Open-source platform for academic collaboration

Question

I'm planning a collaboration platform that will be used by academics from twenty different countries collaborating within the same field of research. Ideally I'd like to base my work on an existing open-source platform that can be extended to meet all the requirements.

The final platform has the following requirements:

• Integrated message board
• Support for file uploading for sharing new research papers, etc.
• A shared calender for upcoming conferences, etc.
• Task lists with reminder support
• Mailing list support

Furthermore, the platform will be hosted in a Linux environment. And ideally it would use MySQL as the underlying database. The programming language can be either Java or PHP, where Java is the preferred choice.

My question: Is there any open-source collaboration platform that would fit the requirements outlined above? What's your recommendation?

Thanks a lot in advance!

Answer 1

• Zoho.com - Free hosted solution (in case you will need a simplier solution than maintaining your own collaboration portal)

• PHPCollab - Open source project, extandable.

• Dimdim is easy, open and affordable web collaboration software and comes with a robust set of powerful features that just keeps getting better. Dimdim scales to thousands of meeting attendees, provides world class availability and comes in multiple hosted and onsite configurations including downloadable open source and a free hosted version.

• Mindquarry is an Open Source collaborative software platform for file sharing (documents, images, media files, etc.), task and project management, team collaboration and Wiki editing that meshes simplicity and functionality. As a result, knowledge workers are able to connect with team members and share information from wherever they are, effectively improving team-work and increasing productivity within the company.

Just in case, here is the List of collaborative software at Wikipedia.org

Answer 2

Plone may meet many of your requirements, though you might need to get some plugins.