Moving towards eResearch some recent trends
Dr Liz Lyon, Director
UKOLN, University of Bath
JISC Consultation Workshop, NeSC
23rd February, 2004
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
MLA
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
“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….”
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
“….Similar developments are having
an impact in the arts and humanities,
and in the social sciences.”
A Vision for Research,
RCUK, December 2003.
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Powering the Virtual
Universe
http://www.astrogrid.org
(Edinburgh, Belfast, Cambridge,
Leicester, London, Manchester, RAL)
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,
centre
of expertise
in digital
information
management
federationAand
data
mining tools
to facilitate
better
and
faster scientific
output.
www.ukoln.ac.uk
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)”
:
“The governments of …34
countries…recognising that open access:
to, and unrestricted use of, data promotes
scientific progress and facilitates the training of
researchers;
will maximise the value derived from public
investments in data collection efforts;”
OECD Declaration on access to research data
from public funding.
January 2004
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
“The governments of …34 countries…declare
their commitment to:
work towards the establishment of access
regimes for digital research data…in
accordance with the following principles….
openness, transparency, legal conformity,
formal responsibility, professionalism,
protection of IPR, interoperability, quality and
security, efficiency, accountability…..”
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
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
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
eResearch – the trends?
•
•
•
•
Research is increasingly data–intensive
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
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
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
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Sloan Digital Sky
Survey
http://www.sdss.org
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Messier 81: a classic 2-armed spiral
galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
….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…
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
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
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
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?
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk