Relevant PhD Research Areas

iFellow research could address a range of broadly defined technical areas common to large-scale digital projects, including but not limited to:

Examination of relationships among a set of Coherence-related projects
Theoretical investigations of models of scalable infrastructure.
Distributed open repository design, linkage and integration
Cross-platform workflow architectures to facilitate resource sharing and reuse
Analysis and modeling of large domain application projects
Domain-specific information access and analysis toolkits
Scholarly workflow representation, capture and reporting
New models for dissemination and sharing of scholarly work, data and resources
Extensible schemes for migration from analog to digital scholarly resources
Project workflow analyses
Improved distributed information access, analysis, presentation and dissemination capabilities

A more extensive list of specific topics is given below. The iFellow application would necessarily need to address specifically how the topic is of crucial importance to the success of the large-scale project identified and how it can be related to the higher level issues noted above.

Repository and Infrastructure Research Topics

repositories architectures and technologies
repository interoperability and scaling
system modeling technologies
component-based design and reuse
large scale data and system integration
internal data-structures and packaging standards
assured-service negotiation strategies among federated repositories
automatic categorization & correlation of large multi-source collections
low-level facilities for managing multiple large collections
generalizable modules adaptable for different topics and disciplinary areas
scalability and performance analysis
semantic web and linked data technologies
complex information object structures
information object modeling and documentation
institutional repository management practices
information services design processes
APIs for repository ingest, search, harvest, deposit, delete

Information Content Research Topics

instantiation and sharing and of complex object models
technologies for re-use of content, software, services across application areas
query languages and ontologies
data-sharing policies and strategies
metadata, tools, format transformation
semantic web, linked open data models,
content creation and ingest issues (born digital and legacy collections)
auto format and conversion tools
conceptual reference models for semantic frameworks
automatic indexing and semantic annotation for text and non-textual information
version control technologies
acquisition/verification/cataloguing/indexing of electronic media
virtual research environments
collections usage and impact measures
collection of user feedback

Information Access and Use Research Topics

queries and query analysis tools
heuristic optimization and search strategies, retrieval ranking
tools for search, retrieval and aggregation across domain repositories
multimedia information retrieval and combination tools
web information retrieval and social media search
automatic tools for entity and relationship identification
domain specific information access, manipulation and analysis tools
collection level browsing and search
cross-domain knowledge and discovery management services
predictive analytics and modeling
data science, analytics and web science topics
document representation and content analysis
syntactic, semantic, stylistic and other forms of text analysis
social media and analysis
multi-model adaptivity to support personalization
open data, ontologies, software
event-based metadata and annotation
data mining and knowledge discovery across very large digital ecosystems
personal objects; personal archiving
personalized information retrieval and presentation
interactive multimedia applications
information display, visualization and infographics of multiple object types
transmedia representation applications
software, services, and infrastructure for use and reuse of content
information security & privacy
usage metrics and impact indicators

Scholarly Communication

open access publishing, dissemination
researcher-centered design for scholarly workflows
formal and informal scholarly communication models and services
transparent scholarship
digital scholarly editing
web-based collaborative authoring
open-source web-publishing platforms
information licensing issues

Community Use, Applications and Issues

collaboration technologies of all sorts
information reuse, integration and sharing in collaborative environments
analysis of international mandates for data management and open access
scholarly social media services: annotation, review, comment, citation
scholarly citation, attribution, acknowledgment, and altmetrics
changing roles of libraries in digital era; new organizational structures and types
innovative knowledge commons research
recommendation in social networks
services for entities and relationships adaptivity based on community input
collaborative filtering and recommender systems

Data Curation Research Topics

stewardship practices across the information and scholarly workflow lifecycles
data curation lifecycle services
digital preservation tools, services & infrastructure
models of collaborative preservation
best practices for documenting authenticity, integrity, and provenance of assets
harmonize data storage and preservation policies
semantic workflow models and formalized representations of the curatorial processes