A centre of expertise in digital information management

www.ukoln.ac.uk

                                                             

Moving towards eResearch - some recent trends

Dr Liz Lyon, Director

UKOLN, University of Bath

JISC Consultation Workshop, Warwick5th March, 2004

MLA

A centre of expertise in digital information management

www.ukoln.ac.uk

                                                             

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 Universehttp://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, federation and data mining tools to facilitate better and faster scientific output.

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)”

:

A centre of expertise in digital information management

www.ukoln.ac.uk

                                                             

“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 Surveyhttp://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?