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Mike Harte
University of Otago Project Plan
The University of Otago has an e-Research Advisory Group that reports through to the Research Committee.
Members of the ERAG:
eResearch represents a broad term defining the compilation of infrastructural facilities that support large scale, distributed, national and global collaboration in research. It typically refers to digital services that strengthen and extend research through the capability offered by the Internet.
The capability offered through such digital facilities holds tremendous promise in assisting new ways of understanding, organising and performing research work. Researchers can access facilities remotely that allow them to access data stores; securely control instruments; run analysis and visualisation tools; store notes in a shared electronic notebook; and converse with colleagues using videoconferencing, whiteboards, and shared writing applications, as easily as if they were on site.
The digital facilities offered under the concept of eResearch are theoretically able to support the entire research life-cycle, from project management, background research and problem definition; to data acquisition and analysis, comparison with previous work and publication. As technologies and our understanding of distance and cross-discipline collaboration improves, it is expected that the convenience and power offered by digital facilities to researchers coupled with the savings in cost and time will make the concept of eResearch a primary component of all new resource centres.
To distinguish eResearch from the typical use of ICT it is helpful to focus on two key features:
eResearch developments happen at the cutting edge, at the threshold where ICT capacities have grown to either replace traditional, or enable completely new problem-solving capabilities. eResearch lives on the steep slope of the learning curve, as do all research-intensive organisations ready to exploit opportunities as they emerge. It is not a simple one-time challenge achieved and then forgotten but one that evolves with ICT capacity and capability.
At present and for the foreseeable future the approach to eResearch is through distributed assets, particularly high-capacity distributed computing and vast distributed storage capability. Furthermore, the people involved in a project do not necessarily work in the same place or for the same organisational entity. The computational, data and metadata resources created and used are not necessarily all sorted in one place or under the control of one entity. At the heart of eResearch are the functional tools such as databases, bibliographies, repositories, shared collaborative work spaces, online journals etc. When coupled together they create what are commonly known as Virtual Facilities (VFs). Virtual Facilities each support a certain part or parts of the research process, by providing a repository to search or submit work to, video-conferencing to communicate with colleagues, subject-specific tools to perform analysis and visualisation with etc.
VFs add value to the research industry by being integrated into Virtual Environments (VEs). VEs allow for centres without walls, in which researchers can perform their research without regard for geographical location and physical access to resources. The technology for these environments is already largely available It is a case now of assessing the needs of researchers and combining commercial, public, and custom tools with the facility-wide security, messaging, data storage, notebook, workflow collaboration, reference databases, and other services.
In conclusion eResearch as a concept and Virtual Facilities in particular are quickly becoming a viable means with which to conduct research. It holds promises of cost saving and convenience and promises to become an important means of providing advanced resources to a wide range of users. Through the use of VFs researchers are able to enhance and expand research capabilities through integrating, packaging, and supporting an ensemble of tools tailored to make research communities more efficient and effective. While the exact nature of the eResearch evolution is unclear, its scale and ability to support research places it at the forefront of 21st century research.
Retrieved from "https://eresearch.wiki.otago.ac.nz/EResearch_Overview"