From Clio Infrastructure
The Liferay environment
IISH has built its collaboration tool on the basis of open source software developed within the Liferay community.
The platform has been tested in the context of two SURF Foundation project on collaboratories, running in 2008 and 2009. In the first stage of the project, three collaboratory platforms were evaluated: Sharepoint, Sakai and Liferay. The selected platform was installed in a test-environment for four different collaboratories. Testing the software in different groups allowed us to assess the importance of institutional contexts, differences in workflows as well as group dynamics in the implementation of communication tools.
At the IISH, the Liferay collaborative software is used for several collaboratories to manage, store, and deliver content and documents. In general, this software can be seen as the virtual working space of these collaboratories and the participating researchers use it to share their data, to search for relevant project documentation, to post questions to other members of the group, or to present the project to a wider audience. The software is designed from an end user perspective and its main purpose is to enhance interaction and communication among the members of the collaboratory.
The website is divided in a public and a private section. In the public section, which can be visited and found by everyone with internet access, the collaboratory can present itself to a wider audience of academics, funders and the general public. By default, this section displays what the collaboratory is about, the results it has achieved (or plans to achieve), and the partners and/or funders of the collaboratory. The private section of the website is only accessible for registered members and combines various functionalities for online collaboration. In this section one can, for instance, upload and download documents (including large datasets), discuss the common research project in an online forum, or send an e-mail to the other members of the collaboratory. Moreover, it is possible to chat with other members of the collaboratory if they are online at the same moment.
