Web based R&D collaboration

Modern communications, especially the Internet, can provide more efficient work in many scientific areas. This paper describes an application of Web technologies for creating data platform aimed at storing specific qualitative data related to gender issues in engineering and technology research settings. These data are collected by interviewing women/men research engineers from industrial, academic and governmental organizations in different countries. The interviews are carried out in accordance with particularly design questionnaires. Two basic functions are supported by the data platform. The first one enables on-line entry of data collected, while the second function provides presentation of all available data and their cross-comparison, if necessary. The data integrity is ensured by pre-defined user's rights. During the data entry process, each user can enter or revise the interview results for her/his organization only. Retrieval and cross-comparison of data are allowed to all users. By selecting relevant criteria such as country, nationality, research sector, category, etc. the users can obtain different sets of output data in accordance with their needs. The advantages of the use of computer and Web technologies in this application field are the following: accuracy and reliability of data, speed, simple data access, user-friendly environment, distributed work, better collaboration, extend ability, etc. For all of these reasons, the data platform provides a good foundation for many more or less complex gender analyses.