Universities are playing main role in research and socio-economic development of the country. The University research generates lot of research information and it is physically added in to libraries. The Research information should be easily available to new Researchers. Every research is generating new knowledge, and it's just kept in the form of thesis, dissertations, research papers, articles, etc. The enormous amount of research data exists in different geographical locations, which could not be investigated by researchers because research data is not available in a central location. The research community is facing lot of problems in sharing, searching and collecting required information and knowledge for their research. Due to these issues, researchers may do work of ‘reinventing a wheel'. This chapter puts a conceptual study for open source community to develop a Knowledge Management System for researchers. This study specifically focuses on Knowledge management approach and proposes the OS_KMS model for research community as an open source software.
Top1. Introduction
Academic programs like Ph. D., M. Phil. and Master Degrees provided by various universities, are research oriented programs for motivating students for research. The research scholars are doing work on their research as an academic requirement of their degree course. Now days, lot of students are attracted towards research, and competition for these courses is increased. This leads to increase in the number of researchers in the research community. The academic research is a continuous process, which is going on from hundreds of years. The research work creates lot of research knowledge and information. It is physically added in to libraries. It should be easily available to new Researchers. In this Information Age, this Research information is awaiting for being open to all for further use and research purpose. Every research is generating new knowledge. This knowledge is just kept in the form of thesis, dissertations, research papers, articles and etc. research community is facing lot of challenges and problems in research. The researchers could not search huge amount of research data because research data is not available in centralized accessible form. Researchers could not reach to the old research data effectively. Hence researchers could do work of reinventing the wheel again and again. Researchers may not know that the topic selected is already used by any other researchers in any other University. There is lack of appropriate tools for information and knowledge sharing in academic research. Which is the major problem faced by research scholars (Deshpande, Kulkarni, & Metkewar 2015).
In the current era of Information & Communication Technology, research scholars have different tools like research repositories, research publication databases, open source solutions and free ware desktops software’s like Research Gate, Mendeley, ShodhGanga, IEEE Explore, Scopus, Google Scholar and many more, but these are not sufficient tools to meet the need of the research community. The authors think that there is a need of open source solution, which must be more customized and improved research tool for the knowledge management of the research community at University or Institute level. For design the proper tools there is need of studying the problems, challenges, issues and requirements of research community. Also the major shortcomings of the free ware/web solutions available should be studied. As the implications of this study, authors are trying to mention about the required features for benefits for research community (Deshpande, Kulkarni, Metkewar, 2015).
Objectives of this chapter:
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To study research process with Knowledge Management approach.
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To study problems, challenges and requirements of research community.
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To study the required features in proposed open source solution for research community.
Top2. Background
Tian, J., Nakamori, Y., & Wierzbicki, A. P. (2009) (p.76-92) found that the authors have done research work on Knowledge management and knowledge creation in academia a survey based study in a Japanese research university. The authors have given the purpose that to pose one major research question, i.e. why and how to use knowledge management methods in order to enhance knowledge creation in academia – at universities and research institutes? They have mentioned that, the first survey was focused on knowledge management in academia and investigated the current KM situations, special and diverse requirements from researchers. The second survey was concentrated on supporting the creative processes of academic research and investigated which aspects of knowledge creation processes should be supported in particular. The author have given findings based on survey that the first survey showed that the KM obstacles reflected on various aspects that was technological support, the people involved in creation activities, laboratory cultural, and so on. The seven most critical questions and three most important questions were evaluated by responders with respect to academic knowledge creation process in the second survey.