The Brain Project – Building Research Background Part of JISC Virtual Research Environments (Phase 3) Programme Based at Coventry University with Leeds University as partner Project Context The Institution incorporates one of the largest university enterprise organisations in Europe – research is business and community focused with a cross-disciplinary approach Basic aims To harness the collective intelligence of the Institution by building a Community of Practice for Research and Innovation involving the University and external academic and other partners and developing and providing the appropriate tools and services to support this To provide benefit to the wider academic community through the project’s experiences and outputs Methodology Find out and analyse what researchers and partner businesses and organisations are doing and identify requirements and issues  Extensive user engagement - over 100 people interviewed so far, several ongoing focus groups, documented use cases, direct involvement in research and business projects  Internal and External Advisory Groups Analyse process (including research support and business development), identify good practice Develop and deploy tools and services, implement process and system improvements, facilitate communities Interact, Evaluate, Embed, Evolve – an iterative user-focused RAD based development approach

What do researchers want? – Key Requirements Finding and Matching - Who knows what? “How do you find the person you want to talk to?” “How do I find who's done something similar?” Connecting requirements, expertise, interests, capacity, funding etc. Discussions and Networking “How do you suggest and discuss good ideas?” “We need a common place and common events to meet at. Space and time to talk.” “An intelligent notice board...” “Networks of networks …” Integrated physical and virtual networking “Everything connected” – API’s, Mashups etc. Varied requirements - Asynchronous/Synchronous, Audio/Video, Integration with collaborative working Collaborative Working Documents, Graphical content etc. Collaborative design/visualisation/thinking/creativity tools Shared information and resources using feeds etc. Flexible and unified access control and security Tagging, rating and feedback tools What do researchers want? – Key Issues Process Collaborative systems must integrate with existing workflows An integrated knowledge infrastructure is needed to derive the full benefit from diverse sources of personal and other data “The frustrating thing is being asked for the same information several times in different forms” - Reuse and repurpose Usability “It’s a great system – but nobody can use it.” More is less – avoid information and feature overload Benefits and costs – perceived benefits to the user of a system must exceed costs (in the widest sense) Barriers to collaboration Time/Resource – especially in the initial stages Siloing/Organisational Divisions – Administrative and Financial regulations and policies often mitigate against collaboration (“It’s the devil's own job to create something that crosses boundaries.”) “Cultural” differences – e.g., between academia and business (“I don’t really have much idea what goes on at the University.”)

and Innovation Networks Finding Connections The project has developed tools to find connections between researchers, to search for expertise that could meet specified requirements, to map locations of business partners to identify clusters etc. This required putting together and analysing information from many sources which had often never been linked before. Building and Supporting Physical and Virtual Networks Several networking events have been organised by the project and virtual systems developed to support these, as well as provide discussion, collaborative working and other facilities for specific research areas, as well as for more general requirements. External events linking research and business have also been supported, integrating several systems.

Systems and Tools The experience of the project supports the conclusion that different solutions are needed for different requirements and the fundamental approach to VRE development needs to be about facilitating connectivity and interoperability. The project has used a number of platforms and its main system is itself based on an integration of Wordpress/Buddypress with Mediawiki and other tools. This has been linked to the main University Sharepoint system and the project is also using Liferay. Integration with the existing infrastructure was a major challenge and the Brain system is the only system at the University which combines internal and external authentication. Tools to facilitate making links and connections have a key role to play in facilitating collaboration and even the prototype systems developed by the project have proved effective in practice and are in active use by researchers and business development staff at the University. The project is developing more sophisticated and flexible tools that can also find connections with external researchers and businesses. The project has worked planned with a number of Universities for collaborative activities based on tools like this and hopes to extend this with others. Approach & Methodology An integrated approach - including process and organisational culture as well as technology needs to be taken when building VREs. The project has found that user requirements are often not adequately met and tend to be shoe-horned into existing categories such as Blogs, Wikis etc - where a more flexible approach is required. User interfaces are also sometimes poor and the project has been prototyping front-ends which are more intuitive for users. Concepts sometimes described by the terms “Science 2.0” and “Research 2.0” have stimulated discussion about new methodologies for research related to developments in Internet technologies. Promoting collaborative research, especially across disciplinary boundaries, also raises many important and difficult issues about how knowledge and practice can be shared and connected. These questions need to be considered seriously and the project is using a pattern language-based and semantic web approach to facilitate this both for the research areas it works with as well as for the project itself and the VRE community it is part of. The project has been encouraged and inspired by the people and groups it has worked with. For example, one business working with us included the project in a bid to the Heritage Lottery fund without us initially knowing! Once the benefits of collaborative research and innovation and how the work of projects like the Brain project could facilitate this were understood by them, they became enthusiastic proponents of its work. The national and international VRE initiatives have a vital role in taking research and the economic and other benefits which come from it forward. Jim Hensman, Coventry University, Conclusions and Ongoing Work