Research Portals: Status Quo and Improvement Perspectives

Becker Jörg, Knackstedt Ralf, Lis Lukasz, Stein Armin, Steinhorst Matthias

Abstract
Research portals are a means to present, discuss, and advance scientific findings. They are web-based knowledgemanagement tools for research communities. Research portals foster collaboration among a communityof scientists, research funders, and political decision-makers. However, research communities might notpossess the knowledge and experience required to design a research portal. The authors support them byanalyzing the status quo of existing portals and providing respective improvement perspectives. The authorsask what typical characteristics of such portals are and how these characteristics can be used to evaluatethe advancement of individual portals and they seek to distinguish classes of differently advanced researchportals and determine their status quo. The authors' research is based on a systematic web search, duringwhich the authors identify 813 relevant research portals. Following a multi-method approach, they assigneach research portal a previously distinguished class of advancement. The authors conclude that researchportals generally only offer basic functionality and discuss functionality that is underrepresented in this poolof analyzed research portals and elaborate on improvement perspectives in 11 feature dimensions.