At first glance, it seems to be quite surprising that so far traditional business process-oriented knowledge management techniques have not been transferred to research in order to improve the efficiency of scientific work on a larger scale. But due to the high variability and unpredictability of scientific work processes, these techniques are not easily applicable here. In fact scientific work processes have to be understood as a network of informal learning processes with a high level of social interaction.

For this purpose, a model of a “Knowledge-Added Process” has been developed as a new paradigm of process-oriented support. Furthermore, several methods and tools for efficiently supporting such interdisciplinary knowledge creation processes in eScience were developed by transferring approved methods and technologies from operative KM solutions.

Within the project, a software prototype for web-based collaborative engineering of lightweight ontologies and annotation of web resources (SOBOLEO), as well as a tool for annotating and sharing locally stored documents (SATIN)  have already been developed. Both can be downloaded/ accessed here:

http://www.im-wissensnetz.de/Wissensnetz/CMS/Downloads/ 

More information about the underlying public funded research project "Im Wissensnetz" can be found on:

http://www.im-wissensnetz.de (unfortunately only in german language)