ICTlogy

February 2008 issue of the Open Source Business Resource has published a “for the practitioner” version of my work “The personal research portal: web 2.0 driven individual commitment with open access for development”.

I slightly adapted the contents to make them more appealing to a non-scholarly audience, but the core idea remains the same.

BTW, I added a cite by the Beautiful South. It’s cryptic, but it is fully relevant — at least to me — when you think of knowledge, knowledge sharing, knowledge binding … and knowledge pimping these days.

I want to sincerely thank Dru Lavigne for betting on it.

More info:

• Peña-López, I. (2008). “The personal research portal”. In Open Source Business Resource, February 2008, 23-27. Ottawa: Talent First Network.
• Read it online: http://www.osbr.ca/ojs/index.php/osbr/article/view/517/476
• Download it: 20080221_ismael_pena_personal_research_portal_osbr.pdf (, 535.35 Kb)

Abstract:

Digital technologies have forever changed the way that knowledge is disseminated and accessed. Yet, the main problem knowledge workers face is invisibility: if people don’t know that you know, and people are not aware of what you know, you do not exist.

Governments and institutions are being pushed to foster Open Access (OA) literature as a way to achieve universal reach of research diffusion at inexpensive and immediate levels. Most efforts have been made at the institutional level, dedicating little energy to what the individual can do to contribute. The philosophy and tools around web 2.0 bring clear opportunities for individuals to contribute and to build a broader personal presence on the Internet and a better diffusion for their work, interests or publications.

We propose the concept of the personal research portal (PRP) as a means to create a digital identity for knowledge workers–tied to one’s digital public notebook and personal repository–and a virtual network of colleagues working in the same field. Complementary to formal publishing or taking part in offline meetings, the PRP would be a knowledge management system that would enhance reading, storing, and creation at both the private and public levels, and contribute to create an online identity that, in turn, will help to create a network whose currency is knowledge.

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