A Web/Grid Services Approach for a Virtual Research Environment Implementation

The role of scientific and scholarly publications is changing due to advances in Web technology. In particular, the need for collaborative science has generated demands for working environments that facilitate human communication and resource sharing among research communities. Such environments have been typically implemented as monolithic systems in the past, which are then faced with challenges in adapting to changing user requirements. CORE is a JISC funded project to develop a Virtual Research Environment (VRE) that enables orthopaedic surgeons to collaborate in the design, analysis, and dissemination of experiments. The VRE presented in this paper is designed based on the concept of a loosely coupled Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). This paper reports the user requirements of the VRE and discusses the advantages that will be achieved by implementing the VRE as Web/Grid services.