Community Forum – What librarian tool do you use for R&D knowledge?

A: What librarian tool do you use for R&D knowledge?  

Please find below the responses to this week’s IRI Community Forum Survey. Thank you to those who took the time to add their input! 

We’re reevaluating the tool we use to organize and share R&D knowledge and want to see what others are using and your thoughts on those tools and the future of R&D knowledge systems. If you’ve got 5 minutes, we’d really appreciate your input in this quick survey. Results will be shared on Friday. 

Responses are below.

Community Responses

Other:

• Biovia
• SER Group/Doxis (under review)
• Glean

Other:

• Note searching is best done in the formal document repository.

Other:

• More use of AI-enhanced product development tools.
• Finding out what else exists already externally in parallel with internal information

Other:

• More use of AI-enhanced product development tools.
• Finding out what else exists already externally in parallel with internal information

In your view, will curated or “settled” knowledge continue to be kept separate from early-stage thinking or brainstorming? Why or why not?

• All this information is stored in our document storage system regardless of level of “settledness” in your terms.  Any person could tell the difference between these documents.  Frequently active work is posted in TEAMs or SharePoints when still in progress, and uploaded to document system when work is complete.
• Yes, working documents are meant to be read by the project team who already have a base level of understanding. Curated knowledge provides context, background, and analysis of working-level documents, so that anyone technical could read and understand them.
• Not sure
• Early-stage thinking or brainstorming is captured with a different designation rather than a separate location. This allows us to use a single database or file location for all reports and leverage the distinctions between report types to help filter data when searching.
• it is not kept separately, but together to enable later review. However, as it is not a must, the knowledge from different members can be kept very diversely.
• No – the platform must be access-controlled to protect intellectual property kept as trade secret
• Likely yes, kept separate for now, although that’s not the desired state.  Captured knowledge isn’t as comprehensive as we need to be very useful, so we’ll need to focus on that culture change, but then we also need to take the knowledge to where the research is being done instead of expecting researchers to go to one more resource when they’re doing early-stage work.
• Yes, Presto is the “body of knowledge” of published technical reports while Box is the repository of “working knowledge” for active projects
• There needs to be clarity on what is hypothesis vs. known data. 
• Yes. Content you can rely and build on top of versus thought generators
• Yes – curated knowledge needed for current/future AI plans
• Separate, perhaps, but both easily accessible on the same platform.
• mostly likely seperate for IP reasons at the beginning
• Not sure
• Yes; however, they are stored in the same tool within different folders.  As AI gets added to the tool, will be nice to see where a piece of knowledge comes from (folder), and still using it for context knowledge with all data sets of knowledge.
• It is valuable to have a record of work that was either completed or not as many ideas are cyclical and we need the ability to pull the historic information.

What would your ideal knowledge management system do that your current one doesn’t?

• 1. have everything in one place and in one system. 2. if not, have AI features to search, filter and curate reference documents from all the different locations. 3. be so easy to prompt and use that all R&D employees would eagerly use it to both post new information and to search.
• Have better keyword searching of documents. SharePoint seems to be hit or miss.
• Not sure, just starting to put together a system for knowledge management/transfer, looking for ideas.
• The ideal system would include a robust “simple” search feature akin to a Boolean search of keywords and metadata.
• I am looking forward to a new platform integrated with Machine learning and AI if possible.
• Provide AI-generated summaries of current knowledge
• Select flavors for applications based on pre-defined properties such as flavor form, sensory properties, food application, etc.
• Integrate with other systems (lab notebooks, LIMS, external search), as well as allow for AI-related development.  We have many permission restrictions on the reports captured, which hinder new tech dev.
• Improved searchability ideally utilizing AI to improve usability
• We need to continue working on the ease of use and finding the information that is applicable and helpful for the users.  There is still a lot of resistance based on concerns about applicability to similar but not exactly the same problems.
• AI capabilities are at the top of the list
• search internally and externally simultaneously, content summarization and decision making, easy filtering/viewing, integration for automation of tasks
• Better use of AI tools to search and use reports
• Integrate all locations where KM information is stored