Articulating a Grass-root View of Research Communities

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Articulating a Grass-root View of Research
Communities

• Dr Lydia Lau
• School of Computing
• University of Leeds
• UK

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Evolution of infrastructures for collaboration
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VRE vs CWE
A computer scientists view
CWE collaborative work environment VRE
virtual research environment
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Traditionally Top Down
Knowledge Management
VRE / CWE
Strategy
Software Engineering
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e.g. Virtual Knowledge Park (VKP)
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e.g. EVIE Project Typical campus research
systems landscape
Costing system
Campus intranet
Grid tools
Finance system
Grants management system
HR Systems
Collaborative working environment
Publications database
Library resources
e-submission form
http//www.leeds.ac.uk/evie Derek Sergeant,
Leeds University Library
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EVIE project Research Lifecycle
Resource Discovery
Research Outputs
Obtain Funding
Project Management
Collaboration with Partners
http//www.leeds.ac.uk/evie Derek Sergeant Leeds
University Library
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Issues

• Assumption Users use it as the main virtual
  place of work!
• Reality A number of competitions for being the
  main virtual workplace!
• and
• Usually a fraction of the functionalities were
  used
• People dipped in and out
• Difficult to assemble a critical mass
• A number of ghost workspaces over time

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Why? a boundary issue?

• What are we dealing with here?
• Valuable output and knowledge generated from
  research work
• Need a community to sustain / maintain the
  effort important for progressing research
• Key ingredients

community
Protocols practices
researcher
researcher
resources
Quality assurance
tools techniques
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A grass root view to break boundary- concept of
a researchers affinity radar zones
2 questions - the real research environment for
individual researcher? - are
the tools / resources specific or generic?
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Doing the affinity radar scan an example
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Tracing the community and what they need
In particular, the core group of active members
of the community
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Future work

• Testing the concept by modelling a research
  community