Research collaboration
Collaboration is the defining theme of eResearch.
New collaborative software tools, high-speed networks, and emerging grid technologies facilitate communication and sharing of resources and knowledge between geographically dispersed groups.
By offering improved, easier to use methods of communication and data sharing, eResearch facilitates cooperation between research groups and reveals possibilities for collaboration that may not have been previously apparent. The expansion of inter-disciplinary collaboration is one of the key benefits that eResearch can bring to the research community.
Collaboration is supported by three major streams in eResearch:
Collaboration tools
Technologies for web-based video conferencing are expanding the potential for research collaboration, without requiring researchers to leave their desks.
Video conferencing technologies like Access Grid and EVO enable real-time interactions in which researchers can see, hear and talk to each other, whilst sharing data and access to applications.
Web tools like Sakai, Drupal and Plone allow researchers to collaborate on the construction of shared websites and create web spaces where they can join discussion groups, contribute to blogs, develop mailing lists, and share files.
Data sharing
Data sharing infrastructure improves access to research conducted across the globe, across the country, and across the street.
Whether the research that you want to do involves the integration and manipulation of data from different locations around the world, or you want to send data to a processing facility located across town, high speed networks, centralised data repositories like SASR, and web-based collaboration tools like Sakai can help you share data in controlled ways within and across research teams and institutions.
Access to shared resources
Grid computing technologies and high speed networks enable the coordinated sharing of resources such as computer processing power and data storage capacity over the internet.
High-performance computing (HPC) is useful for researchers who need large amounts of computing power to perform mathematical modelling, analyse complex statistics, or to search large databases. Using HPC resources, researchers can understand or predict the behaviour of complex systems in work as diverse as molecular-level drug design, global warming research, and physical simulations.
The national grid computing network allows researchers access to advanced data processing facilities that individual institutions might be unable to afford.