A centre of expertise in digital information management Moving towards eResearch - some recent trends Dr Liz Lyon, Director UKOLN, University of Bath JISC Consultation Workshop, Warwick 5 th March, 2004 MLA

A centre of expertise in digital information management

A centre of expertise in digital information management The next generation of research breakthroughs will rely upon new ways of handling the immense amounts of data that are being produced by modern research methods and equipment, such as telescopes, particle accelerators, genome sequencers and biological imagers….

A centre of expertise in digital information management ….Similar developments are having an impact in the arts and humanities, and in the social sciences. A Vision for Research, RCUK, December 2003.

A centre of expertise in digital information management

A centre of expertise in digital information management Powering the Virtual Universe (Edinburgh, Belfast, Cambridge, Leicester, London, Manchester, RAL) Multi-wavelength showing the jet in M87: from top to bottom – Chandra X-ray, HST optical, Gemini mid-IR, VLA radio. AstroGrid will provide advanced, Grid based, federation and data mining tools to facilitate better and faster scientific output. Picture credits: NASA / Chandra X-ray Observatory / Herman Marshall (MIT), NASA/HST/Eric Perlman (UMBC), Gemini Observatory/OSCIR, VLA/NSF/Eric Perlman (UMBC)/Fang Zhou, Biretta (STScI)/F Owen (NRA) :

A centre of expertise in digital information management The governments of …34 countries…recognising that open access: to, and unrestricted use of, data promotes scientific progress and facilitates the training of researchers; will maximise the value derived from public investments in data collection efforts; OECD Declaration on access to research data from public funding. January 2004

A centre of expertise in digital information management The governments of …34 countries…declare their commitment to: work towards the establishment of access regimes for digital research data…in accordance with the following principles…. openness, transparency, legal conformity, formal responsibility, professionalism, protection of IPR, interoperability, quality and security, efficiency, accountability…..

A centre of expertise in digital information management A global initiative US Sabo Bill (Public Access to Science) Berlin Declaration (BOAI) Wellcome Trust statement DAREnet Dutch scientific results JISC FAIR Programme Australian government statement WSIS Declaration of Principles & Plan of Action …..and the forthcoming….. UK Parliament Science & Technology Committee Inquiry on Scientific Publications

A centre of expertise in digital information management eResearch – the trends? Research is increasingly data–intensive Open access to data and information Inter-disciplinary / new disciplines e.g. Astro-informatics New approaches require new skills (IT + statistics + domain) Collaborative: virtual communities / organisations Knowledge-rich infrastructures: development of ontologies, terminology servers Highly distributed resource utilisation – instruments, primary data, bibliographic collections

A centre of expertise in digital information management New resources……. Physical and remote –Telescope, scanner, computer cycles Primary / original data –Observational, experimental, numeric, genomic, 2/3D molecular structures, satellite images, electron micrographs, wave spectra, CAD, code, musical compositions, VR, performances, animations Informational / bibliographic –Articles, theses, eprints, maps, music scores, scripts, newspapers, programs Human discourse –Chat, instant messaging, , discussion lists, virtual meetings, minutes, workshops, annotations

A centre of expertise in digital information management Sloan Digital Sky Survey

A centre of expertise in digital information management Messier 81: a classic 2-armed spiral galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major

A centre of expertise in digital information management ….used in new ways Data and information –Creation, discovery, gathering, aggregation, dis-aggregation, replication, federation, manipulation, transformation, linking, annotation, editing/versioning, validation, (self-)archiving, deposit, publication, curation Knowledge extraction and management –Analysis (textual, musical, statistical, mathematical, visual, chemical, gene……) –Mining (text, data, structures……) –Modelling (economic, mathematical, biological..) –Simulation (molecular, physical, environmental, games…) –Presentation (visualisation, rendering….) Distributed collaborative discourse –Discuss, criticise, evaluate, support, agree, disagree, reject…

A centre of expertise in digital information management

A centre of expertise in digital information management What are the user / community requirements? Integrated –Roles: researcher, learner, citizen, consumer –Resources and functionality: Web services, portals, registries Portable / ubiquitous access: wireless, iPOD Managed / secure / sustainable –Access: digital certificates, Shibboleth? –Rights: Creative commons, trusted repositories –Archives: digital curation Usable –Next generation search Vivissimo, Grokker, visualisation –Semantic interoperability, ontology services Collaborative –Shared interaction: Access Grid, Twiki, Jabber, instant messaging Personalised –MySpace, recommender systems Intelligent: agent technology, improve workflows, save me time

A centre of expertise in digital information management Some questions ….. Is there a shared vision for an e-research environment? What are the disciplinary differences / commonality? What are the critical functions? What are the barriers to implementation? What are the implications for researchers, for information services and for institutions? What are the development and funding priorities? What are the sustainability issues?