Announcing the Center for eResearch
Effective mid-January 2005, the University of Missouri inaugurated a Center for eResearch. The primary mission of the CeR is to foster internet-based research across disciplines, both locally on campus and via national and international cooperations. It is crucial to emphasize that all schools, colleges, and intra-college units of its home university, as well as all outside institutions, are welcome and invited to take part in CeR activities, and that the director will make every effort to solicit their initial and continuing participation.
The philosophy behind the establishment of this facility is simple. Today internet-based research is proliferating throughout colleges and universities, just as web-based interactions have revolutionized nearly every sector of our daily lives. A major stumbling block, however, is the fact that individual efforts in e-research have remained highly individual; they have tended to take root and flourish in relative isolation, thriving within their own narrow confines but seldom interacting with efforts by other researchers. To network these “silos” more effectively, the CeR proposes to help e-researchers communicate with one another through local seminars and consultations, webcasts and archived recordings for campus and national/international audiences, national and international agreements, an online journal-newsletter entitled eResearch, and a web page with an updatable database. For more on various CeR initiatives, visit www.e-researchcenter.org.