Post-Graduate Scholarship
UCD School of Information and Library Studies (SILS) &
UCD School of Computer Science and Informatics (CSI)
Applications are invited for
 An MSc in Computer Science scholarship (2 years)
 An MLitt in Information Studies scholarship (2 years)
To commence September 1st 2008 or as soon as possible thereafter.
Project Title: OJAX++: A Next-Generation Collaborative Research Tool
Funding Agency: Science Foundation Ireland
Project Details:
The aim of the proposed research is to investigate how concepts from the Social Web can be
applied to the research environment in order to facilitate dynamic collaboration and the sharing
of ideas among researchers. It will be illustrated via the creation of OJAX++, a next-generation
collaborative research tool, using Web 2.0 technologies such as Web Services, Ajax and
collaborative tagging.
Requirements:
 Honours degree (first class or 2.1) in Computer Science or related field.
 Or honours degree (first class or 2.1) in another subject plus relevant technical
experience (eg Web technology, JavaScript, Ajax, Java, Ruby or Python)
Stipend: €17,000 per annum plus fees.
Contact: Dr Judith Wusteman, School of Information and Library Studies (SILS)
UCD Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland. judith.wusteman@ucd.ie
For both students:
•
First Supervisor: Dr Judith Wusteman (http://www.ucd.ie/wusteman)
•
Second supervisor: Dr Lorraine McGinty
(http://csiweb.ucd.ie/Staff/AcademicStaff/lmcginty/)
Applications
In the first instance, please submit a CV to Dr Judith Wusteman (judith.wusteman@ucd.ie)
1
Further details
Abstract
The aim of the proposed research is to investigate how concepts from the Social Web and
recommender technology can be applied to the research environment in order to facilitate
dynamic collaboration and the sharing of ideas among researchers. It will be illustrated via the
creation of OJAX++, a next-generation collaborative research tool, using Web 2.0 technologies
such as Web Services, Ajax, collaborative tagging and recommender functionality. A component
of OJAX++ will be OJAX (http://ojax.sourceforge.net/), an existing Ajax-enabled prototype user
interface to a federated search service for OAI-PMH-compatible repository metadata.
Keywords
Web 2.0, Social Web, collaborative research environments, eResearch.
1. What is the question that this proposal addresses?
The central idea behind Web 2.0, or the “Social Web”, is harnessing collective intelligence [1].
This is also the central function of academic research. The research process involves community
and collaboration, the sharing of ideas and peer review, all characteristics of the Social Web. The
momentum of academic research could benefit enormously from adopting Social Web ingenuity
and functionality. The application of ideas from recommender technologies to Social Web
concepts, such as annotation and tagging, has the potential to further improve the online research
experience by providing the user with more relevant search results.
The aim of the proposed research is to investigate how concepts from the Social Web and
recommender technology can be applied to the research environment in order to enhance and
personalise interaction and to facilitate dynamic collaboration and the sharing of ideas among
researchers. The research findings will be illustrated via the creation of a next-generation
collaborative research tool called OJAX++.
2. Why is this problem significant?
The aim of the government’s Strategy for Science, Technology and Innovation, launched in June
2006, is to “accelerate the drive towards making Ireland a country which harnesses cutting-edge
knowledge in the interests of all” [2]. The intention of the strategy is to double the number of
PhD students, to help businesses to benefit from research and to support “enquiry and
excellence” across all areas. To achieve success, this strategy will require considerable advances
in Ireland’s research infrastructure. Given that “computers empower advancement in almost
every traditional field of research endeavour” [3], facilitating research requires a continual
exploration of how state of the art technology can enhance the research process. Both the
OJAX++ tool itself and the accompanying evaluation of user requirements for collaborative
research environments will be of potential benefit to the entire research community in Ireland.
2
3. How will the question be addressed?
3.1 Introduction
This project will build on an existing corpus of research expertise, publications and software in
the fields of Web 2.0, AI and digital libraries (see Section 4). The OJAX++ collaborative
research tool will use Web 2.0 technologies such as Ajax, Web Services and collaborative
tagging and will integrate a sophisticated recommendation engine combining AI technologies
and ideas from case-based reasoning (CBR) [4-7], user profiling [8-13] and data mining research
[14-17].
A component of OJAX++ will be OJAX [18], a prototype user interface to a federated search
service for OAI-PMH-compatible repository metadata. OJAX is Ajax-enabled and comprises a
client-side GUI, implemented in JavaScript and HTML, and server-side metasearch Web
Services, implemented in Java. Apache Lucene is used to index and search the metadata. OJAX
is simple to use and non-threatening but it is also powerful. It attempts to minimise upfront user
investment and provide immediate dynamic feedback, thus encouraging experimentation and
enabling enactive learning. OJAX Version 0.1 is described in [19]; more recent developments
are described at [18].
OJAX++ will be based on Web Services, thus enabling modularity and interoperability. Rather
than building all of the features discussed in this proposal, a central theme of the project will be
to investigate and develop interoperability and collaboration with other systems and projects.
The project team will use Agile development methods, including continuous integration of all
work packages.
3.2 IVRLA
The UCD Irish Virtual Research Library & Archive (IVRLA) [20] repository will be used as an
initial testbed for OJAX++.
Launched in January 2005, IVRLA is a major digitisation and digital object management project.
It was conceived as a means of preserving and facilitating access to elements of UCD’s historical
repositories. The uniqueness, and in many cases fragility, of the original materials, is a major
obstacle to their availability and use by the scholarly community. When fully implemented,
IVRLA will be one of the first comprehensive digital primary source repositories in Ireland. The
final repository will host digital collections in a variety of media types including text, audio,
video and graphics. A critical challenge for the IVRLA is how to help researchers navigate,
discover and annotate relevant content in the repository’s diverse holdings.
3.3 Research Issues
The following sections outline some of the specific research issues that will be addressed.
3
3.3.1 Collaborative research environments
The definition of Collaborative Research Environments (CREs), also known as Virtual Research
Environments (VREs), is still evolving. The UK Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC)
Virtual Research Environments Programme defines a VRE as comprising
“A set of online tools and other network resources and technologies interoperating with
each other to support or enhance the processes of a wide range of research practitioners
within and across disciplinary and institutional boundaries. A key characteristic of a VRE
is that it facilitates collaboration amongst researchers and research teams providing them
with more effective means of collaboratively collecting, manipulating and managing data,
as well as collaborative knowledge creation” [21].
The OJAX ++ project will take advantage of research findings (for example [22, 23]) and will
develop collaboration and cross fertilisation with relevant projects (for example [24, 25]). Early
results in the field of user requirements for CRE [25, 26] indicate that, to be effective, a CRE
must be developed in the context of a research community and must take account of that
community’s shared practices and tools. Direct dialogue and engagement with the research
community for whom the VRE is being developed is vital [27]. Collaboration with IVRLA will
provide a context for exploring the real needs of a research community.
Standardised Web Services can empower CRE technology, offering more control and simpler
system customisation and integration [28]. By using standard Web Services, components of
CREs built in the context of one research community can be “mashed up” in different
combinations for research communities with different needs.
3.3.2 Integration and interoperability
One of the central tenets of Web 2.0 is the provision of data and services that facilitate
“remixing” with other data and services, via an “architecture of participation” [29].
Interoperability, modularity and compatibility with other systems have also been identified as
generic requirements for CREs [30]. Significantly, the intention of the JISC VRE programme is
not to produce a “complete VRE” but rather to contribute to the definition and development of a
“common framework and its associated standards” [30]. An exploration of potential integrations
and interoperability with other tools, systems and data sources will be a central theme of the
OJAX++ project.
There are various mechanisms that can facilitate the integration and interoperability of OJAX++,
including widgets, RSS [31] and Web Services. One area in which adoption of appropriate Web
Service standards is of paramount importance is the search technology underlying the service.
Such technologies include SRW/U (Search/Retrieve via the Web or URL) which is widely
supported but largely within library-related applications, and the more recent but increasingly
popular OpenSearch. OJAX already supports OpenSearch and can be easily integrated with any
of the many OpenSearch compliant services. Supporting SRW/U would enable interoperability
with library systems and bridge the gap between library applications and the Web 2.0 universe.
Some existing and potential collaborations between OJAX++ and other services are described
below.
4
OJAX++ could become an alternative search interface for institutional repository software such
as Fedora [32], I-Tor [33], DSpace [34] or Eprints [35]. There is an existing collaboration
between SILS and the Technical University of Denmark to apply OJAX to the Fedora Generic
Search Service [36]. The aim is to provide the latter with a flexible and dynamic user interface.
This collaboration should highlight interesting interoperability research issues which it may be
fruitful to pursue in the OJAX++ project. IVRLA uses the Fedora repository, thus further
facilitating such an investigation.
I-Tor is used by DAREnet, the Dutch Digital Academic Repositories programme [37].
Developers working on DAREnet have been considering the implications of OJAX [38]. The
Irish Universities Association has recently been awarded a Higher Education Authority Strategic
Innovation Fund grant [39] for the development of an Irish national search service, possibly
analogous to the Dutch DARE model. This service will support searching across the emerging
network of third level institutional repositories [40, 41]. OJAX could provide a search interface
for such a national service. Again, this potential collaboration may provide research issues of
relevance to the OJAX++ project.
The Sakai project, of which UCD is a partner, is a “community source software development
effort to design, build and deploy a new Collaboration and Learning Environment (CLE) for
higher education” [42]. It could provide an opening for collaboration, as could the interest,
expressed by the developers of the OpenCourseWare management system, EDUCommons [43],
in integrating OJAX’s federated search facilities [44].
References
[1] O'Reilly, T. (2005) “What Is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next
Generation of Software”, O'Reilly, September. Available at:
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html
[2] Ahern, B. [T.D.] (2006) “The Strategy for Science, Technology & Innovation”, June 18
2006. Available at: http://www.taoiseach.gov.ie/index.asp?docID=2715
[3] UCD Research Computing Committee “The Requirements for Information Technology to
Support UCD's Research Activities”, May 2004. Available at:
http://www.ucd.ie/itservices/researchit/UCDresearchcomputingreportMay04.pdf
[4] McGinty, L. and Smyth, B. (2001) "Collaborative Case-Based Reasoning: Applications in
Personalised Route Planning", In Proceedings of the International of on Case-Based
Reasoning (ICCBR 2001), pp. 362-376, Springer.
[5] Wang, F., & Wedman, J. (2003) "A Case-based Reasoning Knowledge Repository to Support
the Technology Integration Community", World Conference on Educational Multimedia,
Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2003(1), pp. 156-159.
[6] Moore, J., Means, T., & Kim, B. (2004). "Applying Case-Based Reasoning Principles Within
A Technology Integration Learning Environment". Society for Information Technology and
Teacher Education International Conference 2004(1), pp. 3533-3538.
[7] McGinty, L. and Plaza, E. (2006) Distributed Case-Based Reasoning. The Knowledge
Engineering Review, Volume0:0 1-4, Cambridge University Press. Eds: Aha,D.W. and
Marling,C.
5
[8] Smyth, B., McCarthy, K., Reilly, J., O'Sullivan, D., McGinty, L. and Wilson, D.C. "Case
Studies in Association Rule Mining for Recommender Systems" In: Arabnia, H.R. and
Joshua, R.(eds) Proceedings of the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IC-AI
2005). Las Vegas, Nevada, pp. 809-815, CSREA Press.
[9] McGinty, L. and Smyth, B. (2003) "The Power of Suggestion" In: Gottlob, G. and Walsh, T.
(eds) Proceedings of the 18th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence,
(IJCAI-03). pp. 127-132., Mexico. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.
[10] Middleton, S. E., Shadbolt, N. R. and De Roure, D. C. (2003) "Capturing Interest Through
Inference and Visualization: Ontological User Profiling in Recommender Systems". In
Proceedings of K-CAP2003, Sundial Beach Resort, Sanibel Island, Florida, USA.
[11] Lang, K. "NewsWeeder: Learning to Filter NetNews" (1995) In Proceedings of the
International Conference on MAchine Learning (ICML 1995). Tahoe City, CA, July 1995,
pp 331-339.
[12] Middleton, S.E. De Roure, D. C. Shadbolt, N.R. "Capturing Knowledge of User
Preferences: ontologies on recommender systems" (2001) In Proceedings of the First
International Conference on Knowledge Capture (K-CAP 2001), Victoria, B.C. Canada.
[13] Costello, E., Doody, J., and McGinty, L. (2006) "iCARE: Intelligent Customer Assistance
for Recommending Eyewear". In: Paris, C., Sidner, C. L. (eds) Proceedings of the 11th
International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces. (IUI-06) pp. 282-284. ACM Press.
[14] Mooney, R. J. and Bunescu, R. (2005) "Mining Knowledge from Text Using Information
Extraction" SIGKDD Explorations (special issue on Text Mining and Natural Language
Processing), 7(1), pp. 3-10.
[15] Berry, M.J.and Linoff, G.S. (2006) "Data Mining Techniques: For Marketing, Sales, and
Customer Relationship Management" Wiley Computing Publishers.
[16] Tan, A. "Text mining: The state of the art and the challenges", In Proc of the Pacic Asia
Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining PAKDD'99 workshop on Knowledge
Discovery from Advanced Databases, pp.65-70.
[17] Bilenko, M., Basu, S. and Sahami, M. (2005) "Adaptive Product Normalization: Using
Online Shopping for Record Linkage in Comparison Shopping" In Proceedings of the 5th
International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM 2005), pp. 58-65, Houston, TX.
[18] OJAX Homepage: http://ojax.sourceforge.net/
[19] Wusteman, J. and O'hIceadha, P., (2006) "Using Ajax to Empower Dynamic Searching",
Information Technology and Libraries (ITAL), Vol. 25, No. 2, June, pp 57-64.
Available at: http://www.ucd.ie/wusteman/
[20] The UCD Irish Virtual Research Library & Archive (IVRLA): http://www.ucd.ie/ivrla/
[21] JISC Virtual Research Environments Programme:
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/programme_vre.html
[22] Caccamo A. (2006) "User Needs and the Irish Virtual Research Library and Archive",
September, MLIS dissertation, School of Information and Library Studies, UCD.
[23] The Melvyl Recommender Project, California Digital Library:
http://www.cdlib.org/inside/projects/melvyl_recommender/
[24] e-Research Tools and Resources Interoperability Project (eReSS):
http://www.hull.ac.uk/esig/eress
[25] “Building a Virtual Research Environment for the Humanities”:
http://bvreh.humanities.ox.ac.uk/
[26] Sim, Y. W., Wang, C., Gilbert, L. and Wills, G. B. (2005) “User Requirement Study for a
6
Virtual Research Environment”, Technical Report ECSTR-IAM05-003, Electronics and
Computer Science, University of Southampton.
[27] JISC Virtual Research Environments Programme (2005) “Notes from a Consultation
Workshop on the Virtual Research Environments Programme”, 28 November 2005,
London. Available at: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/programme_vre.html
[28] Wusteman, J. (2006) "Realising the Potential of Web Services" OCLC Systems &
Services: International Digital Library Perspectives, vol 22, issue 1, pp. 5-9. Available at:
http://www.ucd.ie/wusteman/
[29] O'Reilly,T. (2005) “Web 2.0: Compact Definition?”, blog, October 01 2005. Available at:
http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2005/10/web_20_compact_definition.html
[30] JISC Virtual Research Environments programme: Phase 2 roadmap:
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/publications/pub_vreroadmap.aspx
[31] Wusteman, J. (2004) "RSS: The Latest Feed", Library Hi Tech, vol 22, no 4, pp. 404 - 413.
Available at: http://www.ucd.ie/wusteman/
[32] Fedora: http://www.fedora.info/
[33] I-Tor: http://www.i-tor.org/en/
[34] DSpace: http://www.dspace.org/
[35] Eprints: http://www.eprints.org/
[36] Fedora search service: http://defxws2006.cvt.dk/fedoragsearch/
[37] DAREnet: http://www.darenet.nl/
[38] Waaijers, L. (2006) Personal communication, 18 January 2006.
[39] Higher Education Authority Strategic Innovation Fund 2006:
http://www.hea.ie/index.cfm/page/sub/id/1122
[40] CHIU Librarians Institutional Repositories Working Group Report (2005).
[41] Sheehan, P. (2006) Personal communication, 28 November 2006.
[42], Sakai: http://sakaiproject.org/index.php
[43] EDUCommons: http://cosl.usu.edu/projects/educommons/
[44] Wiley, D. (2006) Personal communication, 12 January 2006.
[45] McGinty, L., Shanley, D., Smyth, B. (2005) “Common-Sense Recommendation: Using
Recommendation Summaries for Retrieval in Conversational Recommenders”. In: Arabnia,
H.R., and Joshua, R.(eds), Proceedings of the 2005 International Conference on Artificial
Intelligence (ICAI-05). Pages 802-808, Nevada, USA. CSREA Press.
[46] MEtrics from Scholarly Usage of Resources (MESUR), Los Alamos National Laboratory:
http://www.mesur.org/Home.html
[47] Wusteman, J. (2006) "OJAX: Facilitating dynamic access to repository metadata", First
European Workshop on the use of Digital Object Repository Systems in Digital Libraries
(DORSDL) in conjunction with the 10th European Conference On Research And Advanced
Technology For Digital Libraries (ECDL) 2006, September 2006, Alicante, Spain.
[48] OJAX Testimonials: http://ojax.sourceforge.net/testimonials.htm
[49] Wiley, D (2005) “Iterating towards openness”, blog, December 9, 2005. Available at:
http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/222
[50] Lyon, L. (2006) “Digital Libraries and e-Research: new horizons, new challenges?”,
8th International Bielefeld Conference, Germany, February 2006. Available at:
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ukoln/staff/e.j.lyon/presentati
7