Meik Poschen

Adoption and use of Web 2.0 in scholarly communications

Sharing research resources of different kinds, in new ways, and on an increasing scale, is a central element of the unfolding e-Research vision. Web 2.0 is seen as providing the technical platform to enable these new forms of scholarly communications. We report findings from a study of the use of Web 2.0 services by UK researchers and their use in novel forms of scholarly communication. We document the contours of adoption, the barriers and enablers, and the dynamics of innovation in Web services and scholarly practices. We conclude by considering the steps that different stakeholders might take to encourage greater experimentation and uptake.

Case Studies of e-Infrastructure Adoption

This article reports results from a study of e-Infrastructure adoption in the social sciences and humanities (SSH). The authors find that bridging barriers between computer and domain scientists is of key importance. In particular, SSH communities have to be accepted as being distinct and not suited to a ‘‘one size fits all’’ strategy of e-Infrastructure diffusion. Sustainability was also a core issue, whereas barriers to resource sharing could mostly be resolved with technological solutions, and skills and training activities are a reflection of the general ‘‘user dilemma.’’ The authors’ recommendations to European Union (EU) policy makers point the way to promoting e-Infrastructure development and wider application in the SSH.

Agile Project Management: A Case Study of a Virtual Research Environment Development Project

In this paper we use a case study of a project to create a Web 2.0-based, Virtual Research Environment (VRE) for researchers to share digital resources in order to reflect on the principles and practices for embedding eResearch applications within user communities. In particular, we focus on the software development methodologies and project management techniques adopted by the project team in order to ensure that the project remained responsive to changing user requirements without compromising their capacity to keep the project ‘on track’, i.e. meeting the goals declared in the project proposal within budget and on time. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, we describe how the project team, whose members are distributed across multiple sites (and often mobile), exploit a repertoire of coordination mechanisms, communication modes and tools, artefacts and structuring devices as they seek to establish the orderly running of the project while following an agile, user-centred development approach.

Development of a Pilot Data Management Infrastructure for Biomedical Researchers at University of Manchester - Approach, Findings, Challenges and Outlook of the MaDAM Project

Management and curation of digital data has been becoming ever more important in a higher education and research environment characterised by large and complex data, demand for more interdisciplinary and collaborative work, extended funder requirements and use of e-infrastructures to facilitate new research methods and paradigms. This paper presents the approach, technical infrastructure, findings, challenges and outlook (including future development within the successor project, MiSS) of the ‘MaDAM: Pilot data management infrastructure for biomedical researchers at University of Manchester’ project funded under the infrastructure strand of the JISC Managing Research Data (JISCMRD) programme. MaDAM developed a pilot research data management solution at the University of Manchester based on biomedical researchers’ requirements, which includes technical and governance components with the flexibility to meet future needs across multiple research groups and disciplines.

e-Infrastructure adoption in the social sciences and humanities : cross-national evidence

This paper is a first attempt to describe and compare the adoption of e-Infrastructure across the UK, continental Europe, and the USA in the social sciences and humanities. A survey of early adopters identified three differences across these countries, each potentially affecting adoption: funding approaches, the technical configuration of projects, and research support. Our findings also suggest that the sustainable adoption of e-Infrastructure co-varies with the role of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations and the involvement of other people in the adoption decision.

Secure data sharing across portals: experiences from OneVRE.

Research and higher education are facing an on-going transformation of practice resulting in the need for effective collaboration and sharing of resources within and across disciplinary and geographical boundaries. Portal technologies and portal-based virtual research and learning environments (VREs and VLEs) already have become standard infrastructures within a large number of research communities and institutions. From 2004, a series of research and development projects began to ask the question whether an open source videoconferencing and collaboration system could be used as a complete, or as a part of, VRE. This study presents the evolution of these projects and at the same time, describes the definition of a VRE and their future possible integration. The OneVRE portlet integration project attempted to create missing components, including adding secure and universal identity management. This moves the idea of shared data to a different level by creating a new administrative domain that is outside the control of a single local institution portal and resolves certain administrative virtual organizations problems. We explain some of the hurdles that still need to be overcome to make this venture truly successful, when a complete toolkit can be designed for the researcher of the future.

E-INFRASTRUCTURE ADOPTION IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

This paper is a first attempt to describe and compare the adoption of e-Infrastructure across the UK, continental Europe, and the USA in the social sciences and humanities. A survey of early adopters identified three differences across these countries, each potentially affecting adoption: funding approaches, the technical configuration of projects, and research support. Our findings also suggest that the sustainable adoption of e-Infrastructure co-varies with the role of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations and the involvement of other people in the adoption decision.