Comparative analysis of university-wide research collaboration platforms

Abstract

In the current knowledge-based society, a collaboration of experts from diverse fields is crucial for creative and innovative research. The advent of the Internet and Web 2.0 has lowered the temporal and spatial barrier of knowledge exchanges, and accordingly, online research collaboration services have emerged to promote interactions among researchers in diverse fields. The present thesis performs a comparative analysis of online collaboration platforms suitable for university environment. To this end, an analysis framework is proposed on the basis of the ecology study of university-wide research collaboration. The framework consists of four phases (i.e., knowledge management, research activity analysis, group formation, group research activity). For each phase, inhibiting and facilitating factors are reported on the basis a comprehensive literature survey. Using this framework, a comparative analysis is performed using several collaboration platforms such as ‘TWiki’, ‘Jive’, and ‘Mendeley’, leading to practical design guidelines of online systems for university-wide research collaboration.