e-Science Infrastructure for the Social Sciences

When the term „e-Science“ became popular, it frequently was referred to as “enhanced science” or “electronic science”. More telling is the definition ‘e-Science is about global collaboration in key areas of science and the next generation of infrastructure that will enable it’ (Taylor, 2001). The question arises to what extent can the social sciences profit from recent developments in e- Science infrastructure? While computing, storage and network capacities so far were sufficient to accommodate and access social science data bases, new capacities and technologies support new types of research, e.g. linking and analysing transactional or audio-visual data. Increasingly collaborative working by researchers in distributed networks is efficiently supported and new resources are available for e-learning. Whether these new developments become transformative or just helpful will very much depend on whether their full potential is recognized and creatively integrated into new research designs by theoretically innovative scientists. Progress in e-Science was very much linked to the vision of the Grid as “a software infrastructure that enables flexible, secure, coordinated resource sharing among dynamic collections of individuals, institutions and resources’ and virtually unlimited computing capacities (Foster et al. 2000). In the Social Sciences there has been considerable progress in using modern IT- technologies for multilingual access to virtual distributed research databases across Europe and beyond (e.g. NESSTAR, CESSDA – Portal), data portals for access to statistical offices and for linking access to data, literature, project, expert and other data bases (e.g. Digital Libraries, VASCODA/SOWIPORT). Whether future developments will need GRID enabling of social science databases or can be further developed using WEB 2.0 support is currently an open question. The challenges here are seamless integration and interoperability of data bases, a requirement that is also stipulated by internationalisation and trans-disciplinary research. This goes along with the need for standards and harmonisation of data and metadata. Progress powered by e- infrastructure is, among others, dependent on regulatory frameworks and human capital well trained in both, data science and research methods. It is also dependent on sufficient critical mass of the institutional infrastructure to efficiently support a dynamic research community that wants to “take the lead without catching up”.

e-Science Infrastructure for the Social Sciences

"When the term 'e-Science' became popular, it frequently was referred to as 'enhanced science' or 'electronic science'. More telling is the definition 'e-Science is about global collaboration in key areas of science and the next generation of infrastructure that will enable it' (Taylor, 2001). The question arises to what extent can the social sciences profit from recent developments in e-Science infrastructure? While computing, storage and network capacities so far were sufficient to accommodate and access social science data bases, new capacities and technologies support new types of research, e.g. linking and analysing transactional or audiovisual data. Increasingly collaborative working by researchers in distributed networks is efficiently supported and new resources are available for e-learning. Whether these new developments become transformative or just helpful will very much depend on whether their full potential is recognized and creatively integrated into new research designs by theoretically innovative scientists. Progress in e-Science was very much linked to the vision of the Grid as 'a software infrastructure that enables flexible, secure, coordinated resource sharing among dynamic collections of individuals, institutions and resources' and virtually unlimited computing capacities (Foster et al. 2000). In the Social Sciences there has been considerable progress in using modern IT-technologies for multilingual access to virtual distributed research databases across Europe and beyond (e.g. NESSTAR, CESSDA - Portal), data portals for access to statistical offices and for linking access to data, literature, project, expert and other data bases (e.g. Digital Libraries, VASCODA/ SOWIPORT). Whether future developments will need GRID enabling of social science databases or can be further developed using WEB 2.0 support is currently an open question. The challenges here are seamless integration and interoperability of data bases, a requirement that is also stipulated by internationalisation and trans-disciplinary research. This goes along with the need for standards and harmonisation of data and metadata. Progress powered by e-infrastructure is, among others, dependent on regulatory frameworks and human capital well trained in both, data science and research methods. It is also dependent on sufficient critical mass of the institutional infrastructure to efficiently support a dynamic research community that wants to 'take the lead without catching up'." (author's abstract

1st INCF Workshop on Global Portal Services for Neuroscience

The goal of this meeting was to map out existing portal services for neuroscience, identify their features and future plans, and outline opportunities for synergistic developments. The workshop discussed alternative formats of future global and integrated portal services

Enterprise portals: addressing the organisational and individual perspectives of information systems

Enterprise portals are being viewed as the next generation application platform of choice, offering benefits over both client/server and thin client arrangements. By providing a mediating layer between the information applications and resources of the organisation and the individuals using them, enterprise portals appear to provide a unique context to allow both the organisational and individual perspectives of information systems to be addressed. This study seeks to examine these often competing perspectives of information systems by using an exploratory empirical survey to investigate the actual deployment of enterprise portals within a range of different organisations. It is found that both the individual and organisational benefits that enterprise portals can offer appear to have been recognised, and coherent sets of services addressing each of these perspectives are being developed. Consistent with diffusion and acceptance of technology models, organisations appear to be commencing their portal developments with services that will ensure utilisation by individuals, and are subsequently seeking to realise organisational level benefits

Core Services in the Architecture of the National Digital Library for Science Education (NSDL)

We describe the core components of the architecture for the (NSDL) National Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology Education Digital Library. Over time the NSDL will include heterogeneous users, content, and services. To accommodate this, a design for a technical and organization infrastructure has been formulated based on the notion of a spectrum of interoperability. This paper describes the first phase of the interoperability infrastructure including the metadata repository, search and discovery services, rights management services, and user interface portal facilities

Evaluating global e-government sites: A view using web diagnostics tools

This is the post-print version of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2004 The AuthorsSeveral governments across the world have embraced the digital revolution and continue to take advantage of the information and communication facilities offered by the Internet to offer public services. Conversely, citizens’ awareness and expectations of Internet based online-public-services have also increased in recent times. Although the numbers of the different national e-Government web portals have rapidly increased in the last three years, the success of these portals will largely depend on their accessibility, quality and privacy. This paper reports the results of an evaluative study of a cross-section of e-Government portals from these three perspectives, using a common set of performance metrics and Web diagnostic engines. Results show that not only are there wide variations in the spectrum of information and services provided by these portals, but that significant work still needs to be undertaken in order to make the portals examples of ‘best practice’ e-Government services

Geoportals: an internet marketing perspective

A geoportal is a web site that presents an entry point to geo-products (including geo-data) on the web. Despite their importance in (spatial) data infrastructures, literature suggest stagnating or even declining trends in visitor numbers. In this paper relevant ideas and techniques for improving performance are derived from internet marketing literature. We tested the extent to which these ideas are already applied in practice through a survey among 48 geoportals worldwide. Results show in many cases positive correlation with trends in visitor numbers. The ideas can be useful for geoportal managers developing their marketing strateg

GridCertLib: a Single Sign-on Solution for Grid Web Applications and Portals

This paper describes the design and implementation of GridCertLib, a Java library leveraging a Shibboleth-based authentication infrastructure and the SLCS online certificate signing service, to provide short-lived X.509 certificates and Grid proxies. The main use case envisioned for GridCertLib, is to provide seamless and secure access to Grid/X.509 certificates and proxies in web applications and portals: when a user logs in to the portal using Shibboleth authentication, GridCertLib can automatically obtain a Grid/X.509 certificate from the SLCS service and generate a VOMS proxy from it. We give an overview of the architecture of GridCertLib and briefly describe its programming model. Its application to some deployment scenarios is outlined, as well as a report on practical experience integrating GridCertLib into portals for Bioinformatics and Computational Chemistry applications, based on the popular P-GRADE and Django softwares.Comment: 18 pages, 1 figure; final manuscript accepted for publication by the "Journal of Grid Computing