eResearch2020 study findings welcomed by European Commission and e-Infrastructure community

By Simon Robinson and Tobias Hüsing, Empirica Communication and Technology Research, Germany, Franz Barjak, Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz, Germany - Ralph Schroeder, Oxford Internet Institute, United Kingdom and Zack Kertcher , National Opinion Research Center of the University of Chicago, U.S.

The findings of the Empirica-led study eResearch2020 - The Role of e-Infrastructures in the Creation of Global Virtual Research Communities were welcomed by the European Commission and members of the global e-Infrastructure community in Brussels at the study’s final workshop on 24th February 2010.
More than 40 e-Infrastructure managers and stakeholders attended the final event of eResearch2020 to hear the consortium present the results of the 14-month study, including new data on e-Infrastructure demand and usage, scenarios of e-Infrastructure futures and recommendations for public action in the EU. Findings were based on the study teams’ uniquely broad survey of the virtual research communities served by today’s e-Infrastructures and on evidence from in-depth studies of a sample of 18 diverse e-Infrastructure initiatives and projects across the globe.
In a keynote address, John Wilbanks (VP Science, Creative Commons) made the case for the “generativity” of open e-Infrastructures, which enables user communities to scale up the array of applications far beyond the ideas of their creators, which are always constrained to their time. In contrast to slick, controlled environments closed to developers, open technologies give researchers the freedom to “screw it up”, essential to enabling the one-in-a-hundred creative spark to trigger new knowledge or even technological revolution. The study team was proud to have on its discussion panel leading members of Europe’s e-Infrastructure community: John Wilbanks was joined by Steven Newhouse, Technical Director of the European Grid Initiative EGEE (to become EGI), Matthew Scott, General Manager of the GÉANT network operating body DANTE, and Paul Wouters, Programme Leader of the Virtual Knowledge Studio for the Humanities and Social Sciences. Under the chair of Simon Robinson, Empirica director, the distinguished panelists welcomed the study results and gave the participants their perspective on study outcomes. Stephen Benians (BELIEF project) participated in the panel and linked study topics to the following BELIEF Brainstorming Event on indicator development.
eResearch2020 has for the first time researched a broad variety of types of e-Infrastructure, their state of development, their users and usage, and their role in supporting productive research in Europe and beyond. The study has collected a wealth of data and only a selection of findings could be presented at the workshop. The interested reader is kindly referred to the study report (see below). In presenting some of the study results, the study underlined that the field of e-Infrastructures is truly heterogeneous, ranging from supply of high speed research network interconnectivity (a prominent example being the operating and development of the backbone as supplied by GÉANT) to providing access to data for virtual research communities in single academic fields. e-Infrastructures include organisations and services as diverse as national and international multi-purpose grids, supercomputer infrastructure, data grids and repositories, tools for visualization, simulation, data management, storage, analysis and collection, tools for support with regard to methods or analysis as well as remote access to research instruments and very large research facilities.
The study found that the vast majority of researchers who are users truly value their e-Infrastructures, which are often indispensable for their research; the infrastructures enable them to be more productive, work on problems that could not be addressed before, access resources they had hitherto not been able to use and allow collaboration with colleagues around the globe which previously worked independently.
Positive impact was found to accrue particularly to projects which are international rather than national in scope, developer-driven rather than user-driven and concerned with computing rather than data. The users who benefit most seem to be those engaging in research in novel and dynamic fields, both in competitive and collaborative environments but less in established fields with low collaboration intensity. e-Infrastructures are also especially helpful for researchers from developing countries in overcoming access and organisational barriers in their work.

eResearch Policy Recommendations
The study used scenario techniques to depict possible futures in the area of e-Infrastructures and derived the following recommendations for action by the European Commission and other research policy makers to ensure arrival at the most positive scenario.
1. European and other researchers increasingly depend on the most technically and socially advanced e-Infrastructures to meet the world‘s most urgent research challenges. e-Infrastructures development underpins the future of meeting these challenges and should remain a key priority for policymakers.
2. Sustainability should be considered in a much longer-term perspective. Resources sustained at the European, national or other level must be committed for extended (10+ years) periods so this commitment provides a reliable and well-integrated platform for the research community and beyond.
3. The uncertainties around funding are the single-largest perceived barrier among providers, virtual research communities, and the yet-to-be-engaged. Clearer plans and funding agendas could overcome these uncertainties.
4. While data is not scarce any more, the key challenge has moved on to the coordination, proper safeguarding, sharing and re-use of data, also beyond its initial purposes. Mandating clear policies to share software and make data interoperable are essential.
5. There are currently few rewards for researchers both inside communities and among providers for their contributions to e-Infrastructures development, or for sharing data and tools. Reward mechanisms need to be promoted that recognize and reward researchers to do this.
6. “Openness” has been a much vaunted principle in e-Infrastructures development, but while open source software and open publishing can already show successes, much more by way of coordination is needed to apply openness to standards and interoperability in systems and collaboration platforms.
7. Governance and metagovernance (governance which coordinates the governance of individual efforts) strategies are still emerging in many ad hoc forms. Although ERICs are emerging as a possible single legal mechanism for the future, there is still uncertainty among the e-Infrastructures communities. Policy can be put in place to overcome this uncertainty.
8. Education and training efforts for e-Infrastructures lag behind e-Infrastructures development, but offer an excellent route for much more widespread engagement with the novel research possibilities and should thus be among the highest priorities in future planning and funding.
9. Many opportunities for shared best practices and for sharing resources between fields and sub-fields are currently unexploited and could be fostered by more funding that favors cross-disciplinary teams and efforts.
10. A fair share of future efforts is also to be dedicated to actions with a higher risk of failure (subject to constant monitoring and revision) which are hoped to generate completely novel applications to problems in which distributed computing and other e-Infrastructures have not yet been applied.
11. Mandating standards both in software and in the interlinking of metadata and data, although requiring a balance with flexibility, remain a high priority
12. Indicators of success and impact and quality are required in view of the need for coordination and resource planning. High priority should be given to providing resources for projects which undertake such measurement or to research from outside the e-Infrastructures to enable monitoring and comparison.
13. Existing barriers to participation by industrial research partner participants need to be removed so that potential benefits materialise more easily for both larger firms with sizeable R&D organizations and SMEs.
14. Research into the bottlenecks, effectiveness, and future potential of e-Infrastructures will be imperative. e-Infrastructures - as a relatively novel, still protean, and absolutely vital platform for research in the ERA and beyond - are a still largely unexplored territory in terms of their impact dynamic. Especially in relation to recommendation 12, such research will have enormous pay-offs.

The study report and the study brochure are available on the project website at http://www.eresearch2020.eu. The workshop was organised by the study consortium consisting of Empirica Communication and Technology Research (Simon Robinson and Tobias Hüsing), Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz (Franz Barjak), Oxford Internet Institute (Ralph Schroeder) and National Opinion Research Center of the University of Chicago (Zack Kertcher) on behalf of the European Commission’s DG Information Society and Media.