Building a semantic research information infrastructure at Oxford

Sally Rumsey ( OULS )

At the University of Oxford research management data (ie data about research) is stored and managed using a variety of central and local technical systems. It would be beneficial to be able to share such data to enable easy search and re-use across the University, and to reduce inefficiencies. The BRII (Building the Research Information Infrastructure) project aims to address these problems and create a means to share data, whilst allowing departments to retain their existing systems. Such a facility will enable different views across the data and forge connections between, for example, researchers, partners, research groups, projects, publications, research themes and funding bodies. The project will work with a selection of central and academic departments. Outcomes comprise a user-needs analysis coupled with the development of ontologies and taxonomies to describe entities such as projects, publications, people and their roles. Semantic web technologies will be used as being developed by ORA (Oxford University Research Archive see http://ora.ouls.ox.ac.uk) and the MSD (Medical Sciences Division see neurosurgery). This seminar will present the activities that form the BRII project and will prompt discussions about areas of common interest between ComLab researchers and the BRII team.