Research as an information systems domain - Information Systems Foundations: Constructing and Criticising - page 149

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:
1. research data warehouses;
2. ontological systems for content organisation;
3. meta-analysis to bring together work with a similar ontological basis;
4. more advanced techniques of domain analysis;
5. knowledge management mechanisms for evidence-based research;
6. serious e-libraries (see DSpace);
7. 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 dif-
ferent 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.
Research and practice interoperability
The KMS described above introduces the second e-Research issue that IS needs to address
- the interaction of the research and practice domains.
The idea that research results need to be socially useful is not new either. The nature of
knowledge, its production and use, has long been a topic of debate and academic research.
In Australia, research has been largely a publicly funded activity, and government is
now casting an increasingly critical eye over the way it is currently performed. DEST's
research network initiative (the context in which this paper is written) is the latest in a
series of moves to promote interdisciplinary research that aims to create and apply
knowledge to address problems of national significance. Ronayne (1997) put it this way:
In Mode 1 problems are set and solved in a context governed by the interests
of a largely academic community. By contrast, Mode 2 knowledge production
is carried out within the context of application. It is intended to be useful to