Enhancing Scientific Cooperation of an Interdisciplinary Cluster of Excellence via a Scientific Cooperation Portal

In the Cluster of Excellence (CoE) “Integrative Production Technology for High-Wage countries” at RWTH Aachen University, scientists from different institutions investigate interdisciplinary ways to solve the polylemma’s tradeoffs between scale and scope as well as between plan and value oriented production. Next to the CoE’s four scientific subfields – the Integrative Cluster Domains (ICDs) – there are three additional subprojects performing cross sectional research and providing means for physical and virtual cross-linkage, the Cross Sectional Processes (CSP). Scientific cooperation in such a large and diverse consortium – as a meta-structure to the structures present in the member institutes – poses many challenges. To tackle these, an online learning and collaboration platform is developed, called the “Scientific Cooperation Portal”, to optimize the cluster-wide cooperation process. Technically building on the Liferay framework, the portal provides basic features like a member list and an event calendar as well as functionalities to help cluster members to gain a deeper understanding of the CoE’s current state regarding the diversity in interdisciplinary terminology, patterns in publication relationships, knowledge management and developed technologies.