ID+Lab – Analyzing, Modeling and Designing Interdisciplinarity

Abstract

Interdisciplinary collaboration is the key to solving complex tasks. At the same time, the communication and cooperation within such a collaboration are themselves characterized by multifaceted, dynamic processes. The ID+Lab explores the structures of interdisciplinary cooperation in order to better understand, visualize and test them. The ID+Model developed for this purpose enables us to acquire an altogether new and detailed view of these structures. ID+Model allows complex collaborations to be analyzed, modeled and designed as a network of actors and connections. The basic elements are eleven ID+Actors that have proven to be essential in interdisciplinary collaborations: people, organizations, events, tasks, methods, tools, money, topics, time, sources and places. The ID+Actors form a network through semantically defined ID+Ties with different status, values and intensity. The formal definition of modeling in the ID+Ontology makes research data available for the Semantic Web and the Linked Open Data Cloud. Based on the ID+Model, the ID+Lab is developing a semantic research contextualization platform – the ID+Stage. The ID+Backstage modeling tool uses a structured question dialogue to gather all the critical actors and connections of a publication, translate them in the background into a machine-readable format, and store them. When a research result is connected to the modeled context of origin, the ID+Publication is formed. Consequently, not only are the research results disclosed, so are their development processes. The ID+Publications are published on the ID+Stage. The ID+Ontology enables the semantic recording and searchability of all data as a modeling foundation.