scientific informationpolicies and e-infrastructures

APA conference 2012Frascati, 6 November 2012

Carlos Morais PiresEuropean CommissionDG CONNECT, unit C1

carlos.morais-pires[@]ec.europa.eu

Author’s views do not commit the European Commission

European Commission

• Policy maker

Funding research

Research performer (JRC)

• Research Infrastructures & funding capacity

ODE

• How policy makers and funders can target their limited resources at so many points of the data sharing ecosystem for maximum social and economic benefit is an enormous question to which there are no simple answers.

• But two things are clear: that investment at all these points is necessary to create a fully realised data sharing system; and that gaps and redundancies in investment can best be avoided by a co-ordinated approach on the part of all agencies – governmental and non-governmental – that make research policy and fund research activities.

preservation, volumes, costs, etc

(*) Peter Buneman, Univ . Edinburgh, Linz April 2006,

Neelie KroesDigital AgendaDigital (information) single market

Open Science means optimal sharing of research results and tools such as publications, research data, software, educational resources and infrastructures across institutional, disciplinary and national boundaries.

reports and studies: european

reports and studies: global

Open Infrastructures for Open Science

Open Scientific Content

data, computational resources and software resulting from public funded research

Open Culture

career systems should support and reward those who participate in the culture of sharing

Open Infrastructures

reliable, high-performance and economically efficient infrastructures

Open Infrastructures for Open Science

COM and REC on Scientific Information, July 2012

Open Access,

Long term preservation,

Capacity building with data infrastructures

ALLEA Declaration, April 2012

Open Scientific Content,

Open Culture,

Open Infrastructures

recommendation:[…] hereby recommends that member states

recommendation

• THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION,• Having regard to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European

Union, and in particular Article 292 thereof,

(1)The Communication from the Commission Europe 2020 puts forward

the development of an economy based on knowledge and innovation

as a priority.

(2)The targets set by the Europe 2020 strategy are given in more detail

in particular in the Flagship Initiatives ‘Digital Agenda for Europe’

and ‘Innovation Union’ .

recommendation

• HEREBY RECOMMENDS THAT MEMBER STATES:

• Open access to scientific publications

1. Define clear policies for the dissemination of and open access to scientific

publications resulting from publicly funded research. These policies should

provide for:

– concrete objectives and indicators to measure progress;

– implementation plans, including the allocation of responsibilities;

– associated financial planning.

recommendation

2. Ensure that research funding institutions responsible for managing

public research funding and academic institutions receiving public funding

implement the policies by:

– defining institutional policies for the dissemination of and open

access to scientific publications; establishing implementation plans at the

level of those funding institutions;

– making the necessary funding available for dissemination and open

access, allowing for different dissemination channels, including digital e-

infrastructures where appropriate and new and experimental ways of

scholarly communication;

recommendation

Open access to research data

3. Define clear policies for the dissemination of and open access to

research data resulting from publicly funded research. These policies

should provide for:

– concrete objectives and indicators to measure progress;

– implementation plans, including the allocation of responsibilities

(including appropriate licensing);

– associated financial planning.

recommendation

Preservation and re-use of scientific information

4. Reinforce the preservation of scientific information, by:

– defining and implementing policies, including an allocation of

responsibilities for the preservation of scientific information, together with

associated financial planning, to ensure curation and long-term

preservation of research results (primary research data and all other

results, including publications);

recommendation

Preservation and re-use of scientific information

– ensuring that an effective system of deposit for electronic scientific

information is in place, covering born-digital publications and, where relevant,

the related datasets;

– preserving the hardware and software needed to read the information

in future, or by migrating the information to new software and hardware

environments on a regular basis;

– fostering the conditions for stakeholders to offer value-added services

based on the re-use of scientific information.

recommendation

E-infrastructures

5. Further develop e-infrastructures underpinning the system for

disseminating scientific information by:

– Supporting scientific data infrastructures for dissemination of

knowledge, research institutions and funding entities to address all stages of

the data life cycle. These stages should include acquisition, curation,

metadata, provenance, persistent identifiers, authorisation, authentication

and data integrity. Approaches need to be developed to provide a common

look and feel to data discovery across disciplines, thus reducing the learning

curve required to achieve productivity;

recommendation

E-infrastructures

– supporting the development and training of new cohorts of data-

intensive computational science experts, including data specialists,

technicians and data managers;

– leveraging and building on existing resources to be economically

efficient and to innovate in the areas of analysis tools, visualisations,

decision-making support, models and modelling tools, simulations, new

algorithms and scientific software;

recommendation

E-infrastructures

– reinforcing the infrastructure for access to and preservation of

scientific information at national level, and earmarking the necessary

funds;

– ensuring the quality and reliability of the infrastructure, including

through the use of certification mechanisms for repositories;

– ensuring interoperability among e-infrastructures at national and

global level.

recommendation

E-infrastructures

6. Ensure synergies among national e-infrastructures at European and

global level by:

– contributing to the interoperability of e-infrastructures, in particular

addressing scientific data exchange, taking into account experiences with

existing projects, infrastructures and software developed at European and

global level;

– supporting transnational cooperative efforts that promote the use

and development of information and communication technologies

infrastructure for higher education and research.

recommendation

Multi-stakeholder dialogue at national, European and international level

7. Participate in multi-stakeholder dialogues at national, European and/or

international level on how to foster open access to and preservation of scientific

information.

recommendation

Structured coordination of Member States at EU level and follow-up to the

Recommendation

8. Designate by the end of the year a national point of reference whose tasks

would be:

– coordinating the measures listed in this Recommendation;

– acting as an interlocutor with the EC on questions pertaining to access to and

preservation of scientific information, in particular better definitions of common

principles and standards, implementation measures and new ways of disseminating

and sharing research in the European Research Area;

– reporting on the follow-up to this Recommendation.

recommendation

Reviewing and reporting

9. Inform the Commission 24 months from the publication of this

Recommendation in the Official Journal of the European Union, and every two

years thereafter, of action taken in response to this Recommendation, in

accordance with formalities to be defined and agreed by the working group. The

Commission will review on this basis the progress made across the EU to assess

whether further action is needed to achieve the objectives laid down in this

Recommendation.

General

Hub

Distributed and participatory architectures; robust networks of people and institutions

Discoverability, Access and Interoperability of Data

Access to Storage and Computing Resources

High-speed Connectivity to enable international collaborations

Node:

“Domain Specific hub”

“National hub”

e-Infrastructures for Data(adapted from Prof. Sulston Presentation in the European Parliament on October 2011)

Funders Perspective onResearch Data Alliance

initial group of funders

Alan Blatecky (NSF), Carlos Morais Pires (EC)

EUDAT conferenceBarcelona, October 24, 2012

IGoF and the RDA

• Why/ Funders Motivation• How/ How do we see the process• What/ What do we expect

Not understanding the critical importance and the need to share data for next century science and education

Not understanding the urgency to address and create a global data infrastructure now

Relying on additional workshops, conferences, committees and so forth to study and provide more recommendations

Waiting for standards to be approved that will enable data sharing, interoperability, and support the entire data life cycle

Four Threats to Establishing a Global Data Research Infrastructure

• G8+O5 and Data infrastructures

• South Africa (Nov 2011) and Hamburg (April 2012)

• Technical/Cultural• Creation of data• Curation & Preservation of data• Access to data• Computing infrastructures• International governance

IGoF Motivation

vision that research data will

Unmanaged → ManagedDisconnected → ConnectedInvisible → FindableSingle-use → Reusable

Transform research and usher in anew era of discovery and innovation

Expectations of Research Data AllianceA strategy of let’s start and do instead of more talk and discussionRDA to be a layer of coordination helping science agencies achieve "Global Data Interoperability; Real actors (scientists, producers of data, service providers, research and education organisations) to be in the driving seat;

RDA to be a simple and effective mechanism so that anyone with good ideas can contribute;

RDA documents become a source of trust that can enable rapid adoption of methods, standards, technologies, and so forth, without replacing the role of formal adoption of standards;

Reminder of RDA Principles

• Openness – membership is open to all interested organizations, meetings are public, processes are transparent, products are openly available;

• Balance – organized on the principle of balanced representation for individual organizations and stakeholder communities;

• Consensus – achieving consensus and resolves disagreements through appropriate voting mechanisms;

• Harmonization – harmonization across standards, policies, technologies, tools, and other data infrastructure elements;

• Voluntary – not a government organization or regulatory body and, instead, is a public mission body responsive to its members;

• Non-profit –not a commercial organization and will not design, promote, endorse, or sell commercial products, technologies, or services, and that there will be different policies/rules/legal bases in the different countries or regions.

iGoF expectations

RDA output reach out to the wider community in particular higher education through innovative teaching/learning contexts be based on the virtualization of science;

RDA results reach out to the industrial sector and promote innovation;

Governmental institutions informed by funders will look into policy aspects of international cooperation like, for instance, the reciprocity in data exchange, degree of openness, licensing regimes etc;

Non Government Structures (NGS)Funded to support RDA

US: Fran Berman – RPI

Bill Michener – DataOneBeth Plale – IndianaSayeed Choudhury – Johns Hopkins

Australia: Ross Wilkinson – ANDS

Andrew Treolar - ANDSEurope:

Leif Laaksonen (iCORDI/CSC)Peter Wittenburg (iCORDI/Max Planck Institute)Juan Bicarregui (iCORDI/STFC)

Initial Council

US: Fran Berman – RPI

Australia:

Ross Wilkinson – ANDS Europe:

John Wood, (iCORDI/ Commonwealth Universities)

4 more At-Large members to be appointed by March meetingand will represent other sector stakeholders

Opening up RDA

• Involve other science agencies ion global research data infrastructures;• Leverage the G8+05 working group on data infrastructures;• First international meeting of RDA will be held in March 2013

1-3 October(Washington)

23-24 October(Barcelona)

21-22 November(Gottingen)

Nov Dec

3-4 December(Amsterdam)

March Sep…

18 - 20 March (Gothenburg)

Oct …

2nd RDA Meeting ( Washington DC ?)

Additional RDA Outcomes

• Act as a Clearinghouse for data sharing products and processes• Develop repositories of re-usable codes, best practices, discovery

tools, “chunk-able” components, usable documentation• Provide an international focus for users, researchers and working

communities who share research data• Support community building including multidisciplinary

collaborations and promote participation and user engagement• Develop digital exchange expertise and operations• Help create a vibrant international data research economy

• Reuse• Data as a Service• “Digital Rolodex”

Thank You!Carlos Morais Pires

carlos.morais-pires(at)ec.europa.eu