A B2B ARCHITECTURE AND PROTOCOL FOR RESEARCHERS COOPERATION

Abstract

Some works on the researchers cooperation's literature provide the key lines for building research networks and propose new protocols and standards for business to business (B2B) data exchange, but none of them explains how researchers should contact and the procedure to select the most appropriate partner of a research enterprise, institute or university. In this paper, we propose a B2B architecture and protocol between research entities, that uses ebXML protocol. The contacts for cooperation are established based on some defined parameters and an information retrieval system. We explain the information retrieval system, the researcher selection procedure, the XML-based protocol and the workflow of our proposal. We also show the information that has to be exchanged to contact other researchers. Several simulations demonstrate that our proposal is a feasible architecture and may be used to promote the research cooperation. The main purpose of this paper is to propose an efficient procedure for searching project partners.