Team Name: Team 3

Team Members:

• Joshua Thompson
• Prabhavathi Kumarasamy
• Paul Varcholik

The Proposed System

The customer's current system is a simple structure files and folders located on his PC. The system has an organization and file naming convention consistent only to the customer himself and not other colleagues. Notes or reviews of research documents are stored in separate files or folders, without a convenient reference to the associated document. Collaboration is difficult under this system because there is no centralized organization or method of document retrieval.

• Web-based system for organizing academic papers
• Meta data associated with an article including: keywords, author, publication source, abstract (full-text), date of publication
• Searching and browsing
• User-provided reviews
• Annotated references to related documents
• Multi-user collaboration
• Multiple repositories
• Easy deployment and site administration

• Read-Only User - Can view, but not modify items in a repository
• Read-Write User - Can add, modify and delete items in a repository
• Admin User - Can manage repository membership and permissions
• Repository Owner - The user who initially established the repository, though ownership may be transferred to another user by the site administrator Can assign admin privileges to other users of the repository
• Site Administrator - Controls the operations of the entire web application, resolves technical issues, deletes users and repositories, and transfers repository ownership

Scenario: User manages an account. The user can create a new account, adding it to the database. The user can also log in and out of the account, and modify the information stored in the profile.

Scenario: User manages a repository. The user can create a new repository, adding it to the database, and the creator automatically becomes the owner/admin of that repository. The user may now invite or accept other people into the repository, and modify their permissions. The repository owner may also delete the repository in its entirety.

Scenario: User manages documents. The user can upload a new document to the repository, modify the document’s metadata, or delete the document. If the document is corrupted, or over the specified size limit, it will not upload.

Scenario: User browses for documents. The user can either use the browse or search functions, and documents will be presented to the user based on what the user is filtering for (e.g. author, publication source, or keyword).

• Support for multiple users
• Ability for users to create and delete repositories
• Ability to upload .pdf documents to repositories
• Ability for users to add users to repositories
• Ability to search for documents
• Ability to link documents within the database

• Group creation and management
• Support of .doc files
• Ability to have a list of favorite or recently viewed articles

The system will enable researchers to efficiently perform literature reviews. If expectations are met, the researcher may be more capable of understanding a research topic and in shorter time than using traditional systems. Additionally, colleagues will be able to leverage literature reviews and contribute to a common pool of knowledge.

The Proposed System: Analysis

• Centralized system for research document organization and collaboration
• Decreased literature review time
• Improved research collaboration

• Requires resources for sever maitenance
• It may take a significant amount of effort to transition to the new system

• Limited by the size and speed of the central server
• Requires adoption amongst researchers in order to achieve maximum collaborative efficacy
• No version control

• Low system adoption
• Server maintenance becomes too expensive

• Use network storage with standards for naming and organizational structure
  • Limited meta data
  • Lack of cross-references
  • Limited search capabilities
• Use existing web-based systems
  • No existing system meets all of the requirements of the customer