Representatives of Microsoft Research, part of technology firm Microsoft Corp., US, outlined their vision for how Microsoft and academics can collaborate on research projects to develop technological breakthroughs at the company's ninth annual Research Faculty Summit.
Speaking to more than 400 faculty members from leading research institutions worldwide, Tony Hey, corporate vice president of Microsoft's External Research Division, emphasised the role his group plays not only in supporting specific collaborative research projects, but also in improving the process of research and its role in the innovation ecosystem. This includes developing and supporting efforts in open access, open tools, open technology and interoperability. Toward that end, the firm announced a set of free software tools aimed at allowing researchers to seamlessly publish, preserve and share data throughout the entire scholarly communication life cycle.
Microsoft researchers partnered with academia throughout the development of these tools to obtain input on the application of technology to the needs of the academic community. Meanwhile, Microsoft product groups submitted feedback on how the company's technology could optimally address the entire research process. The collective efforts are seen to have resulted in the first wave of many tools designed to support academics across the scholarly communication life cycle.
The Article Authoring Add-in for Word 2007 enables metadata to be captured at the authoring stage. The aim is to preserve document structure and semantic information throughout the publishing process, which is essential for enabling search, discovery and analysis in subsequent stages of the life cycle. The Microsoft e-Journal Service provides a hosted, full-service solution that facilitates easy self-publishing of online-only journals to facilitate the availability of conference proceedings and small and medium-sized journals.
Research Output Repository Platform helps capture and leverage semantic relationships among academic objects such as papers, lectures, presentations and video to facilitate access to these items in exciting new ways. The Research Information Centre, in close partnership with the British Library, will be hosted via Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and will allow researchers to collaborate throughout the entire research project workflow. This ranges from seeking research funding to searching and collecting information, as well as managing data, papers and other research objects throughout the research process.
The tools are freely available at
http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/tc/scholarly_communication.mspx.
