A Web 2.0 Supported Business Process Management Environment for Collaborative Research

Abstract

Collaborative research includes research activities conducted by a group of people working at different locations and has become a hot issue due to the effects of globalization and advances in information technology (IT). The aim of this study is to design, develop, implement and evaluate an IT environment to better manage the standard processes of a collaborative research by providing more efficient use of the resources. Inspired by the studies in the literature, the basic steps and requirements of a typical collaborative research are identified and the related process flow diagram is generated. Next a Web 2.0 supported business process management (BPM) environment is developed in the direction of the process flow diagram to support collaborative researches. A commercial BPM system is used to automate and monitor the processes, whereas Web 2.0 platform is used for communications management, workspace sharing and data collection. The proposed environment is experimented by a case study conducted with a group of researchers; its performance is evaluated and directions for improvements are identified. It is concluded that in general the Web 2.0 supported BPM environment is functional, reliable and useful for collaborative research. The environment is found to be more suitable for research support processes compared to basic research processes.