Collaborative Web Research Articles

Migration of legacy Java desktop applications to collaborative Web

The migration of legacy applications to more advanced technology platforms has been a recurring theme in the academic and business sectors. This transformation is driven by the desire to overcome the limitations of traditional desktop applications and integrate advanced remote access and collaboration capabilities. Essential features not only for technology upgrade but also to enable organizations to take advantage of remote collaboration.The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated this need, forcing many organizations to adopt remote work and online collaboration modalities, forcing them to transform their information systems. There are various methodologies and techniques, such as conversion, redeployment and wrapping, that offer different approaches to facilitate this migration by minimizing the effort required during the process. This paper specifically studies the migration of Java Swing applications to web environments, particularly those that incorporate collaborative functionalities. Several solutions that follow different migration strategies have been evaluated, performing a more detailed analysis of the Vaadin platform as an efficient tool to perform this migration, with limited effort and special attention to the inclusion of new collaborative functionalities. Finally, a migration procedure is defined that has been validated through two case studies.

Flood simulation with the RiverCure approach: the open dataset of the 2016 Águeda flood event

Abstract. Floods are among the most common natural disasters responsible for severe damages and human losses. Numerically produced data, managed by user-friendly tools for geographically referenced data, have been adopted to increase preparedness and reduce vulnerabilities. This paper describes the locally sensed and numerically produced data that characterize a flood event that occurred in February 2016 in the Portuguese Águeda River, referred to as Agueda.2016Flood for short. The data were managed through the RiverCure portal, a collaborative web platform connected to a validated shallow-water model featuring modelled dynamic bed geometries and sediment transport. The dataset provides a synthesis of topo-bathymetric, hydrometric and numerically produced data from a calibrated hydrodynamic model. Due to the lack of measured hydrometric data near the city, the numerically produced data are crucial for a complete description of the flood event. The Agueda.2016Flood dataset constitutes a complete validation test for flood forecasting models and a tool to better mitigate floods in this river and in similar rivers. Thus, Agueda.2016Flood is a relevant dataset for Águeda River stakeholders as well as for the community of flood modellers, as it provides a well-documented validation event for forecasting tools. The dataset can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.4211/hs.937927473a3a4e66a07a2e2fdd9d581e (Ricardo et al., 2024).

Creating specialised dictionaries using LexO

Abstract Although the contribution of linguistics to terminology is widely recognized today, there remains a lack of tools allowing the construction of specialized dictionaries that deal with both the conceptual and the linguistic dimension of the terms. In this paper we present LexO, a collaborative web editor that was built with the aim of filling this gap. The guiding principles of LexO are the following: i) to allow terminologists to define the morphological, syntactic and semantic features of a term, w.r.t. the traditional onomasiological perspective; ii) to adhere to the open science philosophy and to the FAIR principles, so to create specialized dictionaries that can be shared and reused within the scientific community.

Graph-enabled cognitive digital twins for causal inference in maintenance processes

The increasing complexity of industrial systems demands more effective and intelligent maintenance approaches to address manufacturing defects arising from faults in multiple asset modules. Traditional digital twin (DT) systems, however, face limitations in interoperability, knowledge sharing, and causal inference. As such, cognitive digital twins (CDTs) can add value by managing a collaborative web of interconnected systems, facilitating advanced cross-domain analysis and dynamic context considerations. This paper introduces a CDT system that leverages industrial knowledge graphs (iKGs) to support maintenance planning and operations. By employing a design structure matrix (DSM) to model dependencies and relationships, a semantic translation approach maps the knowledge into a graph-based representation for reasoning and analysis. An automatic solution generation mechanism, utilising graph sequencing with Louvain and PageRank algorithms, derives feasible solutions, which can be validated via simulation to minimise production disruption impacts. The CDT system can also identify potential disruptions in new product designs, thus enabling preventive actions to be taken. A case study featuring a print production manufacturing line illustrates the CDT system's capabilities in causal inference and solution explainability. The study concludes with a discussion of limitations and future directions, providing valuable guidelines for manufacturers aiming to enhance reactive and predictive maintenance strategies.

A methodological approach to intra-action reviews - application and adaptation of existing global guidance during the COVID-19 pandemic response in Ireland, 2021.

Many countries were under-prepared for the arrival of an emergency such as the COVID-19 pandemic. An intra-action review allows countries, systems and services to reflect on their preparedness and response to date, and revise their policies and approaches as needed. We describe the approach to undertaking an intra-action review of Ireland's Health Protection COVID-19 response during 2021. A project team within National Health Protection developed a project plan, identified key stakeholders, trained facilitators and designed workshop programmes, employing integrated collaborative web tools. Multidisciplinary representatives participated in three half-day, independently facilitated workshops on challenges and solutions within specific response areas: communication, governance and cross-cutting themes such as staff well-being. An all-stakeholder survey sought further in-depth detail. Participants reviewed the ongoing pandemic response in terms of good practice and challenges and recommended implementable solutions. We customised our mixed-methods approach using existing ECDC/WHO guidance, producing consensus recommendations during Ireland's fourth wave of COVID-19, with particular focus on pathways to implementation. Our adaptations may help others in formulating and customising methodological approaches. During an emergency, identifying and reflecting on good practices to retain, and areas for strengthening, with a clear action plan of implementing recommendations, will enhance preparedness now, and for future emergencies.

Development of a collaborative web platform documenting the diversity and extent of diatom deformities

Development of a collaborative web platform documenting the diversity and extent of diatom deformities

Civic Engagement

Based on the past sixteen years of experience with an online collaborative endeavor offered across differing university types, as well as modes of instruction, the best practice found that by fostering student peer exchanges on a collaborative web site students reached a high level of achievement in these courses. Findings indicate that despite differences in institutions or modes of instruction, students were academically reflective in their peer discussions on the site across geographic boundaries. This best practice concludes that a collaboration with a peer interactive design has an important place in any discipline's goals. It provides the development, implementation, and evaluation of a collaborative interactive online teaching process for incorporation across any disciple, which is an ongoing concern for educators, program designers, university administrators, technical and administrative staff, institutional decision makers, training managers, and publishers on the development and delivery of pedagogical content.

Temporal pattern mining from user-generated content

Faster internet, IoT, and social media have reformed the conventional web into a collaborative web resulting in enormous user-generated content. Several studies are focused on such content; however, they mainly focus on textual data, thus undermining the importance of metadata. Considering this gap, we provide a temporal pattern mining framework to model and utilize user-generated content's metadata. First, we scrap 2.1 million tweets from Twitter between Nov-2020 to Sep-2021 about 100 hashtag keywords and present these tweets into 100 User-Tweet-Hashtag (UTH) dynamic graphs. Second, we extract and identify four time-series in three timespans (Day, Hour, and Minute) from UTH dynamic graphs. Lastly, we model these four time-series with three machine learning algorithms to mine temporal patterns with the accuracy of 95.89%, 93.17%, 90.97%, and 93.73%, respectively. We demonstrate that user-generated content's metadata contains valuable information, which helps to understand the users' collective behavior and can be beneficial for business and research. Dataset and codes are publicly available; the link is given in the dataset section.

Learning by Design

The January 6, 2020 insurrection at the United States Capitol Building confirmed and challenged many people’s assumptions about how religion functions in society. As the events of that day continue to be reviewed by government officials, scholars, and public audiences, the Uncivil Religion Project has become an invaluable resource in those endeavors. Spearheaded by Prof. Mike Altman at the University of Alabama and Jerome Copulsky and Peter Manseau from the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, the collaborative web project is both a media-rich digital archive and scholarly anthology on this pivotal historical moment. Altman led a team of graduate students in the University of Alabama’s Religion in Culture MA program in the development of the site. Bulletin editorial assistant Erica Bennet interviewed Ciara Eichorst, Katie Johnson, and Phoebe Duke-Mosier to learn how this project not only took shape, but also impacted their education in the academic study of religion.

The Role of Multi‐Level Governance in Shaping Regional Growth and Competitiveness in the Basque Country

AbstractIn light of ongoing debates in England over the urgency of new devolution deals to ‘level up’ the country, this article investigates how devolved powers have been used to transform and sustain the economy in one of the most economically successful regions in Europe: the Basque Country. Drawing upon interviews conducted with Basque politicians, researchers and practitioners, the article examines the role that multi‐level governance and public‐private collaboration have played in shaping the region's economic development, as well as the challenges that derive from its complex institutional structure. The article concludes by suggesting that one of the most significant takeaways from the Basque experience is the importance of using devolution to build a collaborative web of actors and institutions at regional and local level with an enduring common knowledge and purpose that far outlives any one government, as well as the social capital needed to sustain that.

StudyU: A Platform for Designing and Conducting Innovative Digital N-of-1 Trials.

N-of-1 trials are the gold standard study design to evaluate individual treatment effects and derive personalized treatment strategies. Digital tools have the potential to initiate a new era of N-of-1 trials in terms of scale and scope, but fully functional platforms are not yet available. Here, we present the open source StudyU platform, which includes the StudyU Designer and StudyU app. With the StudyU Designer, scientists are given a collaborative web application to digitally specify, publish, and conduct N-of-1 trials. The StudyU app is a smartphone app with innovative user-centric elements for participants to partake in trials published through the StudyU Designer to assess the effects of different interventions on their health. Thereby, the StudyU platform allows clinicians and researchers worldwide to easily design and conduct digital N-of-1 trials in a safe manner. We envision that StudyU can change the landscape of personalized treatments both for patients and healthy individuals, democratize and personalize evidence generation for self-optimization and medicine, and can be integrated in clinical practice.

Creation of an online inventory for choosing critical appraisal tools

Critical appraisal of evidence is performed to assess its validity, trustworthiness and usefulness in evidence-based practice. There currently exists a large number and variety of critical appraisal tools (also named risk of bias tools and quality assessment instruments), which makes it challenging to identify and choose an appropriate tool to use. We sought to develop an online inventory to inform librarians, practitioners, graduate students, and researchers about critical appraisal tools. This online inventory was developed from a literature review on critical appraisal tools and is kept up to date using a crowdsourcing collaborative web tool (eSRAP-DIY). To date, 40 tools have been added to the inventory (www.catevaluation.ca), and grouped according to five general categories: (a) quantitative studies, (b) qualitative studies, (c) mixed methods studies, (d) systematic reviews and (e) others. For each tool, a summary is provided with the following information: tool name, study designs, number of items, rating scale, validity, reliability, other information (such as existing websites or previous versions), and main references. Further studies are needed to test and improve the usability of the online inventory, and to find solutions to reduce to monitoring and update workload.

Coupling Imaging and Omics in Plankton Surveys: State-of-the-Art, Challenges, and Future Directions

A major challenge in characterizing plankton communities is the collection, identification and quantification of samples in a time-efficient way. The classical manual microscopy counts are gradually being replaced by high throughput imaging and nucleic acid sequencing. DNA sequencing allows deep taxonomic resolution (including cryptic species) as well as high detection power (detecting rare species), while RNA provides insights on function and potential activity. However, these methods are affected by database limitations, PCR bias, and copy number variability across taxa. Recent developments in high-throughput imaging applied in situ or on collected samples (high-throughput microscopy, Underwater Vision Profiler, FlowCam, ZooScan, etc) has enabled a rapid enumeration of morphologically-distinguished plankton populations, estimates of biovolume/biomass, and provides additional valuable phenotypic information. Although machine learning classifiers generate encouraging results to classify marine plankton images in a time efficient way, there is still a need for large training datasets of manually annotated images. Here we provide workflow examples that couple nucleic acid sequencing with high-throughput imaging for a more complete and robust analysis of microbial communities. We also describe the publicly available and collaborative web application EcoTaxa, which offers tools for the rapid validation of plankton by specialists with the help of automatic recognition algorithms. Finally, we describe how the field is moving with citizen science programs, unmanned autonomous platforms with in situ sensors, and sequencing and digitalization of historical plankton samples.

IDOL: Retrofit-Kotlin Service-Based Online Digital Library Application and College Open Data Repository

Digital libraries promise new social benefits, especially for e-learning in the age of digital technology. Integrated Online Digital Libraries are required to have professional knowledge and information on one service. Digital library innovation still needs to be researched regarding initiation; development; application; exploitation; the role of the external competitive environment; the role of the organization's internal environment; and products, services, and process outcomes. In the research, the Integrated Digital Online Library – IDOL application developed will fulfill every feature of the digital library system where four core concepts (Content, User, Functionality, Quality, Policy, and Architecture) as the core model of IDOL need to be considered in relation to four main and interrelated factors. interact with the developed digital library system, and special studies are still needed on this development research. This research focuses on the development of the Integrated Digital Online Library – IDOL by implementing Retrofit-Kotlin as a highly secure REST-client library for Java and Android. The RAD (Rapid Application Development) method is used in the development process of this platform. The results of this study still need further development, both regarding functionality, interactive and collaborative web various functions are still needed. Regarding user feedback, both the interface is a factor that must be considered in future development. Regarding data speed, we adopted the HTTP/2 protocol as a data loading strategy and the IDOL platform has successfully implemented the use of Retrofit-Kotlin. Based on the test results, the level of failure in the UT-7, UT-8, and UT-10 tests with achievements of less than 80% of respondents failed to answer. For a success rate above 80% on UT-1, UT-2, UT-3, UT-4, UT-5, UT-6, and UT-9 tests

A SEMANTICALLY ENRICHED MULTIMODAL IMAGING APPROACH DEDICATED TO CONSERVATION AND RESTORATION STUDIES

Abstract. For the past decades, Cultural Heritage (CH) is commonly documented by digital-based imaging and analytical techniques. This documentation is used as a support by heritage scientists to study and help the preservation of CH objects. Multiple techniques or modalities are usually required and applied to complete the documentation and the possible diagnostic from it. In this paper we explored multimodal imaging strategies to survey, analyse and share semantically enriched digital replicas. Three challenging case-studies from the SUMUM research project aims to illustrate efficient multi-source approaches in multi-scalar, multi-temporal and multi-spectral contexts. From multimodal data acquisitions, a photogrammetric-based registration method (TACO) has been developed in order to exploit a 2D/3D semantic annotation process implemented into a CH oriented collaborative web platform (AIOLI). In the exemples showed, the structure and the content of the annotations work is based from condition reports provided by conservation and restoration experts. To this end, all the documentation gathered on CH objects are either directly merged by image based registration while complementary analysis can be spatially anchored to annotations as linked resources. The dissemination part is explored by built-in AIOLI’s collaborative features or external Potree-based viewer, to enhance the accessibility of the final 3D annotated scenes for further expertises or wide-public events and purposes.

An Enterprise 2.0 project management approach to facilitate participation, transparency, and communication

The use of current interactive and collaborative Web 2.0 concepts and technologies has great potential for flexible, loosely-coupled integration and ad-hoc information exchange within and between organizations. However, stakeholders’ readiness, willingness and ability to participate need to be continuously factored in. The successful implementation of common strategies, systems and processes in the course of Enterprise 2.0 projects is crucial. To increase the probability of success and to enhance the intensity of cooperation and trust in such projects, the constructs of transparency, communication and participation need to be addressed through an integrated project methodology. To bridge the gap between existing scientific models and requirements for Enterprise 2.0 projects, this paper proposes and describes a project methodology to support the main objectives for Enterprise 2.0 implementations. Selected results from two pilot projects within Austrian companies are presented and matched with critical success factors, which are derived from the literature. These provide elaborative insights into key characteristics of certain Enterprise 2.0 tools and project management for Enterprise 2.0 projects.

BIcenter-AD: Harmonising Alzheimer’s Disease cohorts using a common ETL tool

Background:Many scientific studies have sought to obtain a better understanding of specific medical conditions. Concerning Alzheimer’s Disease, there is a lack of reliable diagnostics and this can be related to the availability of only small-scale ongoing biomarker studies and longitudinal cohorts including these subjects. Aiming to generate more substantial clinical evidence, researchers have started to perform multiple cohort analyses. While this is currently possible by harmonising these cohorts into a common data model, the migration pipelines are usually implemented using programming languages. Therefore, cohort owners may have difficulties contributing during the validation stage of these pipelines. Results:To reduce the dependency on technical teams’ support when validating the data transformations, it is proposed the use of an ETL tool with visual features. BIcenter is a collaborative web platform designed to implement ETL tasks through the browser. These pipelines are constructed using drag-and-drop features and intuitive forms to customise the ETL steps. This tool is an open-source project and is accessible at https://bioinformatics-ua.github.io/BIcenter-AD/. Conclusions:Our methodology produces interoperable cohorts for multicentric disease-specific studies. Therefore, the tool was validated using Alzheimer’s Disease cohorts from several countries, combining at the end 6,669 subjects and 172 medical attributes. The harmonised cohorts now enable multi-cohort querying and analysis, helping in the execution of new studies.

Contribution of the co.LAB Framework to the Collaborative Design of Serious Games: Mixed Methods Validation Study.

BackgroundMultidisciplinary collaboration is essential to the successful development of serious games, albeit difficult to achieve. In a previous study, the co.LAB serious game design framework was created to support collaboration within serious game multidisciplinary design teams. Its use has not yet been validated in a real usage context.ObjectiveThe objective of this study was to perform a first assessment of the impact of the co.LAB framework on collaboration within multidisciplinary teams during serious game design and development.MethodsA mixed methods study was conducted, based on 2 serious game design projects in which the co.LAB framework was used. The first phase was qualitative and carried out using a general inductive approach. To this end, all members of the first serious game project team who used the co.LAB framework were invited to take part in a focus group session (n=6). In a second phase, results inferred from qualitative data were used to define a quantitative instrument (questionnaire) that was designed according to the Checklist for Reporting Results of Internet E-Surveys. Members of both project teams (n=11) were then asked to answer the questionnaire. Quantitative results were reported as median (Q1, Q3), and appropriate nonparametric tests were used to assess between-group differences. Finally, results gathered through the qualitative and quantitative phases were integrated.ResultsIn both phases, the participation rate was 100% (6/6 and 11/11). Verbatim transcripts were classified into 4 high level themes: (1) influence on collaborative dimensions; (2) impact on project course, monitoring, and efficiency; (3) qualitative perceptions of the framework; and (4) influence of team composition on the use of the framework. The web-based questionnaire was then developed according to the 7 dimensions of collaboration by Burkhardt et al. In both projects, the co.LAB framework had a positive impact on most dimensions of collaboration during the multidisciplinary design and development of serious games. When all collaborative dimensions were aggregated, the overall impact of the framework was rated on a scale from –42 to 42 (very negative to very positive). The overall median score was 23 (Q1, Q3: 20, 27), with no significant difference between groups (P=.58). Most respondents also believed that all serious game design teams should include a member possessing significant expertise in serious game design to guide the development process.ConclusionsThe co.LAB framework had a positive impact on collaboration within serious game design and development teams. However, expert guidance seems necessary to maximize development efficiency. Whether such guidance can be provided by means of a collaborative web platform remains to be determined.

Francophone perspectives on creative industries and the creative economy

Research on the socioeconomics of culture, the collaborative Web and the creative economy have converged today in an ideological construct: the notions of creative industries and the creative economy, at least as they are presented by national and supranational institutions and experts. Most of these themes were introduced into Francophone research through Anglophone works. In this regard, the distinction between various forms of critical research on the one hand and non-critical research on the other seems much more fundamental. As a consequence, we propose to take the notion of creative industries seriously, deviating from the definitions given by experts so as to build a critical theory of creative industries that reflects the dynamics of the economy of symbolic goods.

Knowledge Elicitation with Aboriginal Australian communities

This paper provides techniques for engagement and data collection in researching with Aboriginal Australian cultures, acknowledging significant differences in forms of communication and usage of Information Systems to the mainstream Australian culture. An approach to trust in relationships is developed by interpreting cultural aspects arising from the diverse relationships to technology developed by Aboriginal users. This work uses the existing Honeycomb model for social media development as a base framework for collaborative web systems and online knowledge sharing in the Indigenous domain. We present a series of product development research projects based in universities in NSW Australia, in particular user experience studies, to explain the relationship between the researchers and users and the products that are created in terms of the model. Some concepts and processes fundamental to engagement with Aboriginal Australian communities in the supply of appropriate information sharing technology are discussed in this context. For if Aboriginal people are to engage in IS development, we are sharing the knowledge or the culture that is embedded in the technology which can have detrimental effects. Either we are asking them to enter the culture that created the technology, that is assimilate, or we use engagement in design to change that technology to suit the culture.