Building virtual communities for research collaboration

This paper discusses the problem of how to grow and evolve virtual infrastructures that support the development and growth of geographically dispersed research communities. It describes ongoing research into personalization within a collaborative environment intended as a "virtual campus". As part of this research it provides initial reports on a project that is developing collaborative workspaces for dispersed research teams, and reviews relevant literature pertaining to the use of online collaborative workspaces to build virtual communities.