NEERI Panel

Collaboration for Data & Tools Access to data and tools is the quintessence of most digital research infrastructures or e-infrastructures in the (social) sciences, humanities and cultural heritage. It is therefore essential that the collaboration among research infrastructures across disciplines be enhanced. Yes, different approaches for data-ID‘s will be harmful for cross- disciplinary differentiation (an enhanced publication using different ID-schemes) + how many local environments Atlas-TI and DDI3 can you have? No, it introduces organisational overheads that will impede the evolution of subject-focused system Disciplines have to participate in defining high-level standards (IDs, Descriptive Metadata, AA) but will develop and operate the specifics themselves

Grid and cloud computing Grid and cloud computing (both for data storage and for high performance computing) are important for (future) research in the digital humanities and e-social sciences. As yet, only few researchers in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) are aware of the potential of the grid. It is a challenge for research infrastructures in the SSH to bridge the gap between the grid and the SSH research communities. Yes, web-based services (e.g. terminology) need to adhere to grid/cloud principles in order to be widely usable + e.g. text-mining or automatic-categorizers will directly need it No, lightweight protocols and local services will suffice Grid/Clouds are needed as a capacity and a concept for distributed deployment but may not meet any small and lightweight requirement

Access for Research Purposes Providing access to digital cultural heritage for research purposes is conceptually more demanding than providing acces to content for the general public. Yes, OpenAIRE would need to introduce very many specific standards (e.g. a DDI3-search) No, each research community already itself organizes „deeper“ services anyway A thin common cross-disciplinary layer is what is needed that is the starting point for researchers

Interoperability and Quality Data integration and interoperability of distributed resources, adherence to (metadata) standards, and data quality are paramount for the successful provision of data. Yes, provider-sided standards will prevent explosion of service-sided costs No, because it‘s not about standards – it‘s about compliance and homogenization will be done by the machines in the future Syntax standards are needed, semantics remain to be seen.

Single Point of Access Providing integrated single point access to data produced by scientific research, official statistics, and government administration is a sign of maturity of a research infrastructure Yes, it provides an authoritative starting point and allows for sustainable funding No, it will always fail to represent the underlying dynamics of research A thin, authoritative layer has to be sustainably provided and taking into acount a constant struggle between permanence and dynamics