are provided for free.


The development team in a retreat in Pu Luong Natural Reserve, Ba Thuoc District, Thanh Hoa Province, Vietnam (May 27, 2022)


What do we do?

We aim to support researchers in social sciences and humanities in conducting and publishing their studies on a global scale, especially Early Career Researchers (ECRs) and those in low-resource settings. For that purpose, AISDL created mindsponge.info as the Science Portal for the Serendipity-Mindsponge-3D (SM3D) Knowledge Management Theory.


Why do we do it?

Working in academia is challenging, and it is even more so with limited resources and opportunities. Researchers around the world do not have equal working conditions. Apart from financial inequality between high-income and low-income regions, there are also issues of science communication privilege, ideological dominance, and other systematic discrimination toward researchers’ origins, races, and genders. In many places, public misperceptions of the value of science may push scientists into financial difficulties and greatly hinder their scientific endeavors [1].

Due to inequality issues, academic work, to some people, can be unnecessarily costly – not only financially but also psychologically. We have learned about a book chapter written by an ECR with a non-normative gender identity discussing the unfair pressures within a conservative socio-cultural environment [2]. Interestingly, the mindsponge-based concept of cultural additivity [3] was incorporated into this publication. This was among many more observations which made us glad that our works were useful to other researchers who found themselves in relatively unfair situations.

We believe that innovations can help researchers overcome the challenges of social inequality. Thus, we offer certain research tools and direct support to help researchers innovate in both thinking and practice, which can lead to better academic performance, achievements, career advancement, and earnings.

 

How can we help?

On this site, researchers can find helpful materials and gain new skills to conduct low-cost studies without sacrificing quality or time. The mindsponge mechanism of information processing provides a novel approach to thinking and research conceptualization, while the Bayesian-Mindsponge Framework (BMF) helps turns ideas and conceptual models into solid manuscripts [4]. The SM3D theory serves as the conceptual foundation for studies focusing on statistical investigations, but it also is highly applicable for theoretical studies [5,6].

Our home-grown Bayesian analytics package bayesvl [7] is publicly available for free use. We provide clear and easy-to-follow protocols for using the package and additional support through reading materials, training programs, and collaborative projects. In particular, we think that research collaboration is highly effective for learning and may also increase the likelihood of successful publication for ECRs.

We hope that the site is helpful for researchers in their pursuit of scientific discoveries, innovations, and achievements. We will keep working on the site to contribute to the collective effort of building an equal global academic landscape in the future.

Last but not least, to compensate for your long, tedious work hours, we try to bring fun and humorous science news (a kind of scicomm effort) to the scholarly community by distilling reliable and plausible research results worldwide.

Contact

For more details about how to join us in real-world projects, please visit: https://mindsponge.info/projects

For general inquiries, please send an email to: aisdl_team@mindsponge.info.

*2023 Update: In February 2023, our underpinning theoretical foundation was published in Mindsponge Theory [8].


References

[1] Vuong QH. (2018). The (ir)rational consideration of the cost of science in transition economies. Nature Human Behaviour, 2(1), 5.

[2] Le G. (2021). Living a queer life in Vietnam. In F. Blaikie (Ed.), Visual and Cultural Identity Constructs of Global Youth and Young Adults: Situated, Embodied and Performed Ways of Being, Engaging and Belonging (1st ed.). Routledge.

[3] Vuong QH, et al. (2018). Cultural additivity: Behavioural insights from the interaction of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism in folktales. Palgrave Communications, 4, 143.

[4] Vuong QH, Nguyen MH, La VP. (2022). The mindsponge and BMF analytics for innovative thinking in social sciences and humanities. De Gruyter.

[5] Vuong QH, et al. (2022). Covid-19 vaccines production and societal immunization under the serendipity-mindsponge-3D knowledge management theory and conceptual framework. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 9, 22.

[6] Vuong QH. (2022). A New Theory of Serendipity: Nature, Emergence and Mechanism. De Gruyter.

[7] La VP, Vuong QH. (2019). bayesvl: Visually Learning the Graphical Structure of Bayesian Networks and Performing MCMC with ‘Stan’. The Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN).

[8] Vuong QH. (2023). Mindsponge Theory. De Gruyter.