Preliminary report on stakeholder needs

<strong>Preliminary</strong> <strong>report</strong> on stakeholder needsTable of ContentsExecutive Summary..............................................................................................................................31. Introduction......................................................................................................................................52. Producers (authors)...........................................................................................................................63. Consumers (readers).........................................................................................................................83.1. Locate......................................................................................................................................93.1.1. Browse.........................................................................................................................103.1.2. Generation of navigational views.................................................................................103.1.3. Semantic......................................................................................................................103.1.4. Join Portal....................................................................................................................113.2. Study.....................................................................................................................................113.2.1. Print or Read Online ?..................................................................................................123.2.2. A read-later list............................................................................................................124. Community – Peers........................................................................................................................134.1. Activity.................................................................................................................................144.1.1. Sharing.........................................................................................................................144.1.2. Blogging......................................................................................................................144.1.3. Conversation................................................................................................................144.1.4. Suggestions..................................................................................................................154.1.5. Collaboration...............................................................................................................154.1.6. Updates & News-feed..................................................................................................154.2. Relationships.........................................................................................................................154.2.1. Locate..........................................................................................................................154.2.2. Contacts.......................................................................................................................154.2.3. Groups.........................................................................................................................154.2.4. Norms..........................................................................................................................154.3. Identity..................................................................................................................................164.3.1. Profile..........................................................................................................................164.3.2. Presence.......................................................................................................................164.4. Reputation.............................................................................................................................165. Managers, Editors & Librarians......................................................................................................18– 1 –

<strong>Preliminary</strong> <strong>report</strong> on stakeholder needsExecutive SummaryThis document provides a preliminary <strong>report</strong> of the user requirements of the VOA3Rplatform. In particular the objective of this <strong>report</strong> is to provide some insight on the identifiedand suggested functionality so that VOA3R’s partners can try to communicate these to thestakeholders within targeted events (workshops, meetings, interviews, etc.) that will enableus to analyse, prioritise and validate those requirements.Actually the document provides rather a brief description of needs and requirement from theVOA3R platform than a comprehensive analysis of the stakeholders’ requirements. It’s a listof ideas and identified features that we need to validate and elaborate upon within thestakeholders meetings, reviews, etc. Partners are welcome to add more items in the list and<strong>report</strong> on any suggested functionality identified during the stakeholder events.Towards this fact, the document is put down in an informal style, using snapshots from theaccompanying mind-map. In fact, readers are encouraged to use the mind-map (with theXmind software) to get a broader view of the envisaged usage of the VOA3R platform bydifferent user categories.Both this document and the accompanying mind-map are live, in the sense that they will becontinuously updated, refined and amended along with the partners proceeding with thestakeholders events and the experience gained through the interaction with the stakeholders.The current version of the document and related material (mind-map, etc.) will be availablefrom the VOA3R wiki.The final version of the document, along with the partners <strong>report</strong>s, will serve as the basis forthe comprehensive analysis of user requirements for the VOA3R platform, presented in theD2.2. project’s deliverable.Document revisionsDateSummary of changes21 Sep ’10 selection of mind-map figures and initial drafting24 Sep ’10 (v1) initial version25 Sep ’10 (v2) revision, mainly stylistic, and release to partners01 Oct ’10 (v3) additions, improvements, after initial review by the project partners07 Oct’ 10 (v4) final version prior to workshops, added indicative questions andintegrated comments from partners– 3 –

<strong>Preliminary</strong> <strong>report</strong> on stakeholder needs1. IntroductionWhen external entities, such as (human) users, as well as external systems, interact with theVOA3R platform, they play the role of a specific actor.Each single physical entity may play several different roles, and a specific role may beplayed by single or multiple different instances.The following sections describe the core functionality and the respective user needs for theProducers and Consumers of content, as well as the users who participate in the VOA3R’scommunities.The requirements for Managers & Editors, as well as that for external systems are mostlytechnical and will be dealt mainly within the T2.3 task of WP2.– 5 –

<strong>Preliminary</strong> <strong>report</strong> on stakeholder needs2. Producers (authors)Producers of content (Authors) are mainly Researchers, but nonetheless they could also beAcademics, Students (acting as junior researchers) or even Practitioners and Industryrepresentatives. The VOA3R platform will support both conventional and informalpublishing life-cycles, starting from the concept / idea of a publication, continuing with thereview and publication and ending at the support of the content by their authors, in terms offeedback to readers and, last but not least, statistics and information (mainly towards theauthors) on the readability, rating and overall impact of their publication (using variousmetrics).INVESTIGATE• Different publishing lifecycles – checkhttp://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/social/objects/feedback/writeareview.htm l• Other systems for online publishing.• Licensing, ethical and Copyright issues, Open Access.• Statistics (and their "type") as a way to track impact– 6 –

<strong>Preliminary</strong> <strong>report</strong> on stakeholder needs• Authors and Reviewers shall be able to organise their content, placing it in relatedsets / collections, using keywords, tags, references, etc.• The system will automatically subscribe the Author, as well as any reviewers, whenrelevant, to the publication process.• Ways to make research outcomes more available – automatic submission to otherrelevant systems and search lists.• Import and export in various citation formats.INDICATIVE QUESTIONS• Are you familiar with Open Access and what is your attitude towards OA?• What is your favourite method to track the impact of your publications?• Are you interested in creating a personal profile page to hold your contact details,research interests and a full list of your publications and other research outcomes?• Are you aware that such a page could be easily and automatically be updated by thesystem, in terms of aggregating other Open Access repositories and suggesting toinclude information it locates about your research work?• Are you interested in a tool that exports references in various formats and allowsrating of references so that the most important ones are identified?• Would you register to the VOA3R platform in order to receive statistics on thereadability of your papers, publications, etc?• Would you like to answer to questions and respond to comments on your researchpublications?• What other kind of data would you like to publish?• Have you used online systems for publishing? Did it include support for the reviewprocess?• Have you used and/or are you interested in alternative publishing models? Pleasedescribe.• Are you in favor of reviewing papers that have already been published?– 7 –

<strong>Preliminary</strong> <strong>report</strong> on stakeholder needs3. Consumers (readers)Consumers of content (i.e. readers), being Practitioners, Students, people from the Industry,Policy Makers, End-consumers, etc. will need to locate material and then study it. They willalso want to know-who (except to knowing how), but this is covered in theCommunity/Peers requirements section.INDICATIVE QUESTIONS• Searching and locating◦ Are you familiar with Open Access?◦ What is your attitude towards Open Access?◦ What are the main qualitative characteristics that you want from a repository?◦ Would you expect to rate repositories according to the quality of the providedcontent and services?– 8 –

<strong>Preliminary</strong> <strong>report</strong> on stakeholder needs◦ Do you search for other types of content except text?◦ Are you interested in searching for dissertations except from papers?◦ Have you followed automatic recommendations for similar material?◦ Would you register to VOA3R in order to be able to save your searches?◦ Would you register in order to be able to further organise the results of a search?◦ Would you like the VOA3R platform to e-mail you with new results that arerelevant to your previous searches?• Reading online:◦ Are you interested in taking notes and personal annotations during reading apaper online?◦ While reading, are you interested in saving links “for futurereading/investigation” without having to actually leave the paper you're currentlystudying?◦ Are you interested in translation services?◦ Would you like the system to overlay automatic links (with different indication tothe original author's links that already exist in the paper), with relatedinformation?3.1. LocateThe main use case will be searching for outcomes based onan expression of practical application needs. For example,practitioners will be able to formulate search in relation toproblems as "weed control in vegetable gardens".Consumers will want to choose specific repositories tosearch for content, mainly based on previous (positive)experience and estimated quality of repository.INVESTIGATE• metrics for measuring quality• can users themselves rate and have a role in the 'rating' of repositories?• tag-based searching– 9 –

<strong>Preliminary</strong> <strong>report</strong> on stakeholder needs3.1.1. BrowseAn application offers the Browse functionality when the user is allowed to navigate thecontents (or instances) of the knowledge base of the application. This occurs mainly throughWeb browsers, but other applications or interfaces can be used with the same purpose oftraversing a set of linked objects.Examples of applications that offer this functionality are:• SEmantic portAL (SEAL);• MuseumFinland;• Semantic Portal of International Affairs (SPIA); and• Personal Publication Reader (PPR).3.1.2. Generation of navigational viewsSometimes, the “data model” or ontology of an application is complex and the browsingexperience can be overwhelming and frustrating for the end-user. Therefore, someapplications also use an “extra” model to generate navigational views.3.1.3. SemanticAccording to Berners-Lee [Berners-Lee, 1998] [Berners-Lee et al., 2001], a definition to theSemantic Web is: “an extension of the Web obtained via the semantic addition to the presentdata format representation”.The main purpose of having a Semantic Web is making the Web data understandable forhumans and for software entities such as agents [Silva et al., 2003] or components– 10 –

<strong>Preliminary</strong> <strong>report</strong> on stakeholder needs[Szyperski, 1998]. In this sense, if the Web content would be machine processable,applications could have access to a huge variety of resources, which could be shared,integrated and processed to produce a result with more value to the user.3.1.4. Join PortalINVESTIGATE3.2. Study• How are users motivated to join the portal, i.e. register their personal details in anew user profile?• Facilitate re-search (reusing previous searches)• A search agent would be a saved search with a schedule for automatically<strong>report</strong>ing new and updated information on a regular basis back to the Consumer.For example a search on tomato fertilizers could become a search-agent and thesystem would inform the user (probably by a regular e-mail) for any new content,communication, comment, etc. on this topic.What happens once readers find what they imagine they have been looking for1. do they (try to) read the information online or print it for further studying?2. do they check background information on the article and author?3. do they follow links from each research article to directly relevant materials (basedon the keywords provided by the author)?– 11 –

<strong>Preliminary</strong> <strong>report</strong> on stakeholder needs4. do they use opportunities for interactivity, such as public commenting, rating,recommending, etc.?The system could/should(?) include functionality for overlaying links on-top of the linksinserted by the author(s) of the content.Links should be displayed with different style according to their origin and type (and maybemove linked content in the "read (later) list")3.2.1. Print or Read Online ?What are the affordances of paper? What makes people need to print material in order tofurther study it? Could the VOA3R platform include features to help studying online?Would users decide to register in order to be able to access features that assist onlinereading?INVESTIGATE• personal annotations• bookmarks,• history of read material• a "to read (later) list"3.2.2. A read-later listINVESTIGATE• When the reader clicks on a link therecould be an intermediate questionsuggesting to put the link in the "read(later) list" or open it immediately (inthe same or other window).• The "read later" list will be persistent across sessions (i.e. it will be saved in the user'sprofile).– 12 –

<strong>Preliminary</strong> <strong>report</strong> on stakeholder needs4. Community – PeersThe main innovation of VOA3R is that it shall provide a "community and social-oriented"platform:• member profiles (identity),• relationships,• participation tools (activity),• reputation mechanisms.INDICATIVE QUESTIONS• Are you member of some kind of social network? Which?• Are you interested in joining communities of experts, or finding people that youcould collaborate with?• Do you have a personal web page? How do you keep it up-to-date?• Would you create your public profile in VOA3R - what would you like to go in it?• Would you participate in discussions related to content in the VOA3R repository?• Would you like the VOA3R system to automatically update your public profile withbibliographic information which you have (co-) authored and is located in theaggregated repositories?• Would you like the system to rate users according to their participation in thecommunity?• Do you keep a blog? Would you write blog entries within the VOA3R portal?• Do you consider your online reputation highly?– 13 –

<strong>Preliminary</strong> <strong>report</strong> on stakeholder needs4.1. ActivityIf there’s nothing to do on a site,then it doesn’t matter if all yourfriends are there or not. The sitehas no more interest than anaddress book, and it won’t getaffection or traffic.Resolution: Create activities thatare useful to individuals but aremuch improved by groupparticipation.The third major pattern in socialsoftware is community activity. This is just like being a party planner: you’ve broughtpeople together, now what? Happily, humans have things they like to do together, and if youget them in the same spot and give them even rudimentary tools, they’ll start talking,sharing, and collaborating.4.1.1. SharingI share because I join a passion & interest!Gift giving is a primitive human behavior—it binds us. When one person gives something toanother, there’s gratitude, and a desire to reciprocate. In online community settings, wherethe nature of the medium ensures you retain a copy of any files you give to someone else,gift giving becomes sharing. Sharing gathers people of like interests, and allows for anexchange of ideas. As the community tightens, sharing permits exchanging dreams, hopes,secrets, and fears.4.1.2. BloggingSee Also: Pre-publish (informal), idea4.1.3. ConversationConversations and communication—that’s the heart and soul of a community. No matterhow much software we build, people build the relationships, and they build them out ofwords first. If you don’t have a place for people to put their words, community devolves intoviewership.Note that in VOA3R most communication is object-centered: Research and practicalexperience have shown that a web-based community most likely thrives when it is buildaround shared objects, resources, and topics, also understood as object-centered sociality.It has been shown by Flickr and other communities that publishing photos in a communitycontext enables contributors to participate in conversation and play and to experiencecritique and companionship.See Also: Track their impact (- give feedback - answer questions)– 14 –

<strong>Preliminary</strong> <strong>report</strong> on stakeholder needs4.1.4. SuggestionsSuggest some content (to other peers) or even suggest peers (to others)!4.1.5. CollaborationSocial software was envisioned as a tool to allow work groups to collaborate. While the“social” part may have swept the web, there are still plenty of tools that focus on allowingsmaller groups to get things done.4.1.6. Updates & News-feedProvide feedback about ongoing activity.4.2. RelationshipsOn a web site with thousands or millions ofpeople, how do you make sure you can keeptrack of the people you care about?Resolution: Create ways for people toidentify, connect, and organize the peoplethey care about, as well as the informationthose people produce. The complexity ofrelationship classification depends on howyour customers will use your web site.4.2.1. LocateKnow who! Search for past, current oreven future peers and partners!4.2.2. ContactsKeep track of all contacts, invite peers tothe VOA3R platform.4.2.3. GroupsEasily join groups, e.g. a new project team.4.2.4. NormsAvoid flame-wars– 15 –

<strong>Preliminary</strong> <strong>report</strong> on stakeholder needs4.3. IdentityIdentity is the bedrock of social architecture. In thebrilliant essay “A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy,” ClayShirky writes:If you were going to build a piece of social software tosupport large and long-lived groups, what would youdesign for? The first thing you would design for ishandles the user can invest in.4.3.1. ProfileA profile is a collection of information about theuser, typically including a short biography andcontextually appropriate facts.INVESTIGATE• How important is for users (researchers) tohave an online CV and / or a personal pagewith details on their research activities,research profiles, interests, etc.• How many users have a personal web pagein their university?• Would they hand-out their web page /profile in other services (e.g. facebook,linkedin, etc.) as a reference in aconference presentation?4.3.2. PresenceOne thing any inviting and vibrant community needs is a sense of life. Presence is a way forusers to express themselves and populate the online space. Presence can be a status, historyof activity, or location.4.4. ReputationImportant mainly for producers. Systemcould automatically <strong>report</strong> on change ofimpact factor and / or other statistics by e-mail.On a website, your reputation is equal tothe sum of all your past actions on thesite, good or bad, where the communitydefines “good” and “bad.” Since human memory is fallible, and ofcourse, new members or visitors don’t always know the history,reputation systems are built into web software to track behaviour– 16 –

<strong>Preliminary</strong> <strong>report</strong> on stakeholder needsand how the community judges it. Amazon’s “Top 500 Reviewer” or eBay’s “Top Seller”designations are great examples of reputation systems.– 17 –

<strong>Preliminary</strong> <strong>report</strong> on stakeholder needs5. Managers, Editors & LibrariansINDICATIVE QUESTIONS• What are the similar systems you are aware of?• What kind of metadata should be stored in the VOA3R repositories?• What kind of standards / specifications should be supported by VOA3R? (DIDL,MARC, METS, MPEG, XrML, etc.)• Do you need a tool to create DC ontologies, embedded in VOA3R?• Do you need thesauruses integrated in VOA3R?• Are you familiar with author network visualization? How useful do you think such afunctionality?– 18 –