JISC

Summary

The project will utilise a number of aspects of digital infrastructure, particularly semantic data and data visualisation techniques, to help support and develop a particular EPSRC funded research community – SPIRES (Supporting People Who Investigate Research Environments and Spaces). This community has a wide membership from many academic institutions, libraries and other bodies who are involved in a diverse range of research activities. The aim of the proposed project is to both help strengthen the network and its existing membership and to extend and develop it, particularly using the connections of its members within institutions and projects they are part of to find new research themes and potential areas for new collaborations. Within the partner universities of the INSPIRES project, special focus will be made on developing communities which have been identified as institutional priorities that link to disciplinary areas and themes related to SPIRES.

The technologies used for the project are based on those developed as part of the VRE3 Brain project at Coventry University - including immersive visualisation environments and tools to find cross-disciplinary connections between researchers, work carried out by the VRE3 Cancer Imaging VRE project and the Institutional Innovation BRII project at Oxford University - including the development of a semantic research data registry, and work carried out under several projects at Warwick University - including techniques to connect and merge ontologies from different disciplines. Although not a formal project partner, connection will be kept through an Advisory Group with relevant work at Cambridge University, particularly work with the research collaboration tool, Vivo. Although the limited project time period will preclude major new development, integration of aspects of different technologies, together with some development to adapt these appropriately, will provide the opportunity for technical innovation.

Although development will be carried out around specific research networks, the work and its outputs and outcomes will have relevance to research communities more generally who wish to apply digital infrastructure technologies to explore new directions and collaborative opportunities. An additional aspect of the development will be to include businesses and other non-academic bodies within the scope of the networks being facilitated.

Objectives

• To help build the SPIRES research community, especially by identifying potential collaborative connections and partnerships.
• To help extend the SPIRES community through networks and activities that its members are part of and by finding links to wider research, particularly within partner institutions.
• To integrate and enhance Digital Infrastructure tools and systems developed as part of different VRE and related initiatives and embed them in SPIRES and project partner communities.
• To provide case studies and models of general value to JISC and the HE community, showing the use of particular Digital Infrastructure technologies and techniques to help develop research communities.

Anticipated Outputs and Outcomes

• A system and set of tools to support the SPIRES project and associated networks by identifying and developing connections and collaborations and representing and displaying these in appropriate ways, integrated with the SPIRES website and other online facilities.
• An immersive visualisation environment linked to this information to facilitate collective thinking and discussion and to support interactive sessions.
• A demonstrator system and suitably packaged software outputs.
• Reports and results dissemination detailing the experience involved in the development and implementation of the project, with particular emphasis on evaluation of impact, interoperability and interfacing issues – including semantic interoperability, and community building and integration.