The possibilities of systems-pull (or, inversely, the problem of ‘systems failures’) in the research domain are rampant. The fact that data sets are typically not warehoused and re-used is an example of failure at the data level.
At the information level, McDonald (2003) argued that current methods of organising and mobilising this research are flawed. Considered as a whole, the applied science literature is:
Dispersed: It is scattered across different kinds of literature such as books, periodicals, research papers, technical reports, proceedings, which are located all over the globe. It is possible that research is unwittingly being duplicated because the original was not found in the literature review.
Dated: Some knowledge, created long ago, has been superseded by more recent work but still remains in the literature with a corresponding potential to mislead.
Underutilised: Studies indicate that no more than 20 per cent of the knowledge available in research institutes is really being put to use. Therefore, the full weight of current human knowledge is not being brought to bear on problem solving.
Expanding rapidly: The quantity of knowledge is increasing at an exponential rate.
Variable in quality: The reliability of public knowledge is complex. ‘Textbook Science’ is more reliable than primary (e.g. research papers) and secondary literature (e.g. review articles). Furthermore, knowledge that is reliable in one context may not be so reliable in another.
Inconsistent: Considerable contradictions have been found within published knowledge, and between the published knowledge and expert opinion.
Incomplete: There are considerable gaps in published knowledge.
Slow to be published and applied: The path from applied science research to decision making in the field can be long and inefficient. Publication in scientific journals can take 12 to 18 months after acceptance, which itself may have taken a year to achieve.
Clearly, there is a large knowledge management problem to be addressed here, even if the information management systems (document collection, indexing, bibliographic and full-text databases that store and deliver papers) were effective. We are stuck in a very outmoded system that serves neither researchers nor practitioners adequately.
There are attempts to address these problems. The Cochrane Collaboration has successfully adopted ‘systematic reviews’ or meta-analyses as a method for getting the best scientific results to practitioners and other researchers. Meyers, in the Communications of the AIS has papers that are regularly revised, and WIKI systems allow multiple people to continuously contribute to and revise a paper.
An IS approach to these problems would use a variety of technologies and methods, but IS theories, tools and techniques will need to be deployed, reviewed and, probably, new IS approaches developed. Some parts of an IS approach to e-Research might be:
research data warehouses;
ontological systems for content organisation;
meta-analysis to bring together work with a similar ontological basis;
more advanced techniques of domain analysis;
knowledge management mechanisms for evidence-based research;
serious e-libraries (see DSpace);
development of domain-specific patterns.
It is at the knowledge level, that e-research may well have its greatest impact. Knowledge management systems (KMS) technologies may be at the heart of a new kind of system. This system would be charged with representing the knowledge reported in a domain of research and, through a set of interface systems, employ the knowledge base in different ways to meet some of the needs in a range of human activity systems. For example, a decision support system would use the KMS as a model of a domain to allow scenario processing; an expert system would give advice using the KMS as a knowledge base and justify the advice on the basis of the publications from which the KMS has been built; a Computer Aided Instruction (CAI) interface would allow the KMS to form the basis of courses in the domain; researchers and research bodies could use the KMS as a source for literature reviews and hypothesis testing. Each of these interface systems would have specific systems components suitable to their purposes but would rely on the core KMS as the source for their domain knowledge. The KMS would be self-maintaining as each new research report that became available would be represented as a new document-related knowledge base and so participate immediately in the various uses to which the system is being put. Such a system would be domain specific, rather like the ‘specialist libraries’ of the past. The various needs of the different stakeholders could be met from a single core of knowledge.
Proposals like this are not new. A century ago, Paul Otlet was presenting a similar notion (see various papers by W. Boyd Rayward). We may now, however, be in a position to bring new technologies to bear on e-Research, but only if IS takes a major role in the intervention that such technology might make to the research human activity system. Without IS, another technology failure would most likely be imminent.