The document discusses JISC's VRE programs from 2004-2011 which aimed to support collaborative research through online tools and technologies. It summarizes the three phases of the program, including 15 experimental projects in VRE1, 4 demonstrator projects in VRE2 focused on user practices, and 10 projects in VRE3 broadening usage. Specific VRE projects are highlighted from the natural sciences, social sciences, and domains like myExperiment, CREW and VERA.

1. 20 March 2012
Presenter or main title…
JISC’s VRE Programme – supporting collaborative
researchTitle or subtitle…
Session
Christopher Brown c.brown@jisc.ac.uk
Digital Infrastructure Team

2. JISC Mission
To provide world-class leadership in the
innovative use of ICT, to support education
and research
20/03/2012 | Slide 2

3. VRE definition
A VRE comprises a set of online tools and other network
resources and technologies interoperating with each other
to facilitate or enhance the processes of research
practitioners within and across institutional boundaries.
A key characteristic of a VRE is that it facilitates collaboration amongst
researchers and research teams providing them with more effective
means of collaboratively collecting, manipulating and managing data, as
well as collaborative knowledge creation.
20/03/2012 | Slide 3

4. JISC VRE Programmes
VRE1 VRE2 VRE3
2004-2007 2007-2009 2009-2011
15 Projects 4 Demonstrators 10 Projects
Technology Focused User and Research Broadening Use
Practice Focused
Experimental Developmental Embedding
Diverse design and Unified design and Diverse design –
developmental development models community and challenge
approached driven
Standalone solutions Integrated pilots Focussed on tools,
frameworks and
interoperability
Collaboration
Large and small scale research
Single and Multi-disciplinary Research
20/03/2012 | Slide 4

5. VRE Phase 1
VRE1  Experimental
VRE2 VRE3
2004-2007 2007-2009 2009-2011
15 Projects 4 Demonstrators 10 Projects
Technology Focused User and Research Broadening Use
 Application of
Practice Focused VLE approaches to
Experimental research
Developmental Embedding
Diverse design and Unified design and Diverse design –
developmental development models community and challenge
approached driven
Standalone solutions  Application of Service Oriented
Integrated pilots Focussed on tools,
frameworks and
Architectures to research
interoperability
Collaboration
Large and small scale research
Single and Multi-disciplinary Research
20/03/2012 | Slide 5

6. VRE Phase 1 - Domain Areas
Social Sciences and Arts Natural Sciences
and Humanities
ISME
OGHAM IBVRE
BVREH
Sakai education
research
CHESHIRE 3
Political Discourse
Cross-Domain
CSAGE
CORE
Sakai portal
demonstrator
EVIE
ELVI
IUGO
GROWL
MEMETIC
20/03/2012 | Slide 6

7. VRE Phase 1 - Technologies
Portal
ELVI
EVIE
IBVRE CORE Portal
Demo MEMETIC
ISME
OGHAM IUGO
Edu Research Cheshire
CSAGE
BVREH Political Discourse
Growl
Domain Specific Sakai
Generic
20/03/2012 | Slide 7

8. VRE Phase 2
 Developmental
VRE1 VRE2  VRE Exemplars
VRE3
2004-2007 2007-2009 2009-2011
15 Projects 4 Demonstrators 10 Projects
 User Centric &  Demonstrators
Technology Focused
Research Focused User and Research Broadening Use
Practice Focused
Experimental Developmental Embedding
Diverse design and Unified design and Diverse design –
developmental development models community and challenge
approached driven
Standalone solutions Integrated pilots Focussed on tools,
frameworks and
interoperability
Collaboration
Large and small scale research
Single and Multi-disciplinary Research
20/03/2012 | Slide 8

9. VRE Phase 2 – Four Demonstrators
VRE-SDM Oxford University http://bvreh.humanities.ox.ac.uk/VRE-SDM
CREW Manchester University http://www.crew-vre.net/
myExperiment Southampton University http://www.myexperiment.org/
VERA Reading University http://vera.rdg.ac.uk/
20/03/2012 | Slide 9

10. VRE for Study of Documents and Manuscripts
20/03/2012 | Slide 10

11. CREW - Collaborative Research Events on the Web
VRE 1 – Semantic linking of data
AlertingServices
InstantMessaging
or IRC Log
Event w eb site
Web-based
annotation
services
e-m ail list
archive
messages
VRE 1 – Semantic linking of AG
annotations
PersonalBlogs
Presenters and photo archives
personal etc. ofm em bers of
hom epage Related External the audience
Content e.g.
project w ebpages
Examples of web-based content related to a
20/03/2012 | Slide 11
single conference or event presentation

12.  “Facebook for Scientists”  Open source (BSD) Ruby
...but different to Facebook! on Rails application with
 A repository of research HTML, REST and SPARQL
methods interfaces
 A community social network  Project started March 2007
 A Virtual Research  Closed beta since July 2007
Environment  Open beta November 2007
myExperiment has over 3000 members, 200 groups, 1000
workflows, 300 files and 100 packs*
Go to www.myexperiment.org to access publicly available
content or create an account
*April 2011 20/03/2012 | Slide 12

13. Virtual Learning The social process
Environment
of Science 2.0
Undergraduate
Students
Digital
Libraries scientists
Graduate
Students
Reprints
Peer-
Reviewed Technical
experimentation
Journal &
Conference Preprints Reports
Papers &
Metadata
Local
Web Data, Metadata
Repositories Provenance
Certified
Experimental Workflows
Results & Analyses Ontologies 20/03/2012 | Slide 13

14. 20/03/2012 | Slide 14

15. VERA – Virtual Environments for Research in Archaeology
20/03/2012 | Slide 15

16. VERA – Online presence
20/03/2012 | Slide 16

17. VERA – Technology trials
20/03/2012 | Slide 17

18. VRE Phase 3
 Embedding and extending take-up
VRE1 VRE2 VRE3
2004-2007 2007-2009 2009-2011
15 Projects 4 Demonstrators 10 Projects
 “Building communities for sharing practice”
Technology Focused User and Research Broadening Use
Practice Focused
 Open ended/rolling programme
Experimental Developmental Embedding
Diverse design and Unified design and Diverse design –
developmental development models community and challenge
approached driven
Standalone solutions Integrated pilots Focussed on tools,
frameworks and
interoperability
Collaboration
Large and small scale research
Single and Multi-disciplinary Research
20/03/2012 | Slide 18

19. VRE Phase 3
The intention of this programme is not to produce a complete
VRE, but rather to define and help to develop the frameworks
and associated standards and to encourage the development
and population of VREs with applications, services and
resources appropriate to their needs.
20/03/2012 | Slide 19

20. VRE Phase 3 - Overview
20/03/2012 | Slide 20

21. VRE Phase 3 - Projects
Strand 1 - VRE Tools Strand 3 - VRE Interoperability
- Video Conversion on PAG LinkSphere Reading
Manchester
Text VRE KCL
Virtual Research Integration
Collaboration (VRIC)
Southampton
Institutional Scholarly comms &
Strand 2 - VRE Frameworks publication sharing Cambridge
IBBRE Southampton
Collaborative Research in Business
(CRIB) Lancaster
Cancer Imaging VRE Oxford
ONE VRE Manchester
BRAIN - Building Research and
Innovation Networks Coventry
20/03/2012 | Slide 21

22. VRE Phase 3 – IBBRE
 A VRE to support cross-disciplinary and cross-institutional collaboration
in internet-based behavioural research
 Enable behavioural scientists working within a variety of disciplines
across the university to collaborate in sharing and reviewing components
of internet-delivered interventions
 Analyse and describe how the VRE can be flexibly used to support
collaborations within and outside the university
 LifeGuide enables researchers to design interventions that:
– give tailored advice based on the user's answers to questions;
– allow users to plan, chart and check their progress;
– send follow-up messages to users in the form of personalised emails or texts;
– automatically randomise users to different interventions arms;
– store all data on user responses and website usage for output to Excel and
CSV
 http://www.lifeguideonline.org/
20/03/2012 | Slide 22

23. VRE Phase 3 – CRIB
 Collaborative Research In Business
 Provide a web-based VRE platform (built on Sakai) that supports
management and business professionals in university departments and
related organisations who are the essential links between research and
commerce.
 Demonstrates how a VRE can be extended to include management
research and practice with tools enabling more effective collaboration,
sharing of information and accelerating their progress through the
research lifecycle.
 EMBRaCE (VRERI) – E-Managed Business Relationships and Cohesive
Environments.
– Exploring mechanisms for the development of large scale e-communities of
owner-managers of smaller enterprises.
– Knowledge transfer activities between public sector and businesses.
20/03/2012 | Slide 23

24. VRE Phase 3 – VRE-CI
VRE Toolkit
for SP2010
Cancer Imaging VRE (VRE-CI) to provide a framework to allow researchers and clinicians involved in
Cancer Imaging to share information, images and algorithms. Builds on the Research Information
Centre (RIC) developed for bioscience researchers by the British Library and Microsoft Corporation.
20/03/2012 | Slide 24

25. VRE Phase 3 – VRE-CI
Image Metadata Curation Image Library
Image Viewer
Annotation Tools
20/03/2012 | Slide 25

26. 20/03/2012 | Slide 26

27. VRE Phase 3 – BRAIN
 Building Research And Innovation Networks project
 Key components of the project:
– Selecting a methodology for the project as a whole and using it to
structure and plan the project (Agile/RAD).
– Finding out what people do in the area of research and innovation and
what they needed to improve this.
– Analysing how University research-related processes work and how they
could be improved.
– Helping to fulfil user requirements particularly by facilitating the building of
networks and communities and by developing, integrating and deploying
supporting tools and services.
– Evaluating results and impact and feeding this back into the project.
 http://innovation1.coventry.ac.uk/brain/
20/03/2012 | Slide 27

28. VRE Phase 3 – BRAIN
Expertise Search Tool (Stand-alone version)
www.project-brain.org
Researcher Matching Tool (Online version) 20/03/2012 | Slide 28

29. VRE Phase 3 – Linksphere
 Linking researchers and information
 Create a unified system with single virtual interface to search all repositories
and collections within University of Reading
 Integration of social network for researchers
 Enable social interaction and collaboration
 Repositories include, for example:
– Silchester IADB http://www.silchester.rdg.ac.uk
– Film Collection – Film, Television and Theatre http://www.reading.ac.uk/ftt/
– Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology http://www.rdg.ac.uk/Ure/
– The Museum of English Rural Life http://www.merl.org.uk/
 http://www.linksphere.org/
20/03/2012 | Slide 29

30. VRE Phase 3 – TextVRE
 Support the complete lifecycle of research in e-Humanities textual studies
 Collaborative environment for textual scholarship, using German TextGrid
infrastructure
 Dispersed scholars working on diverse (digital) humanities projects
 Develop a VRE that is embedded in the day-to-day research activities of
scholars
 Integrate VRE with institutional infrastructure: repositories, preservation,
archives/library
 Provide integrated framework for dealing with (text-based) historical and
archival material
 http://textvre.cerch.kcl.ac.uk/
20/03/2012 | Slide 30

31. VRE Phase 3 – VRIC
 Virtual Research Integration Collaboration
 Take the Collaborative Orthopaedic Research Environment VRE (CORE)
from VRE1 and integrated into The Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital
(RNOH)
 Built on the myExperiment platform to share artefacts and enable
collaboration
 VRIC walks users through the stages that constitute the health care
research process.
 Provides tools to facilitate creation of research protocol, trials’
documentation, data analysis and organisation of results
 33 clinical trials being added to VRIC
 http://www.vric.ecs.soton.ac.uk/
20/03/2012 | Slide 31

32. VRE Phase 3 – Connected Works (Institutional Scholarly comms & publication sharing)
 CARET (Centre for Applied Research in Educational Technologies,
Univ of Cambridge) is working with the University Library and
Symplectic Ltd to create a scholarly networking platform, inside their
Sakai-based VRE CamTools.
 Supporting researchers – sharing their profiles, connecting with
others and driving new collaborations.
 “One-click publication sharing” system
– Enable academics to upload a new paper, and automatically have it
placed in the institutional repository and added to their online profile, and
also use information about the paper to recommend new connections
within the network.
 http://connectedworks.blogspot.com/
20/03/2012 | Slide 32

33. VRERI – Rapid Innovation
Ami Cambridge University, Peter Murray-Rust
BlogMyData Reading University, Dr J D Blower
CritterVRE Manchester University, Dr Andrew Rowley
Embrace Lancaster University, Robert Crouchley
gMan Kings College London, Mark Hedges
MEGStream Aston University, Ian Holliday
MILARQ Oxford University, Dr David M Shotton
OpenImpact Southampton University, Dr Leslie Carr
OpenPSIPearl Southampton University, John Darlington
PPCC York University, Tom Smith
RDSPress Coventry University, David Morris
SERPent University College London, Inst. of Child Health, Dr Tito
Castillo
vizTweets City University London, Dr Jason Dykes
WattNames Heriot-Watt University, Roger Rist
http://code.google.com/p/vreri/
20/03/2012 | Slide 33

34. VRERI - AMI
 AMI - a prototype of a natural user interface system that allows bench scientists to interact with their
experimental information at the fumehood, using innovative modes of communication appropriate to
the lab setting, focusing on voice recognition, touch-screens and laser keyboards.
Log in using ID badge
(Touch-A-Tag RFID reader)
The Ami experiment selection screen
All chemicals and apparatus
tagged with an RFID tag
http://amiproject.wordpress.com
The Ami event log screen 20/03/2012 | Slide 34

35. VRERI - AMI
All output files created are stored
in one directory for each
experiment. This makes it easy to
keep track of all data created, and
to transfer it to the electronic lab
notebook
Each sensor has its own log file
The Ami Experiment The infrared sensor being
Monitoring Tool, here tested on an Arduino circuit
being used to monitor board
tea temperature…
20/03/2012 | Slide 35

36. VRERI - BlogMyData
 www.blogmydata.org
 Allows environmental scientists to visually and interactively explore
large datasets, then create notes and annotations about the data.
+ =
www.rdg.ac.uk/godiva2 blogs.chem.soton.ac.uk
20/03/2012 | Slide 36

37. Post-VRE3
 Research Programme
– Incorporates VRE and research infrastructure programmes
– A wider focus than the original VRE programme
– Consists of two strands:
• Research Tools
• Research Support
 VRE Starter Kit/Infokit via JISC Advance
 VRE Knowledge Base
20/03/2012 | Slide 37

38. Research Programme - Projects
 First Research Tools call (16/11) Feb – July 2012
– CamELS
• Improve the adoption of ELNs within Chemistry Dept of Cambridge
and Southampton.
– Increasing interoperability between Corpus Tools
• Explore ways of linking different corpus query tools so that users can
investigate aspects of the same data in a variety of ways.
– e-Health GATEway to the Clouds
• Establish a cloud-based VRE on the White Rose Grid to support e-
health records research
– HISTORE
• Developing training modules to encourage and support the use of
online historical research tools within VREs
20/03/2012 | Slide 38

39. Research Programme - Projects
 First Research Tools call (16/11) Feb – July 2012
– INSPIRES
• Using visualisation environments and tools to find cross-disciplinary
connections between researchers and projects.
– SLRGuide
• Establish the requirements for, and develop a cloud based
collaborative tool to support, the systematic literature review process
– TEXTUS
• Developing an open source platform that helps researchers and
students to collaborate around and work with collections of digitised
public domain texts
20/03/2012 | Slide 39

40. Research Programme Projects
 Second Research Tools call (01/12) July – March 2013
– 4 strands:
• Emerging tools
• Facilitating research communications
• Develop sustainable and open vocabularies for research and
information management
• Synthesis project focussed on sustainable and open vocabularies for
research and information management
20/03/2012 | Slide 40

41. International Connections
 Knowledge Exchange
– JISC, SURFfoundation, DFG, DEF
 SURF
– Starter Kit –> VRE “Infokits”
– SURFconext
 Project Bamboo/Mellon Foundation
 TERENA
20/03/2012 | Slide 41

42. Further Details
Programme Websites
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/vre
http://code.google.com/p/vreri/
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/di_research.aspx
Christopher Brown, Programme Manager
E-Mail: c.brown@jisc.ac.uk
Tel: +44 7891 501177
Torsten Reimer, Programme Manager
E-Mail: t.reimer@jisc.ac.uk
Tel: +44 787 512 0055
Matthew Dovey, Programme Director (e-Research)
E-Mail: m.dovey@jisc.ac.uk
Tel: +44 7876 445403
Programme hash tags:
#jiscvre #vre #jiscresearch #jiscrestools #jiscressupport
20/03/2012 | Slide 42

43. Questions
16/05/2011 | Slide 43