How networking can advance academic knowledge management
In its drive to spur the economy, the EU is constantly looking for new ways to encourage knowledge transfer between the public and private sectors, as well as among different stakeholders in Europe. In this spirit, the EU-funded project TEAM (Transferring knowledge on academic knowledge management) linked Austria's Technical University of Graz (TUG) with an Estonian information communications technology (ICT) centre and a British information technology (IT) company. The TUG specialises in knowledge management and semantic technologies, while the two SMEs boast advanced engineering expertise in developing commercial knowledge management solutions and products. Through dynamic networking, the project team enabled the two commercial entities to upgrade their products and services. While both companies rely on a comprehensive database of information for their business, the content is very different. For the UK company, this involves online scientific articles, while for the Estonian enterprise the database extends information about tourism attractions and sightseeing activities. Against this backdrop, TEAM focused on issues such as document similarity and de-duplication, entity recognition, meta-data extraction, user profile analysis, tag recommendation and folksonomy analysis as well as recommender engines. It organised workshops and training sessions to advance the sharing and exchange of knowledge through powerful cooperation initiatives. TEAM enabled researchers to exchange knowledge and build their capabilities in these organisations, in addition to hiring additional staff to work on the project. Individuals involved in the project, including the 12 who were specifically hired for this purpose, have published 20 scientific articles on the topic and produced support information for interested parties. Moreover, the tools and solutions developed by TEAM have been integrated into the recommendation engines at both partner companies. The project helped all three organisations advance their knowledge, create new networks and enhance their services. Additionally, it encouraged employment and offered training. Its results support research in many scientific fields, boosting Europe's knowledge economy and competitiveness. This endeavour is an excellent example of public-private cooperation at its best.
Keywords
Knowledge transfer, knowledge management, semantic technologies, de-duplication, entity recognition, meta-data extraction, user profile analysis, tag recommendation
