e-research-workshop

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Moving towards eResearch - some recent trends
Dr Liz Lyon, Director UKOLN, University of
Bath JISC Consultation Workshop, Warwick 5th
March, 2004
MLA
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The next generation of research breakthroughs
will rely upon new ways of handling the immense
amounts of data that are being produced by modern
research methods and equipment, such as
telescopes, particle accelerators, genome
sequencers and biological imagers.
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.Similar developments are having an impact in
the arts and humanities, and in the social
sciences.

• A Vision for Research,
• RCUK, December 2003.

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Powering the Virtual Universehttp//www.astrog
rid.org(Edinburgh, Belfast, Cambridge,
Leicester, London, Manchester, RAL)
Picture credits NASA / Chandra X-ray
Observatory / Herman Marshall (MIT),
NASA/HST/Eric Perlman (UMBC), Gemini
Observatory/OSCIR, VLA/NSF/Eric Perlman
(UMBC)/Fang Zhou, Biretta (STScI)/F Owen (NRA)
Multi-wavelength showing the jet in M87 from top
to bottom Chandra X-ray, HST optical, Gemini
mid-IR, VLA radio. AstroGrid will provide
advanced, Grid based, federation and data mining
tools to facilitate better and faster scientific
output.



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The governments of 34 countriesrecognising
that open accessto, and unrestricted use of,
data promotes scientific progress and facilitates
the training of researcherswill maximise the
value derived from public investments in data
collection efforts

• OECD Declaration on access to research data from
  public funding. January 2004

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The governments of 34 countriesdeclare their
commitment towork towards the establishment of
access regimes for digital research datain
accordance with the following principles.openne
ss, transparency, legal conformity, formal
responsibility, professionalism, protection of
IPR, interoperability, quality and security,
efficiency, accountability..
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A global initiative

• US Sabo Bill (Public Access to Science)
• Berlin Declaration (BOAI)
• Wellcome Trust statement
• DAREnet Dutch scientific results
• JISC FAIR Programme
• Australian government statement
• WSIS Declaration of Principles Plan of Action
• ..and the forthcoming..
• UK Parliament Science Technology Committee
  Inquiry on Scientific Publications

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eResearch the trends?

• Research is increasingly dataintensive
• Open access to data and information
• Inter-disciplinary / new disciplines e.g.
  Astro-informatics
• New approaches require new skills
  (IT statistics domain)
• Collaborative virtual communities /
  organisations
• Knowledge-rich infrastructures development of
  ontologies, terminology servers
• Highly distributed resource utilisation
  instruments, primary data, bibliographic
  collections

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New resources.

• Physical and remote
• Telescope, scanner, computer cycles
• Primary / original data
• Observational, experimental, numeric, genomic,
  2/3D molecular structures, satellite images,
  electron micrographs, wave spectra, CAD, code,
  musical compositions, VR, performances,
  animations
• Informational / bibliographic
• Articles, theses, eprints, maps, music scores,
  scripts, newspapers, programs
• Human discourse
• Chat, instant messaging, email, discussion lists,
  virtual meetings, minutes, workshops, annotations

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Sloan Digital Sky Survey http//www.sdss.org
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Messier 81 a classic 2-armed spiral galaxy in
the constellation Ursa Major
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.used in new ways

• Data and information
• Creation, discovery, gathering, aggregation,
  dis-aggregation, replication, federation,
  manipulation, transformation, linking,
  annotation, editing/versioning, validation,
  (self-)archiving, deposit, publication, curation
• Knowledge extraction and management
• Analysis (textual, musical, statistical,
  mathematical, visual, chemical, gene)
• Mining (text, data, structures)
• Modelling (economic, mathematical, biological..)
• Simulation (molecular, physical, environmental,
  games)
• Presentation (visualisation, rendering.)
• Distributed collaborative discourse
• Discuss, criticise, evaluate, support, agree,
  disagree, reject

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What are the user / community requirements?

• Integrated
• Roles researcher, learner, citizen, consumer
• Resources and functionality Web services,
  portals, registries
• Portable / ubiquitous access wireless, iPOD
• Managed / secure / sustainable
• Access digital certificates, Shibboleth?
• Rights Creative commons, trusted repositories
• Archives digital curation
• Usable
• Next generation search Vivissimo, Grokker,
  visualisation
• Semantic interoperability, ontology services
• Collaborative
• Shared interaction Access Grid, Twiki, Jabber,
  instant messaging
• Personalised
• MySpace, recommender systems
• Intelligent agent technology, improve
  workflows, save me time

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Some questions ..

• Is there a shared vision for an e-research
  environment?
• What are the disciplinary differences /
  commonality?
• What are the critical functions?
• What are the barriers to implementation?
• What are the implications for researchers, for
  information services and for institutions?
• What are the development and funding priorities?
• What are the sustainability issues?