Posted by worldlinemine on April 30, 2012 at 2:00pm
This would appear to be the best place to start discussion. Please include only a single module and reasoning for choosing the module. Once a significant number of modules have been identified it would be interesting to experiment with the set to determine what features would appear to be missing.
For example:
Module - Views
Justification - Currently the simplest method to expose collected data in a tabular form to end users. It easily provides multiple variations on the data and it also allows for manipulation of data in a consistent way.
Comments
Module - Services
Module - Services [http://drupal.org/project/services]
Justification - The services module would allow for the integration of a large number of data sources in addition to the standard approach of inputting data via a Content Type for use within the site.
Biblio
Is definitely one of the must have for an open research platform - http://drupal.org/project/biblio
Re: Biblio
This project certainly has promise in terms of adding desirable functionality. It does focus on turning a site into a "digital" research paper, whereas the strengths I see a project like "open research" would be facilitating the gathering, analysis and sharing of data especially leveraging tools like date (to type the data accurately for particular fields) and solr search to allow for potentially very complex returned result sets.
Etherpad
Etherpad integration would also provide a good basis for collaborative work on papers. The module seems minimally maintained though:
http://drupal.org/project/etherpad
Re: Etherpad
Conceptually, I think it has some interesting promise though I haven't personally spoken with any researchers who actively edit documents collaboratively in this fashion.
Instead, I believe that Project Spark would seem to be one possible direction editing in Drupal may improve, and I would tend to keep my eye on this project for a more sustainable improvement to the editing UI: http://drupal.org/project/spark .
BBB
And a third one that I've been escorting (but did not try yet): BigBlueButton (http://drupal.org/project/bbb)
This requires third-party software, but it would be a very powerful solution for improving the quality of meetings teams of geographically separated teams of researchers, or even to make public presentations of research progress or papers to an extended peer community.
Re: BBB
This module would concern me in terms of added overhead to the site. Development appears to be very light at present as I am not seeing many stable release updates for D6 and none for D7. If there was significant activity and a framework for building, collecting and distributing data was functioning then this would be an intriguing direction to go.
For now I'd be inclined to hold off and await more improvements. Has anyone had significant experience in using this and feel that it has compelling use cases?
Open Review
Some kind of annotation feature, where open reviewing of articles could be done, would also be necessary. I found this thread which might point us in some direction:
http://groups.drupal.org/node/72748
http://groups.drupal.org/node/10875
Etherpad Again
I'm entirely familiar with Drupal, web development is part of my job description with C#. I am making a point on Etherpad as an open research installation profile as a module.
I am continuously volunteering a team of 70-100 people using Etherpad provided by Mozilla. That's an amazing experience so far.
So I would definitely like to see Etherpad modules integrated also because of its less maintenance.
Drupal Development