The first ever independent eResearch conference kicked off recently (formerly was done with the Middleware CAMP conference). There was a notable UK presence throughout the conference, but very few people from rest of Australasia. There was a lot going on and, in my opinion, not a lot of overlap between the infrastructure providers and researchers.
A quote from Sir John Taylor was represented “e-Science is about global collaboration in key areas of science and the next generation of infrastructure that will enable it.” This was pre eResearch thinking. Hopefully people realise that local collaboration and “non-key” areas of research can also benefit from the eResearch boom.
It was recognised that there is a gap between Scientists and the Infrastructure (things like the Grid). Rhys Francis gave a brilliant presentation on NCRIS, past present and future. It seems, however, that this gap filling may not be a part of NCRIS at first. This strengthens the argument for institutional and domain funded eResearch specialists. Rhys calls these people the “User Builders”.
Web 2.0, Semantic, Social etc.
Again, social networking tools (youtube, wikis, annotea) featured as key tools in the eResearch ecosystem. Mostly these seem in the development or trial phase. Take a look at www.SciTube.tv for a good example of papers, with video podcast commentry, highlighting the work during the video. (Public Library of Science, PLS)
Web2.0 was also mentioned a few times. The best definition of this seemed to be as a design pattern including:
- The long tail – many people using, find niches formerly too small to be commercial
- Data is the next “Intel inside” – applications are increasingly data-driven
- Users can add value
- Network effects by default – allow networks of people to use the added value
- Some rights reserved – freeing the data for use
- The perpetual beta – always in development
- Cooperate, don’t control
- Software above the level of a single device.
However underneath this web2.0 are dependable robust services. An example is Google maps. To provide this in a dependable, scalable way you need Grid.
Some were calling for a “semantic framework for research”, for objects from raw data, through logs, to the final papers. Demonstrations seemed to be semantic blogs that are populated with both researcher data and comments during the research process. I think for this to work comments must be able to draw on existing diagrams and annotate other entries.
Jane Hunter gave an interesting presentation on harvesting annotations including what some of the current system gaps are. These seem to be problems with supporting search, security/privacy, structured annotation (text only), responsiveness (notifications), having limited media types and limited granularity. Vannotea is project worth taking a look at, collaborative annotation and discussion of medical images/video. Judith Pearce had an insightful question on how to merging annotations for the same object which may be presented in different ways and at different locations (apparently different URIs from the tool’s point of view).
Other Stuff
There was an interesting presentation on the use of e-Resources in the humanities. What I took home from this was that “full text” still reigns supreme. I guess natural language and image processing tools are still coming!?
Ann Borda, eResearch Project Manager, JISC, presented on some of the current issues facing JISC: distrib file management; policy for curation; tools to support use of dynamic VOs; support for project tools; operational authN/authR; user interaction and tool development. The current JISC eResearch activites focus on :
- Community Engagement and Support – Use Case and Service Models, Barriers to Uptake
- Collaborative Technologies – VRE2
- Data/Knowledge/Info Management – data curation, semantic tools, text mining (NaCTEM)
- Authentication, Authorisation, Accounting and Identity Management
- Infrastructure – National Grid (NGS), OMII-UK NGS Tools Dev
They are hoping to use use case analysis and the e-Framework’s Service Usage Models to look at how the community is engaging with infrastructure. (See diagram, to come.)
On the legal side of e-Research, we were encourage to look at the OAK Law report (or also a JISC report) for issues to do with Copyright, Confidentiality, Contracts, Access Policies and Principals (ie. have all of these things, tell people, make them open), and a legal framework (one that facilitates use of and access to research data). Look out for the conference proceeding from their very own International e-Research Conference 2007 (which is actually just a e-Research legals conference). The results of a survey of important outcomes for e-Research will be released at their conference on 11-12 July.