Monitoring research collaborations using Semantic Web technologies

Abstract

In the current research environment, funding agencies are increasingly required to demonstrate that the projects they fund represent value for money. When funds are disbursed in a speculative manner, in order to stimulate interdisciplinary collaboration, the determination of value for money relies on evidence that shows the generation of new collaborations. This paper summarises the work we carried out on behalf of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), in which we have implemented a set of applications to enable the research council to examine the existence and nature of collaborations between researchers. We have used Semantic Web technologies to construct a flexible application framework to provide multiple complementary visualisations of the data, while separating the issues of knowledge acquisition and curation from the more user-centric interface requirements. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.