E-Research: Strengthening institutional partnerships
[ UniNews Vol. 15, No. 2
20 February - 6 March 2006 ] By Linda O’Brien
Whether it’s e-research in Australia, cyberinfrastructure in the USA, the grid in Europe, or e-science in the UK, a transformation is occurring in research practice, a transformation that will have a profound impact on the roles of researchers and information professionals working in higher education, according to University of Melbourne Vice-Principal (Information) Linda O’Brien. “Research is becoming more multidisciplinary, more collaborative, and more global,” she says. “These changes provide new opportunities and challenges for information professionals. E-research is vital in strengthening institutional partnerships. It challenges us to think globally and act locally in building collaboration between information services and the research community.” Ms O’Brien outlines here the shape, role and significance of e-research in an article adapted from one she had published recently in the education journal EDUCAUSE Review.
The term e-science has been used to describe large-scale, distributed, collaborative science enabled by the Internet and related technologies. E-research is a broader term that includes non-scientific research but that also refers to large-scale, distributed, national, or global collaboration in research. E-research provides opportunities to develop whole new areas of valuable research and to see existing research in new ways. Perhaps this is best illustrated by examples.
Astrophysics research at the University of Melbourne is a case in point. It draws critically on cyberinfrastructure through the University of Melbourne’s participation in the Australian Virtual Observatory. By linking expensive astronomical equipment and providing data mining and curation through grid technologies, the Observatory enables astrophysicists to work in large global research teams on terabytes of data. Stored data can be used up to six times for different research, often in unexpected ways.
A current research project being conducted by University of Melbourne astrophysicist Professor Rachel Webster (Physics) is one of three running in parallel internationally to examine the low-frequency radio domain for evidence of the origins of the universe (the other two are at Harvard and MIT). The Australian research alone involves a six-terabyte link to a remote part of Western Australia and hundreds of terabytes of storage.
Another example is PARADISEC, a rich, collaborative research resource of digital and endangered recorded field material relating to cultures of the regions surrounding Australia and beyond. A partnership between four Australian universities, PARADISEC contains almost 2000 records in 254 languages from 39 countries, with more than 800 hours of salvaged and rare sound recordings. Using cyberinfrastructure, these are now accessible for research and teaching across the globe.
Dr Nick Thieberger (Linguistics and Applied Linguistics) requires his research students to add their field material to the PARADISEC archive, provide appropriate metadata, and store it in a digitally sustainable format, further building the resource. New research can now occur that was not even contemplated at the time of collecting the primary material.
As more researchers see the possibility of e-research, the middleware becomes critical to an effective research process. Middleware has been described as essentially the software that provides standard community tools and services for knowledge management, knowledge sharing, collaboration and interoperability between applications, computing resources, institutions, and individuals across the cyberinfrastructure.
Although the physical infrastructure is well developed, the logical and intellectual infrastructure, including middleware, is a work-in-progress. A great deal of effort is being directed at middleware development to enable the progression of ‘production-strength’ middleware tools that cross discipline boundaries and provide broad value to research communities internationally.
Arguably technology is the easy part; harder is the human dimension. The matter of connecting people (researchers) to resources is not only an international issue but also a national, regional, and local issue.
Linking people to resources – researchers to scholarly materials – has been the role of the librarian for centuries. Libraries have traditionally been central to the research endeavour, managing and preserving resources increasingly in digital form and making these resources accessible to the researcher, often through collaboration and partnerships with other libraries. Hence, libraries have know-how not only in managing, making accessible and preserving scholarly resources but also in forming federations and collaborations to share published scholarly work.
But the nature of scholarly communication is changing, with researchers wanting access to primary research data, often in digital form. No longer is scholarly communication a final discrete publication that is to be managed, made accessible, and preserved. Libraries may even risk fading from existence if they don’t respond effectively to the changing environment. In e-research, it is the primary research data that must often be managed, made accessible, and curated.
In most existing e-research projects the researchers have sought to perform these tasks of managing and making accessible the research data, which may be generated across multiple countries and research projects. Many now realise that this data is valuable beyond their initial research, which has a limited life.
But who will take responsibility for the longer-term curation of and access to this data? Unlike their recognition of the need for IT know-how, those in the research community have not often recognised the role that librarians could play in providing specialist know-how in managing, preserving and making accessible the research data.
For example, the PARADISEC project is storing, preserving, and making accessible data of international significance through annual research grants. What happens to this data, and to the infrastructure required for preserving it and making it accessible, if the funds cease?
In developing the capability to support e-research, clearly higher education must build partnerships at the international and the national levels, not only within the research community but also among information professionals. Many of the questions that must be resolved at a national or international level are equally relevant within individual institutions:
Who will be the champion for e-research support and related initiatives?
Should we set up centralised or virtual distributed organisations to support e-research?
How do we share expensive infrastructure and developed expertise to achieve research outcomes?
How do we get domain-specific research communities to adopt recommended standards?
How do we leverage what is being learned by domain-specific research communities to the broader research community to facilitate cross-disciplinary research?
These questions can be effectively addressed only through a strategic approach and strong partnerships between the research community and information professionals.
At the Melbourne, some researchers recognised that collaboration in e-research needed to start at ‘home’. A working party of interested academics was established in partnership with Information Services (formerly the Information Division).
The resulting report and discussions enabled Information Services to better understand researchers’ needs and informed researchers about what Information Services could bring to their research.
Information Services already offers a good deal of technical infrastructure and services, as well as information leadership and co-ordination. A survey of University researchers determined further needs, including access to storage and computational resources, videoconferencing and collaboration tools and assistance with organising and managing research data sets.
The University research community also recognised the importance of a champion at an institutional level to assist in achieving the outcomes sought. A case is currently being made, in collaboration with the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research), Professor John McKenzie, for the creation of such a role.
Linda O’Brien leads Information Services at the University of Melbourne. For the full text and references of this article see EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 40, no. 6 (November/December 2005): 64-76 or visit www.educause.edu/apps/er/erm05/erm0563.asp
Information Services (formerly Information Division) supports the University of Melbourne’s vision of world-class teaching, learning and research through leadership, innovation and quality in information and education services, systems and technologies. Information Services includes libraries, computing and communication facilities and a range of information and education services, systems and technologies to support the University’s teaching, learning, research and its administration. For further information see www.infoservices.unimelb.edu.au
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