What can be the benefits of working in a VRE?
- VREs can help researchers to manage their digital resources. When researchers from different disciplines and with different expertise work together, this allows them to build larger datasets and to carry out more complicated research projects. Certain questions can be answered only when individual researchers combine their intellectual capacity, data collections, and when analyses can take place on accumulated resources. VREs can be used to ensure that all team members can have access to all the relevant data and to the correct versions of all documents.
- VREs can help researchers to coordinate the collaborative work. E-research is by definition a collaborative activity that combines the abilities of (distributed) groups of researchers in order to achieve goals that are beyond the capacity of individual researchers. Evidently, an effective collaboration also requires a number of additional tasks. Team activities need to be co-ordinated, and progress needs to be communicated. Such tasks in the field of project management can be carried out very effectively in a VRE.
- When researchers can make use of effective tools for collaborative work, this generally means that they can work more efficiently. Today’s research project invariably have to deal with vast quantities of digital information, and without adequate support, relatively pedestrian tasks such sharing documents and managing versions can easily consume large portions of the researchers’ limited time. It will be difficult to develop precise metrics for the benefits of VREs, but it may possibly be illustrated by pointing towards an increased pace in the production of publications, an increase in the growth of data collections, or a growth in the number of additions to a project website.
- A VRE enables teams of researchers to answer different types of questions. In research projects which are based on large volumes of heterogeneous data, it will often be impracticable or even impossible for individual scholar to create such comprehensive datasets. In such situations, scholars need to join forces and may choose to merge their individual databases in shared sets so that the all he data can be queried simultaneously. When all the relevant documents and research data are available in a single environment, this should also enable users to work more effectively, and to increase their productivity.
- The various tools and applications which are relevant for a community are often dispersed over many different locations. Some applications may need to be installed locally, and some tools are available online. By making use of a VRE, these different tools can be integrated in a single environment. A VRE can facilitate a centralised access via the Internet. These tools are available at any location and at any place.
- VREs can reduce the complexities of international, cross-institutional projects.
- Some researchers have also commented that working in an institutional VRE also confers prestige on the project. The fact that a specific research project is facilitated by a university library can help to add some weight to subsequent grant applications.
- By making use of a VRE, the entire research process can also be documented more thoroughly and the final and preliminary resources that are created can also be curated more effectively. As a result of the VRE, the research project can be given a 'memory'.