Supporting education and research

JISC Virtual Research Environment Call

Town Meeting

19th July 2004

19 July 2004 VRE Town Meeting, London 2

Agenda

• Welcome and introduction– David de Roure (member of JCSR and VRE

working group

• JISC Circular 5/04• Context and objectives of the call

– Alan Robiette (JISC Development Group)

• Preparing a proposal– Joe Hutcheon (JISC Policy Group)

• Question and answer session– JISC panel

Supporting education and research

Background and Objectives of the Call

Alan Robiette, JISC Development Group<a.robiette@jisc.ac.uk>

19 July 2004 VRE Town Meeting, London 4

Context

• Funding £3M from comprehensive spending review

• Became available 1 April 2004• One-off funding stream: no prospect of

extended recurrent funding• HEFCE funds; so HE (and England) only

• To develop the infrastructure and tools for collaborative e-research environments

• No real strings other than that ...

19 July 2004 VRE Town Meeting, London 5

Process to date

• JISC Committee for Support of Research (JCSR) has lead responsibility for the work

• Appointed Working Group chaired by David Boyd (e-Science Core Programme)

• Working Group met three times, drafted Circular and additional background paper (“roadmap”) for JCSR approval

• Circular signed off by JCSR and issued 30th June 2004

19 July 2004 VRE Town Meeting, London 6

What is a VRE?

• See discussion in Section 2 of the roadmap

• Some key points:• Should support the processes of research• Should be built on interoperable tools

(hence be extensible, capable of being tailored etc.)

• Should support a wide range of users and user requirements, and be compatible with existing widely-used tools

19 July 2004 VRE Town Meeting, London 7

Examples of function

• Access to research resources• E.g. computational resources, data

storage, remote instrumentation

• The publication life-cycle• Literature search and retrieval, support

for authoring, e-prints/self-archiving

• Collaboration• Messaging (including secure messaging),

sharing diaries/calendars/files etc., distributed document production

19 July 2004 VRE Town Meeting, London 8

Approaches

• Top down• Build framework based on open

standards (e.g. WSRP & JSR168 portlets) • Current paradigm is services-oriented

architecture (SOA – see roadmap) )• Integrate extensive range of services and

tools

• Bottom up• Deploy user-focused tools which extend

personal environment to encompass collaborative working

19 July 2004 VRE Town Meeting, London 9

OGCE

• NSF funded Grid portal project led by Indiana University

• Acronym stands for Open Grid Computational Environment

• Uses Jetspeed portal as presentation layer

• Based on web services as the service integration technology

• Incorporates Michigan CHEF toolset to provide collaboration framework (used for example in NEESGrid)

19 July 2004 VRE Town Meeting, London 10

Sakai

• Institutional environment project joint between MIT, Stanford, Indiana, Michigan

• Supplemented by Mellon funding• Component-based architecture using MIT Open

Knowledge Initiative APIs (more VLE than VRE?)• Initial implementation Java-based (not web

services)• Uses uPortal as presentation layer• Also incorporates CHEF toolset for collaborative

groupware functions• Beta deployment Autumn 2004

19 July 2004 VRE Town Meeting, London 11

JISC proposals sought

• (1) Projects to deploy OGCE, Sakai or similar frameworks to support defined communities

• Goal is to gain experience of how these environments enhance the research process, including collaboration

• (2) Projects to integrate new tools and services into such frameworks

• Goal is to develop a portfolio of standards-based, re-usable components

19 July 2004 VRE Town Meeting, London 12

Bottom-up example

• Chandler• Next-generation information

management application (“Outlook killer”)

• Developed by Open Source Applications Foundation (OSAF)

• Will support peer-to-peer sharing in personal version

• Corporate version being funded by Mellon and leading US universities

• Personal version available late 2004

19 July 2004 VRE Town Meeting, London 13

Further examples

• Lionshare• Hybrid peer-to-peer/corporate file-sharing

architecture developed at Penn State• Now also has substantial Mellon funding

• Person-to-person/small-group collaboration tools

• Many examples: circular quotes Privaria as one instance

• Also wikis, blogs, open (server-based) groupware environments etc. etc.

19 July 2004 VRE Town Meeting, London 14

JISC proposals sought

• Trial deployments in research communities with defined user needs

• Particularly those with little previous history of using collaboration tools

• Principal objective is to address human/cultural issues, determine what works and what doesn't, and so on

• Tools tested in this strand may not immediately integrate into frameworks but will help define user requirements

19 July 2004 VRE Town Meeting, London 15

Evaluation strand

• Some funding will be awarded to a formative evaluation project

• Goal is to track work as it proceeds• Act as a knowledge transfer agent

between the differing projects which make up the programme

• Pick up on user experiences and evolving user perceptions of requirements and functionality

• Hence feed back into the work in progress and help to shape its direction

19 July 2004 VRE Town Meeting, London 16

Outcomes and sustainability

• Ultimate target is convergence of VRE work with VLEs and JISC digital library developments

• Institutions or Research Council sites will be able to mount tailored environments for their communities

• Some components may be accepted by and maintained by the Open Middleware Infrastructure Institute (OMII)

• International collaboration on software infrastructure is important

Supporting education and research

Immediate questions?