Enhancing the Value of Collaborative Research Events through Virtual Research Environments

Iugo and Memetic were two projects within the first phase of the JISC VRE programme. Iugo is a Semantic Web application that organises and allows access to the disparate content and information related to conferences and workshops. Memetic is a tool that records and annotates Access Grid sessions allowing flexible and navigable playback. Iugo and Memetic are being integrated through a collaboration under the second phase of the VRE programme known as Collaborative Research Events on the Web (CREW). Collaborative research events facilitate scholarly collaboration; however, their content is rarely open to interrogation by advanced semantic search tools. This paper examines how Iugo, Memetic and CREW have and will help contribute to the definition of VRE's; it examines issues common to all three projects in the use of semantic techniques and in legal, social and ethical perspectives; and it shows how lessons learned concerning user engagement are now being applied within the design and development methodology used by CREW to ensure greater levels of usability and integration of the technology to genuine user scenarios.