3,218 research outputs found
Initial experiences in developing e-health solutions across Scotland
The MRC funded Virtual Organisations for Trials and Epidemiological Studies (VOTES) project is a collaborative effort between e-Science, clinical and ethical research centres across the UK including the universities of Oxford, Glasgow, Imperial, Nottingham and Leicester. The project started in September 2005 and is due to run for 3 years. The primary goal of VOTES is to develop a reusable Grid framework through which a multitude of clinical trials and epidemiological studies can be supported. The National e-Science Centre (NeSC) at the University of Glasgow are looking at developing the Scottish components of this framework. This paper presents the initial experiences in developing this framework and in accessing and using existing data sets, services and software across the NHS in Scotland
Pathways: Augmenting interoperability across scholarly repositories
In the emerging eScience environment, repositories of papers, datasets,
software, etc., should be the foundation of a global and natively-digital
scholarly communications system. The current infrastructure falls far short of
this goal. Cross-repository interoperability must be augmented to support the
many workflows and value-chains involved in scholarly communication. This will
not be achieved through the promotion of single repository architecture or
content representation, but instead requires an interoperability framework to
connect the many heterogeneous systems that will exist.
We present a simple data model and service architecture that augments
repository interoperability to enable scholarly value-chains to be implemented.
We describe an experiment that demonstrates how the proposed infrastructure can
be deployed to implement the workflow involved in the creation of an overlay
journal over several different repository systems (Fedora, aDORe, DSpace and
arXiv).Comment: 18 pages. Accepted for International Journal on Digital Libraries
special issue on Digital Libraries and eScienc
An Integrated Semantic Web Service Discovery and Composition Framework
In this paper we present a theoretical analysis of graph-based service
composition in terms of its dependency with service discovery. Driven by this
analysis we define a composition framework by means of integration with
fine-grained I/O service discovery that enables the generation of a graph-based
composition which contains the set of services that are semantically relevant
for an input-output request. The proposed framework also includes an optimal
composition search algorithm to extract the best composition from the graph
minimising the length and the number of services, and different graph
optimisations to improve the scalability of the system. A practical
implementation used for the empirical analysis is also provided. This analysis
proves the scalability and flexibility of our proposal and provides insights on
how integrated composition systems can be designed in order to achieve good
performance in real scenarios for the Web.Comment: Accepted to appear in IEEE Transactions on Services Computing 201
Development of grid frameworks for clinical trials and epidemiological studies
E-Health initiatives such as electronic clinical trials and epidemiological studies require access to and usage of a range of both clinical and other data sets. Such data sets are typically only available over many heterogeneous domains where a plethora of often legacy based or in-house/bespoke IT solutions exist. Considerable efforts and investments are being made across the UK to upgrade the IT infrastructures across the National Health Service (NHS) such as the National Program for IT in the NHS (NPFIT) [1]. However, it is the case that currently independent and largely non-interoperable IT solutions exist across hospitals, trusts, disease registries and GP practices ā this includes security as well as more general compute and data infrastructures. Grid technology allows issues of distribution and heterogeneity to be overcome, however the clinical trials domain places special demands on security and data which hitherto the Grid community have not satisfactorily addressed. These challenges are often common across many studies and trials hence the development of a re-usable framework for creation and subsequent management of such infrastructures is highly desirable. In this paper we present the challenges in developing such a framework and outline initial scenarios and prototypes developed within the MRC funded Virtual Organisations for Trials and Epidemiological Studies (VOTES) project [2]
Big data: the potential role of research data management and research data registries
Universities generate and hold increasingly vast quantities of research data ā both in the form of large, well-structured datasets but more often in the form of a long tail of small, distributed datasets which collectively amount to āBig Dataā and offer significant potential for reuse. However, unlike big data, these collections of small data are often less well curated and are usually very difficult to find thereby reducing their potential reuse value. The Digital Curation Centre (DCC) works to support UK universities to better manage and expose their research data so that its full value may be realised. With a focus on tapping into this long tail of small data, this presentation will cover two main DCC, services: DMPonline which helps researchers to identify potentially valuable research data and to plan for its longer-term retention and reuse; and the UK pilot research data registry and discovery service (RDRDS) which will help to ensure that research data produced in UK HEIs can be found, understood, and reused.
Initially we will introduce participants to the role of data management planning to open up dialogue between researchers and library services to ensure potentially valuable research data are managed appropriately and made available for reuse where feasible. DMPs provide institutions with valuable insights into the scale of their data holdings, highlight any ethical and legal requirements that need to be met, and enable planning for dissemination and reuse. We will also introduce the DCCās DMPonline, a tool to help researchers write DMPs, which can be customised by institutions and integrated with other systems to simplify and enhance the management and reuse of data.
In the second part of the presentation we will focus on making selected research data more visible for reuse and explore the potential value of local and national research data registries. In particular we will highlight the Jisc-funded RDRDS pilot to establish a UK national service that aggregates metadata relating to data collections held in research institutions and subject data centres. The session will conclude by exploring some of the opportunities we may collaboratively explore in facilitating the management, aggregation and reuse of research data
A Taxonomy of Self-configuring Service Discovery Systems
We analyze the fundamental concepts and issues in service
discovery. This analysis places service discovery in the context of distributed
systems by describing service discovery as a third generation
naming system. We also describe the essential architectures and the
functionalities in service discovery. We then proceed to show how service
discovery fits into a system, by characterizing operational aspects.
Subsequently, we describe how existing state of the art performs service
discovery, in relation to the operational aspects and functionalities, and
identify areas for improvement
Digital Preservation Services : State of the Art Analysis
Research report funded by the DC-NET project.An overview of the state of the art in service provision for digital preservation and curation. Its focus is on the areas where bridging the gaps is needed between e-Infrastructures and efficient and forward-looking digital preservation services. Based on a desktop study and a rapid analysis of some 190 currently available tools and services for digital preservation, the deliverable provides a high-level view on the range of instruments currently on offer to support various functions within a preservation system.European Commission, FP7peer-reviewe
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