Global Resorce Center for Information Studies
The proposed resource center for information studies is aimed at bridging across the many research communities devoted to this broad field and social stakeholders in order to enable an interdisciplinary and overarching understanding of information in all its meaningful aspects. Since there are for information relevant grounds concerning formal-, physical-, chemical-, biological-, cognitive-, social-, technological-, ethical- and philosophical sciences, the traditional gaps and boundaries between sciences must be overcome to achieve an actual overarching understanding of information, which might be essential to cope with the global challenges of our information society.
The proposed infrastructure is based on an integration of resources weaved by (1) a semantic network built upon the ongoing interdisciplinary understanding of information, and (2) a visual oriented interface based on the user experience while searching for knowledge or training; communicating with colleagues in the same or different fields; or cooperating in education, research and innovation. The set of inter-weaved resources intents to gather an open typology of scientific data qualified by the scientific community in different levels of validation, so that both novelty and rigour can be combined.
The proposed system -according to preliminary design- should be constituted by: - A domusBITae
Gate basically composed by: (i) a confederated set of communities using a specialised Content Management System (dB-CMS) adapted to the needs of the
communities in information studies and providing immediate access to the
domusBITae resources; and (ii) a user interface based on social interactions
enabling the engagement of users as active participants.
- A Directory
of Communities of Information Studies providing immediate linking among domusBITae
e-Communities (i.e. confederated by using the dB-CMS, as well as linkage among
communities, contents and information about communities in information studies).
- A Repository
of documents and other open access digital assets in the field of information
studies, in which the community and any user can self-archive according to a
policy of progressive access regarding liaison and under an evaluation scheme
to provide quality assessment.
- A Collaborative
and Educational Toolkit (C&E tools) for the parallel constitution of
emerging collaborative teams and e-learning platforms within domusBITae and
integrated by tools for: (a) interoperability with resources and community and
(b) effective e-Venues enabling empowering interaction. This combination of
tools offers the basis for the constitution of e-Campus in interdisciplinary information
studies for both research and education.
- A virtual
community glossary with a twofold objective: (a) promoting interdisciplinary
clarification and disambiguation on common terms and problems, and the
concerned viewpoints; (b) providing a semantic network for the interoperability
and knowledge integration of the infrastructure. The already working platform BITrum glossary (since 2008), in which
the proponents are involved, conforms the ground for this module, which
inherits its name.
To achieve both a maximal effectiveness and impact of the system the design is planned to be done with a relevant representation of the Scientific community, looking for the consent of the community and the adaptation to their necessities. | 