The 2011 survey form

Note

This was the 2011 survey form – displayed here for the purpose of documentation. Since the survey is already closed, it cannot be used to submit responses anymore.

This survey should take about five minutes. Immediately after submission you will be presented with some statistics on previous responses. Please try to answer as many questions as you can, but don’t worry if you cannot answer all of them. You need to have javascript enabled in your browser for this survey. For feedback email team@neuro.debian.net

Personal background

Which country are you working in?	Select a country Canada France Germany Italy Spain United Kingdom United States Afghanistan Albania Algeria American Samoa Andorra Angola Anguilla Antarctica Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Armenia Aruba Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bermuda Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Bouvet Island Brazil British Indian Ocean Territory Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burundi Cambodia Cameroon Canada Cape Verde Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad Chile China Christmas Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Colombia Comoros Congo Congo, The Democratic Republic of The Cook Islands Costa Rica Cote D'ivoire Croatia Cuba Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Falkland Islands (Malvinas) Faroe Islands Fiji Finland France French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern Territories Gabon Gambia Georgia Germany Ghana Gibraltar Greece Greenland Grenada Guadeloupe Guam Guatemala Guinea Guinea-bissau Guyana Haiti Heard Island and Mcdonald Islands Holy See (Vatican City State) Honduras Hong Kong Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran, Islamic Republic of Iraq Ireland Israel Italy Jamaica Japan Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kiribati Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Republic of Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Lao People's Democratic Republic Latvia Lebanon Lesotho Liberia Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Macao Macedonia, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Maldives Mali Malta Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania Mauritius Mayotte Mexico Micronesia, Federated States of Moldova, Republic of Monaco Mongolia Montserrat Morocco Mozambique Myanmar Namibia Nauru Nepal Netherlands Netherlands Antilles New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua Niger Nigeria Niue Norfolk Island Northern Mariana Islands Norway Oman Pakistan Palau Palestinian Territory, Occupied Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Pitcairn Poland Portugal Puerto Rico Qatar Reunion Romania Russian Federation Rwanda Saint Helena Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia Saint Pierre and Miquelon Saint Vincent and The Grenadines Samoa San Marino Sao Tome and Principe Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia and Montenegro Seychelles Sierra Leone Singapore Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia South Africa South Georgia and The South Sandwich Islands Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Suriname Svalbard and Jan Mayen Swaziland Sweden Switzerland Syrian Arab Republic Taiwan Tajikistan Tanzania, United Republic of Thailand Timor-leste Togo Tokelau Tonga Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United States United States Minor Outlying Islands Uruguay Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela Viet Nam Virgin Islands, British Virgin Islands, U.S. Wallis and Futuna Western Sahara Yemen Zambia Zimbabwe
Where are you working?	Select an option Higher education (privately funded) Higher education (publicly funded) Research institution (privately funded) Research institution (publicly funded) Company
What is your position?	Select an option Undergraduate student PhD student Postdoc Professor/Supervisor Research assistant Other researcher System administrator
What type of data are you working with? Please check all items that apply.	Behavioral Genetic MRI/fMRI/DTI EEG/MEG PET/SPECT Electrophysiology Microspectroscopy Computational modeling/Simulations
Are you developing software that is intended to be used by other researchers?	Yes No

Personal scientific software environment

Here are a few questions about your personal scientific software environment for research activities like data acquisition, computational modeling, and data analysis. You might be running this on your laptop, desktop, personal workstation or any other machine where you decide what software you are using, and you typically also have permission to install it yourself. If you are operating different environments, please describe the one that you find most productive for your research purposes. If you don’t have a machine that you administer yourself, instead, please indicate what kind of scientific software environment you would like to be doing your research in.

What fraction of your research activity time do you spend in this software environment as opposed to any other environment that you might have access to?	Select an option None/I don't have this environment Less then half of the time More than half of the time All of the time
What type of hardware are you using?	Select an option Laptop/Portable device Commodity desktop High-performance workstation Compute cluster Grid/Cloud-computing facility
What operating system is this environment running on?	Select an option Microsoft Windows Apple Mac OS X Red Hat Enterprise Linux CentOS Fedora Scientific Linux Debian Ubuntu BioLinux Suse Enterprise Linux OpenSuse Gentoo Mandriva Arch Linux Slackware Other GNU/Linux distribution FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD HP-UX/AIX/SCO/BSD QNX BeOS Solaris Other operating system I don't know
How much time do you spend each month on maintaining this environment? This includes the time spent on operating system (security) upgrades, as well as installing and updating scientific software.	hours per month

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Please indicate how much you agree to the following statements.

I prefer this particular scientific software environment because …
… the developers of an important research software recommend it	Definitely agree Mostly agree Mostly disagree Definitely disagree
… of the variety of available research software for this environment	Definitely agree Mostly agree Mostly disagree Definitely disagree
… of the availability of commercial support	Definitely agree Mostly agree Mostly disagree Definitely disagree
… many of my colleagues use something similar	Definitely agree Mostly agree Mostly disagree Definitely disagree
… it is popular and I can get solutions for problems from web forums and mailing lists	Definitely agree Mostly agree Mostly disagree Definitely disagree
… I rely on a particular application that runs in this environment only	Definitely agree Mostly agree Mostly disagree Definitely disagree
… it has adequate support for all required hardware	Definitely agree Mostly agree Mostly disagree Definitely disagree
… I have the necessary technical skills to maintain this environment myself	Definitely agree Mostly agree Mostly disagree Definitely disagree

Managed scientific software environment

The following questions are about a managed environment of scientific software that is provided to you to carry out computing and data analysis. Such an environment is typically managed by dedicated IT staff, and you don’t have permissions to install arbitrary software. This environment may be shared by many researchers in a lab, a whole research institution, or even be publicly accessible. If you have access to multiple environments of this kind, please describe the one that offers most support for your particular research purposes.

What fraction of time do you spend in this environment during your research activities?	Select an option None/I don't use this Less then half of the time More than half of the time All of the time
What type of hardware is this software environment running on?	Select an option Laptop/Portable device Commodity desktop High-performance workstation Compute cluster Grid/Cloud-computing facility
What operating system is this environment running on?	Select an option Microsoft Windows Apple Mac OS X Red Hat Enterprise Linux CentOS Fedora Scientific Linux Debian Ubuntu BioLinux Suse Enterprise Linux OpenSuse Gentoo Mandriva Arch Linux Slackware Other GNU/Linux distribution FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD HP-UX/AIX/SCO/BSD QNX BeOS Solaris Other operating system I don't know

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How much do you agree to the following statements?

This environment provides me with the best available tools for my research	Definitely agree Mostly agree Mostly disagree Definitely disagree
The support staff solves all my technical problems and addresses my demands in a timely fashion	Definitely agree Mostly agree Mostly disagree Definitely disagree
There are always enough licenses for essential commercial software tools	Definitely agree Mostly agree Mostly disagree Definitely disagree
I need to deploy additional software to be able to perform my research in this environment	Definitely agree Mostly agree Mostly disagree Definitely disagree
Using this managed environment is more cost effective than operating a suitable environment myself	Definitely agree Mostly agree Mostly disagree Definitely disagree

Virtualization

The following questions are about your usage of systems for hardware virtualization in your research – so-called virtual machines. Virtualization is a technology that allows running more than one operating systems on one machine at the same time.

What fraction of your research activity time do you spend in a virtual environment as opposed to any other environment?	Select an option None/I don't use this Less then half of the time More than half of the time All of the time
Which products for virtualization are you using?	VMWare VirtualBox Parallels QEMU Virtual PC Xen KVM
What guest operating system is running inside virtual machine?	Select an option Microsoft Windows Apple Mac OS X Red Hat Enterprise Linux CentOS Fedora Scientific Linux Debian Ubuntu BioLinux Suse Enterprise Linux OpenSuse Gentoo Mandriva Arch Linux Slackware Other GNU/Linux distribution FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD HP-UX/AIX/SCO/BSD QNX BeOS Solaris Other operating system I don't know
What host operating system are the virtual machines running on?	Select an option Microsoft Windows Apple Mac OS X Red Hat Enterprise Linux CentOS Fedora Scientific Linux Debian Ubuntu BioLinux Suse Enterprise Linux OpenSuse Gentoo Mandriva Arch Linux Slackware Other GNU/Linux distribution FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD HP-UX/AIX/SCO/BSD QNX BeOS Solaris Other operating system I don't know

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What are your reasons for employing virtualization in you research? Please indicate how much you agree to the following statements

I can run software that is otherwise incompatible with my system	Definitely agree Mostly agree Mostly disagree Definitely disagree
I have the ability to easily create a snapshot of my whole analysis environment	Definitely agree Mostly agree Mostly disagree Definitely disagree
I can take my complete analysis environment with me and run it on different machines	Definitely agree Mostly agree Mostly disagree Definitely disagree
The performance of a virtual machine is sufficient for routine application in my research	Definitely agree Mostly agree Mostly disagree Definitely disagree

Resources for scientific software

Where do you obtain scientific software that you employ in your research? Please check all items that apply

	Directly from vendor or project website
	Retailer
	Comes with the operating system
	Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN)
	Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN)
	Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL)
	Fink
	FreeBSD ports
	International neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility (INCF) Research Tools
	Macports
	Matlab Central
	NeuroDebian
	Neuroimaging Informatics Tools and Resources Clearinghouse (NITRC)
	Python Package Index (PyPi)
	Python bundles: Enthought Python, Python(x,y)
	Sourceforge

Software selection

Please select all software that you are using in your research.

Generic computing, scripting, programming environments

C/C++	Fortran	IDL	Java	LabVIEW	LISREL
Maple	Mathcad	Mathematica	Matlab	Octave	Perl
Python	R	Ruby	Scilab	SPSS	SCIRun
Shell scripting

Distributed computing - frameworks and controllers

SGE

Torque/OpenPBS/Maui

Condor

Globus

MPI (any)

IPython

Imaging

3D Slicer	AFNI	Aeskulap	Amide
BIRN Tools	BRAINS Tools	Bioimage Suite	BrainMap
BrainVISA/Anatomist	BrainVoyager	CMTK	Camino
Caret	ConnectomeViewer	DSI Studio	DTI-TK
Diffusion Toolkit/Trackvis	FSL	Fiji	FreeSurfer
ITK-SNAP	ImageJ	Invesalius	LONI
Lipsia	Mango	MIPAV/JIST	MNI tools
MRIcron	MRtrix	Matlab MVPA toolbox	NiBabel/PyNIfTI
NiPy/NiTime/DiPy/NiPype	PyMVPA	REST	SPM
V3D	VoxBo

Data management

XNAT/PyXNAT/...

Human Imaging Database (HID)

Neural systems modeling

Brian	Siemens ECANSE	Emergent NNSS	Genesis	iNVT	iqr
Moose	Nengo	NEST	NeuroML	NEURON	NeuroSolutions
PCSIM	Peltarion	PSICS	PyNN	SNNAP	SNNS
Topographica	XNBC	XPP/XPPAUT

Electrophysiology, MEG/EEG

ASA	BESA	BioSig	BrainStorm	BrainSuite	Brainvision Analyzer
Chronux	EEGLAB	Elekta Neuromag	EMSE	Fieldtrip	FMAToolbox
KlustaKwik	Klusters	LORETA/sLORETA	MClust	MNE suite	NDManager
NeuroExplorer	Neuroscan	NeuroScope	Neuroshare	Openelectrophy	OpenMEEG
Plexon	Relacs	RTXI	Trellis-neuro

Brain-computer interface

BCI2000

OpenVIBE

Pyff

Hardware interface/Data acquisition

Comedi

EPICS

MX

Real-time solutions

RTAI

Xenomai

RTLinux

PREEMPT_RT

Psychophysics, Experiment control

Cogent	DMDX	E-Prime	OpenSesame	Presentation	PsychoPy	Psychtoolbox
PsyScope	Psytoolkit	PyEPL	SuperLab	Tscope	VisionEgg

Other

(comma-separated list)

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