Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
identifying structurally similar compounds in the internal fi le. By these
means, Utopia connects the content of the PDF into a company's systems,
fi nally joining one of the most important pieces of the scientifi c process
to the existing information infrastructure.
15.2 Enabling collaboration
Utopia stands apart from other PDF-management tools in the way in
which it promotes collaboration and sharing of knowledge within an
institution. Most life science industry projects are run by dynamic,
ever-changing teams of scientists, with new members being introduced as
specialist expertise is required, and scientists typically contributing
to many projects at any given time. A researcher faces a constant battle
to stay on top of the literature in each project, determining which
papers should be read and in what order, and exchanging thoughts
with colleagues on the good and bad of what they have digested.
Often the solution to both these needs is ad hoc email, reading
papers suggested by colleagues and replying with relevant critique. Of
course, this relies on the researcher being copied into the email thread
and, assuming that this has happened, on fi nding the email in an
ever-growing inbox (in all probability, emailing a published article to a
colleague, even within the same organization, is likely to be a technical
violation of the license under which the original reader obtained the
article).
Utopia changes this by providing a team-based approach to literature
management. Unlike other document-management tools, this enables
collaboration not just at the level of a paper, but rather, at the level of a
paper's content. Individuals can manage their own paper collections in a
familiar and intuitive interface; however, by simply creating team folders
and sharing these with colleagues, interesting papers and their related
data and annotations can be circulated within relevant groups, without
the need to remember to send that email and get everyone's name right.
Simple icons inform team members of new papers in the collection
(Figures 15.4 and 15.5). As well as comments, annotations on articles
can include data-fi les (e.g. where the group has re-interpreted a large data
set), or links to data held in knowledge-management systems. Thus,
anyone reading the paper will see that there is additional information
from inside the company that might make a real difference to their
interpretation.
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