Over the last couple of years we have seen a shift in the software architecture used in Institutional Repositories. Institutional Repositories seem to have moved away from single software application models and have leaned towards using combinations of flexible and scalable web components, as well as more productive software development frameworks. So far these architectural changes have improved harvesting, indexing and general performance for the end user. But what about the researcher?
I am not exactly sure what term or phrase to reference when discussing the progressive interaction between a researcher and the software that will showcase or disseminate their research output, so allow me to refer to it using terminology that I have picked up recently such as AWE (Academic Working Environment) or eResearch Platform.
Am I correct in assuming that a researchers willingness to participate in actively making research documents and data available, as well as promoting ones personal profile might be elevated during the honeymoon phase of a research project? Based on conversations with many accomplished researchers I believe this is the case, however I have no hard evidence to back this up.
The good news is that advances in the AWE area from a software perspective are now available, creating an opportunity for change. Hopefully these advances will result in increased interaction from researchers and richer content on the web, these changes may not occur simply due to the fact that the software is available but may require innovation from within an institution or even a national mandate.
During the International Conference on Open Repositories 2010 I was made aware of systems including eSciDoc , Islandora and The Fascinator amongst others which address these issues but are unfortunately beyond the scope of this blog post. More to come.
I hope that this has created food for thought, all comments and thoughts are welcome.
Copyright Tim McCallum, 2010. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Australia. < http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/au/ >
This post was written in OpenOffice.org, using templates and tools provided by the Integrated Content Environment project and published to WordPress using The Fascinator.
