Personal Statement
•
How do you encourage and manage research collaboration in e-Research?
Building shared spaces and tangible benefits for communities to come together –
collaboratory model – Open Source model where collaboration makes whole more
than sum of parts 1 (ie win:win). Works in supply chain context as strategic alliance.
•
How do you manage e-Research projects and the relationship between the
various stakeholders involved?
With difficulty. Collaboration is often framed in terms of agreeing shared frames of
reference for sharing knowledge and resources to common ends, but there is less
emphasis on aligning the different short and long time aims, constructs, criteria and
rewards for particular collaborative preferences.
•
How can the relationship between emerging requirements and ongoing
technological development be managed?
Need to separate development of what is core, generic, least variable from what is
local, context specific, highly variable or dynamic. One recurring strategy is to allow
local communities to adapt a local version for their own use, and also to benefit from
the ability of local communities to update, adapt and develop knowledge and expert
resource that can feed back in.
•
What are the appropriate tools and techniques to coordinate scientific
endeavour?
QA is based on match to need – each community will need different things. Given
that one size will not fit all – metadata is a good example of this in the use of digital
image repositories in VLEs/VREs. Napster, You Tube etc provide examples of the
value added where systems leverage diversity rather than shoehorn it into one
pipeline
•
How do we match the facilities of e-Research with particular scientific
cultures?
See before
•
What are the opportunities and restrictions associated with the commercial
development of e-Infrastructures for research?
University generated infrastructure is (a) largely funding led rather than user led (b)
generally not robust or usable enough for scalable use with real users (c) often
1
https://wikis.nesc.ac.uk/mod/Main_Page
reinvents work done in other countries or in commercial contexts. (Universities were
given funding to develop VLES across the UK – then they all bought Blackboard)
Commercial developments for e-research are generally more user focused given that
the funding is user led. They are too often ignored by the academic research
community and rarely inform the debate. Industry should be informing the academic
research community much more.
•
How do we promote and support sustainable use of e-Infrastructures for
research?
Provide usable examples that tangibly meet a community need – how where and
when they need it.
Effective ones seem to build on existing community dynamics – msn, napster, ebay,
WebSOMS
Build opportunistically on requirements bottom up, starting with mock ups
Work more with industry along lines of EDIKT but for wider community
Reward work with real users
Jenny Ure