A generic web compendium tool for research communities
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(Supervisor: Thomas Erlebach)

Researchers working in a particular area need to keep track
of the known results in the area. They want to be able to
find out quickly which results are known for a particular
problem and where they are published. Researchers who begin
to study an area want to have a convenient way of getting a
good and up-to-date overview of the area. There are a few
examples of websites for specific research areas that fulfil
some of these expectations:

* The Compendium of NP Optimization Problems

* The Map-Labeling Bibliography

In particular, such websites should offer the following useful
services (among others):

* A bibliography of all relevant publications in the area,
ideally with links to publications that are available on-line,
possibly with annotations.

* An introduction to the research area and the most important
problems and results.

* A list of all problems that have been defined and studied in
the area, together with information about the best known results
for them and cross-references to related problems.

* A list of interesting open problems.

* Other on-line resources or links to other relevant websites.

* Support for addition, deletion or modification of material.

The goal of this project is to create a tool that makes it easy
to set up and maintain a website of this type without in-depth
knowledge of web technologies. In particular, the project will
have to address the following issues:

- what is a complete set of functionalities that are desirable
for such a website (requirements analysis)

- what possible management structures could be useful for maintaining
such a website, and how can they be supported by the tool (for
example, who should have the permission to add or modify data, and
who can assign or delegate these permissions, etc.)

- how can one identify general methods of categorizing and presenting
the results in an area, so that the tool can then be useful for
various different research areas

- how can one ensure that the categorization methods are used consistently
by all contributors