The End of the Beginning Dr Simon J E Taylor, Coordinator & Reader in Computer Science, Modelling & Simulation Group, Brunel University London

What is an e-Infrastructure? Networks of powerful distributed Information and Communication Technologies High speed research communication networks Computational resources (grids, clouds, etc.) Software services Data services (data sources, scientific literature) Sensors

What is a Science Gateway? Simple web or mobile access to an e-Infrastructure

Can Science Gateways and e-Infrastructures Energise Science in Africa? Open science commonly refers to efforts to make the output of publicly funded research more widely accessible in digital format to the scientific community, the business sector, or society more generally (OECD 2015) Open Science has many potential benefits for Africa in terms of innovation, knowledge transfer and raising the profile of African research across the world ICT is a key foundation to Open Science Energise Open Science in Africa with Science Gateways and e-Infrastructures

The Sci-GaIA Vision for Open Science – An Open Science Commons in Africa www.sci-gaia.eu/osp/

Sci-GaIA Outputs – WP1 Support Create educational materials (124) www.sci-gaia.eu/materials Survey e-Infrastructure usage (>30) http://surveys.sci-gaia.eu/ Maintaining compliance with other international efforts through the Africa & Arabia Regional Operations Centre (AAROC) and EGI Cloud

Sci-GaIA Outputs - WP2 Community Create a new community of service developers and end users (213) http://discourse.sci-gaia.eu Support new and emerging communities of practice (15 CoP, 35 Champions) www.sci-gaia.eu/community www.sci-gaia/champions

Sci-GaIA Output - WP3 Services Create backbone for the Open Science Platform Open Access Repositories (5, 4 DOI Prefixes) http://oar.sci-gaia.eu/ Science Gateways (7) e-Infrastructures African Policy Management Authority (IdFs/eduGAIN) (3) www.sci-gaia.eu/osp Strength and expand Science Gateway and e-Infrastructure related services New services and applications www.sci-gaia.eu/federated-services/ (19) www.sci-gaia.eu/applications/ (30)

Sci-GaIA Outputs - WP4 Dissemination & Training Disseminate our work The website (www.sci-gaia.eu) (>100 Media) The events (www.sci-gaia.eu/events) (29 events - all slides available; many videos) The Winter School www.sci-gaia.eu/winter-school The e-Research Hackfests (4) www.sci-gaia.eu/summer-hackfest Italy (x2) Nigeria Ethiopia Infrastructure Course NRENs (1), IdF (1) The Sci-GaIA Champions (35) www.sci-gaia/champions All materials free to use

Community of Practice Champions Educational materials The End of the Beginning A Virtuous Circle – The Open Science Champions Community of Practice Champions Educational materials Training Service Development Open Science Commons e-Research Hackfests

We will seek to continue to support the Champions on their journeys The End of the Beginning Open Science Champions We will seek to continue to support the Champions on their journeys Key actors to develop, influence and energise science in their Communities of Practice through Open Science and ICT

The End of the Beginning e-Research Hackfests We will seek to continue Open Science training via e-Research Hackfests Partnerships across Africa and beyond to develop scientific capacity in Open Science and potentially general research training

We will seek to continue to develop the Open Science Commons The End of the Beginning The Open Science Commons We will seek to continue to develop the Open Science Commons A socio-technical platform for Open Science; partnering with international associations to contribute to Open Science across the world

The End of the Beginning International Development We will seek to continue to work with e-Infrastructure initiatives to continue to develop African research infrastructure Continue to provide case studies to demonstrate the value of Open Science and advanced ICT to society

Summary and conclusions Open Science can benefit Africa ICT is a key enabler of Open Science and can energise African Science We have created an Open Science Platform and Commons to facilitate this A Virtuous Circle of education, training and services – the Open Science Platform and e-Research Hackfests 4 e-Research events 35 Champions have been trained 24 new user applications and services 5 new open access repositories 11 communities of practice supported We continue to work with AfricaConnect2, TANDEM and MAGIC to support community engagement, showcase success and develop new services and training materials Find out more at www.sci-gaia.eu! Thank you!