Comparative matrix of research networking tools

Holly Falk-Krzesinski, Laura Wimbiscus-Yoon, Pamela L Shaw

Research output: Contribution to conferenceAbstractpeer-review

Abstract

Northwestern University is geographically divided into two campuses: a main, undergraduate campus in Evanston, IL that houses seven schools, and a downtown Chicago campus that is home to three schools. Moreover, the University has three geographically dispersed medical/hospital affiliates. Translational research is performed at both campuses and in conjunction with medical partners, but researchers are generally not aware of expertise, resources, and facilities available at the location that is not their own—even of the research landscape beyond their own school or department! The Northwestern University Clinical and Translational Sciences (NUCATS) Institute recognized the need for a knowledge management system of the University’s entire research enterprise, to gain access to the full spectrum of research resources and with the important goal of encouraging more research collaboration among faculty across all campuses/schools and affiliated medical facilities. The NUCATS Director of Research Team Support launched a project to collect information for a comparative matrix of available research networking tools. This effort involved members of the Galter Health Sciences Library and the Northwestern University Biomedical Informatics Center (NUBIC) at the NUCATS Institute (an additional 17 units at the University and medical affiliates were engaged at the product demonstration stage of the process). This team identified 25 open source and licensed applications for research networking. Sixteen factors were identified for comparison of the tools, including time required for implementation, interoperability with internal and external data sources, and data infeed functionality. Though the project was undertaken to identify the best research networking tool solution for Northwestern University, the team was encouraged to share their findings with other institutions undertaking a similar investigation of research knowledge management systems. The completed comparison provides a glimpse of one institution’s findings in the search of an effective research networking application.
Original languageEnglish
StatePublished - 2010
EventNational VIVO Conference - New York, NY
Duration: Aug 12 2010 → …

Conference

ConferenceNational VIVO Conference
Period8/12/10 → …

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