By Henda van der Berg,
Head: Nexus Database System,
National Research Foundation,
P O Box 2600, Pretoria 0001, South Africa.
E-mail: jhmvdberg@nrf.ac.za.
Tel. No. +27 12 481 4016
The Research Information Programme of the National Research Foundation of South Africa’s plays a central role in the production of new knowledge, research training, research capacity development and policy making. This Programme consists of two main activities, namely the South African Data Archive (SADA) and the Nexus Database System (Nexus).
SADA conserves raw data of large scale South African national and micro-survey research projects. The Nexus Database System supports formal and informal research networking in South Africa.
These main activities complement each other and provide a service at different stages in the research process.
In the innovation process, the flow patterns of scientific and technical information indicate that the formal and informal communications systems are not competing with one another. They complement one another, and the problem is to get the formal and the informal systems working together most effectively for transmitting the many different kinds of information that are essential at different points within the innovation process. The formal scientific and technical information systems seem to work better than the informal systems. However, because of the symbiotic relationship between the formal and informal systems, the full advantages of an efficient formal system cannot be realized unless the informal system makes proper use of it. Hence further attention might be directed toward improving the interface between the formal and informal systems, in order to make full use of the innovative ability and capacities of scientists.
How does Nexus facilitate research networking in South Africa?
Nexus has developed an integrated research networking system that consists of a current and completed research projects database, biographical information of scientists in South Africa database and a research organizations database. These databases are published on the Internet. Hypertext links between researchers, projects and organizations facilitate research networking in a formal and informal way.
This discussion will be complemented with a demonstration of the Nexus Database System’s research networking capabilities.
Can Nexus be used as a model to facilitate and promote research collaboration in Africa? The generation of new knowledge and the establishment of viable research networks amongst African scholars, as well as the promotion of research collaboration and networking in Africa is extremely important, given the continent’s many developmental needs.