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E-science, or networked, collaborative and multidisciplinary scientific research on a shared e-infrastructure using computational tools, methods and applications, has also brought about new networked organizational forms in the transition of higher education towards the entrepreneurial academy. While the under-representation of women in ICTs is well-recorded, it is also known that the potential of new organizational forms such as networked structures to promote gender equality remains ambiguous, as they tend to perpetuate already existing inequalities due to their embeddedness in larger and longer-term structural or institutional gender effects. Based on a year-long ethnographic study in a networked academic e-science collaboration in Sweden and 45 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with its affiliated researchers, this article analyzes the multi-level obstacles to achieving gender equality in e-science to highlight the ways in which gendered disparities persist in this new, project-based academic networked organization in Sweden, hereafter called eSec. At the organizational level eSec remains deeply embedded in the traditional disciplinary and institutional academic setting, inadvertently reproducing existing gender imbalances across sciences. Furthermore, as a project-based organization, it is also embedded in the shift towards an entrepreneurial university model driven by new managerialism, the latter having a well-documented adverse effect in gender equality. This represents a structural-level obstacle which leads to especially female junior faculty leaving academy for industry. An individual level obstacle is observed alongside these as disavowal (Verleugnung) of gender disparities, an affect identified as a key mechanism of subjectivation in neoliberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on an ethnographic study of an e-science platform in Sweden to analyse how horizontal gender segregation across sciences plays out in e-science, a borderland in which sciences converge around state-of-the art computational technologies for scientific research. While the convergence of sciences in e-science has the potential to open a non-traditional trajectory to attract women to ICTs, we find that this potential remains untapped. Instead horizontal gender segregation is perpetuated through a) restricted mobility of women from scientific fields with higher gender parity to IT, b) gender friction negatively affecting women in cross-disciplinary e-science, c) a gendered developer/user divide permeating e-science collaborations under 'the logic of domains,' and d) perceived self-reliance in computational tool development across sciences acting as 'gendered boundary work' to strengthen the gendered hard/soft divide in sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Integrated Data Archive (EIDA) is a data service within Observatories and Research Facilities for European Seismology (ORFEUS) which distributes seismological waveform data across, presently, 12 federated data centres, so-called EIDA nodes. EIDA is also integrated into the European Research Infrastructure EPOS (European Plate Observing System). The increasing need of quantifying the scientific impact of such Research Infrastructures at all levels of operations has led EIDA to develop a unified system able to provide global indicators for data delivery across all EIDA nodes. To achieve this goal, EIDA implemented a system where the numbers are collected and aggregated by each EIDA node and ingested in a centralised database, accessible through an online API. The successful implementation of the system stems from carefully identifying the relevant indicators for well-defined groups of users. The implementation combines simplicity and robustness whilst respecting the distributed design of EIDA. The architecture and implementation choices may be of interest to other multi-site data distribution research infrastructures that face the challenge of providing meaningful key performance indicators.

By using digital technologies to streamline procedures and increase the productivity of public services, e-government modernizes administrative management and makes government more accessible and responsive to citizens’ requests for assistance. The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between e-government and administrative management in the Provincial Municipality of Huaura, Peru. Using a sample of 129 administrative workers and a population of 194 administrative workers, a quantitative, non-experimental, cross-sectional and correlational methodology was developed. Participants completed a survey-questionnaire. The results showed a substantial relationship between administrative management and e-government in the Provincial Municipality of Huaura, with a sig. of less than 5 % and a Rho value of 0,596. This allowed us to deduce that the planning, organization, management and control of the entity’s public resources will improve to the extent that a more solid electronic infrastructure is implemented, political will and institutional architecture, governance through transformations and organizational redesign, and whether or not its citizens have the necessary tools or knowledge to access online information and services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Textiles & Engineers / Tekstil ve Mühendis is the property of Union of Chambers of Turkish Engineers & Architects, Chamber of Textile Engineers and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The research infrastructure is the basic and strategic platform of scientific and technological innovation. In the last decade, China's research infrastructure has achieved leapfrog development in the level of observation, manufacturing, management, data acquisition, data sharing and utilization, which supports China's scientific and technological innovation activities at a higher level. Looking into the future, the scientific research paradigm is transforming. The network, data, and computing platform will not only support the development of major science and technology infrastructure and field stations in larger, more accurate, and more advanced approach, but also contribute to the transformation of scientific research paradigm. It will become an "accelerator" and "multiplier" for major scientific and technological breakthroughs. It is also the key support for China to become the forefront of innovative countries and to enter the world's science and technology strength. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Societal Impact Statement Colombia is a “megadiverse” country with vast natural resources. A history of recent conflict means that information is only now being collected on the natural capital of regions that were previously unexplored. Better access to data, tools, and expertise is required for evidence‐supported decisions on the conservation of these resources. The development of a bespoke cyberinfrastructure could help fulfill this need by providing access to digital resources in a collaborative cyberenvironment. We outline key priorities and develop a reference framework for building cyberinfrastructure in Colombia. This framework could be applied to other fields and countries to promote knowledge exchange, scientific innovation, and socioeconomic growth.

Calibration certificate is an important reference point for metrological measurement traceability. In connection with the approval of the latest revision of SI and the dissemination of a new reference base based on quantum standards, the issue of digitalization of calibration certificates becomes especially urgent. The possibilities of electronic and even more digital calibration certificates (hereinafter DCC) significantly improve the traceability of measurements in comparison with the traditional paper certificate. The form and content of DCC, however, are still not clearly determined and require deep study. Our work is aimed at presenting and summarizing the available results in this field, and formulating the critical questions on the creation of DCC that arise during the work on its implementation. Based on the analysis performed and our own experience in the implementation of the electronic calibration certificate (ECC) we presented a preliminary scheme for the implementation of DCC in our organization. We also touch upon related issues, namely digital signature and e-infrastructure of National Scientific Centre “Institute of Metrology” (NSC IM).

A better understanding of food-related behaviour and its determinants can be achieved through harmonisation and linking of the various data-sources and knowledge platforms. We describe the key decision-making in the development of a prototype of the Determinants and Intake Platform (DI Platform), a data platform that aims to harmonise and link data on consumer food behaviour. It will be part of the Food Nutrition Health Research Infrastructure (FNH-RI) that will facilitate health, social and food sciences. The decision-making was based on the evidence of user needs and data characteristics that guided the specification of the key building blocks of the DI Platform. Eight studies were carried out, including consumer online survey; interview studies of key DI Platform stakeholders; desk research and workshops. Consumers were most willing to share data with universities, then industry and government. Trust, risk perception and altruism predicted willingness to share. For most other stakeholders non-proprietary data was most likely to be shared. Lack of data standards, and incentives for sharing were the main barriers for sharing data among the key stakeholders. The value of various data types would hugely increase if linked with other sources. Finding the right balance between optimizing data sharing and minimizing ethical and legal risks was considered a key challenge. The development of DI Platform is based on careful balancing of the user, technical, business, legal and ethical requirements, following the FAIR principles and the need for financial sustainability, technical flexibility, transparency and multi-layered organisational governance. • There is a need to better support science on food intake and its determinants (DI). • DI Platform links consumer, business, science-generated data on food consumption. • Decision-making is based on evaluations of user needs and data characteristics. • The final design balances user, technology, business and governance requirements. • DI Platform supports the Food Nutrition Health Research Infrastructure initiative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Structural biology aims at characterizing the structural and dynamic properties of biological macromolecules at atomic details. Gaining insight into three dimensional structures of biomolecules and their interactions is critical for understanding the vast majority of cellular processes, with direct applications in health and food sciences. Since 2010, the WeNMR project (www.wenmr.eu) has implemented numerous web-based services to facilitate the use of advanced computational tools by researchers in the field, using the high throughput computing infrastructure provided by EGI. These services have been further developed in subsequent initiatives under H2020 projects and are now operating as Thematic Services in the European Open Science Cloud portal (www.eosc-portal.eu), sending >12 millions of jobs and using around 4,000 CPU-years per year. Here we review 10 years of successful e-infrastructure solutions serving a large worldwide community of over 23,000 users to date, providing them with user-friendly, web-based solutions that run complex workflows in structural biology. The current set of active WeNMR portals are described, together with the complex backend machinery that allows distributed computing resources to be harvested efficiently.

This paper addresses the collaborative development of information infrastructure for supporting data-rich scientific collaboration. Studying infrastructure development empirically not only in terms of spatial issues but also, and equally importantly, temporal ones, we illustrate how the long-term matters. Our case is about the collaborative development of a metadata standard for an ecological research domain. It is a complex example where standards are recognized as one element of infrastructure and standard-making efforts include integration of semantic work and software tools development. With a focus on the temporal scales of short-term and long-term, we analyze the practices and views of the main parties involved in the development of the standard. Our contributions are three-fold: 1) extension of the notion of infrastructure to more explicitly include the temporal dimension; 2) identification of two distinct temporal orientations in information infrastructure development work, namely ‘project time’ and ‘infrastructure time’, and 3) association of related development orientations, particularly ‘continuing design’ as a development orientation that recognizes ‘infrastructure time’. We conclude by highlighting the need to enrich understandings of temporality in CSCW, particularly towards longer time scales and more diversified temporal hybrids in collaborative infrastructure development. This work draws attention to the manifold ramifications that ‘infrastructure time’, as an example of more extended temporal scales, suggests for CSCW and e-Research infrastructures.

Summary: The increasing volume of data being produced, curated, and made available by research infrastructures in the environmental science domain require services that are able to optimize the delivery and staging of data for researchers and other users of scientific data. Specialized data services for managing data life cycle, for creating and delivering data products, and for customized data processing and analysis all play a crucial role in how these research infrastructures serve their communities, and many of these activities are time‐critical—needing to be carried out frequently within specific time windows. We describe our experiences identifying the time‐critical requirements of environmental scientists making use of computational research support environments. We present a microservice‐based infrastructure optimization suite, the Dynamic Real‐Time Infrastructure Planner, used for constructing virtual infrastructures for research applications on demand. We provide a case study whereby our suite is used to optimize runtime service quality for a data subscription service provided by the Euro‐Argo using EGI Federated Cloud and EUDAT's B2SAFE services, and to consider how such a case study relates to other application scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Advances in computer networking, storage technologies, and high‐performance computing are helping global communities of researchers to address increasingly ambitious problems in Science collaboratively. E‐Science is the "science of this age"; it is realized through collaborative scientific enquiry which requires the utilization of non‐trivial amounts of computing resources and massive data sets. Core to this is the integrated set of technologies collectively known as e‐Infrastructures. In this paper, we explore the e‐Science and the e‐Infrastructure knowledge base through co‐citation analysis of existing literature. The dataset for this analysis is downloaded from the ISI Web of Science and includes over 12,000 articles. We identify prominent articles, authors, and articles with citation bursts. The detection of research clusters and the underlying seminal papers provide further insights. Our analysis is an important source of reference for academics, researchers, and students starting research in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Societal Impact Statement: Colombia is a "megadiverse" country with vast natural resources. A history of recent conflict means that information is only now being collected on the natural capital of regions that were previously unexplored. Better access to data, tools, and expertise is required for evidence‐supported decisions on the conservation of these resources. The development of a bespoke cyberinfrastructure could help fulfill this need by providing access to digital resources in a collaborative cyberenvironment. We outline key priorities and develop a reference framework for building cyberinfrastructure in Colombia. This framework could be applied to other fields and countries to promote knowledge exchange, scientific innovation, and socioeconomic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National research and education networks (NRENs) play a critical role in the development of communication network infrastructure and networked services for researchers and educators. They help close 'digital divides' between and within countries and are an essential factor for national and international development. In collaboration with the West and Central African Research and Education Network (WACREN), the TANDEM project has developed a roadmap for the development of NRENs in the region. This was based on the results of a survey that was conducted to investigate user requirements of networked services. The analysis of the 561 responses to a three-part questionnaire divided into 11 education, 22 research and 2 technical management questions identified key educational and research service needs. This article reports on the results of the survey with respect to research services. Highlights include respondents wanting regular access to online conference and academic articles (89%), a range of research services including online library resources, video conferencing, collaboration tools, online data access and storage, online library resources and inter-university login (>87%), access to remote computing facilities (80%) and high performance computing facilities (77%). A desire to share data with others online (74%) was also identified. Respondents also indicated that they would like to access research services through a range of device types–Laptops (96%), Fixed PC (86%) and Mobile Devices (81%). Poor network connectivity was consistently identified as being a major barrier to research in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: The potentials of Africa for growth and economic transformation through science remains challenging because of existing gaps in knowledge and infrastructure. The Africa Pharmacological Science Gateway project and the Medicines Utilization Research in Africa Group seek to meet the research needs of African pharmacologists. This study aimed at identifying priority needs that might be met by access to information and tools through e-infrastructure. Methods: A web-based cross-sectional study among 472 members of pharmacological societies in Africa to obtain information on their research interests and skills, available resources, needs, and knowledge gaps. Descriptive analyses were done. Results: A total of 118 responses from 13 countries were received, mostly from Nigeria (48.3%) and South Africa (21.3%). Respondents had wide ranges of research interests predominantly in drug utilization research. The desired resources included drug utilization research training and tools, pharmacokinetics and pharmacometrics modeling training and tools, drug–drug interaction and medicine prices resources, statistical analysis resources, access to journals, training in specific laboratory techniques, equipment and funding for research-related activities. Conclusions: Key areas of needs not currently provided by the African Pharmacological Science Gateway e-infrastructure were identified to guide the further provision of resources on the e-infrastructure and potentially enhance research capacity within the continent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Europe is building its Open Science Cloud; a set of robust and interoperable e-infrastructures with the capacity to provide data and computational solutions through cloud-based services. The development and sustainable operation of such e-infrastructures are at the forefront of European funding priorities. The research community, however, is still reluctant to engage at the scale required to signal a Europe-wide change in the mode of operation of scientific practices. The striking differences in uptake rates between researchers from different scientific domains indicate that communities do not equally share the benefits of the above European investments. We highlight the need to support research communities in organically engaging with the European Open Science Cloud through the development of trustworthy and interoperable Virtual Research Environments. These domain-specific solutions can support communities in gradually bridging technical and socio-cultural gaps between traditional and open digital science practice, better diffusing the benefits of European e-infrastructures.

In the paper we focus on the experience of some Networked Readness Index (NRI) leading countries. We are interested in their actions aimed at creating and using e-infrastructures and IT for the research data aggregation. As far as quite many of NRI leaders are EU countries, we also take into account EU approaches to the task mentioned. We study some steering papers and some particular IT-projects in the field as well. As a result of the analysis we ascertain that some approaches in different countries have much in common. All of the countries examined acknowledge the problem of e-infrastructures for research data storage and processing to be vital. The countries work hard in order to build and integrate it with the others. We can clearly see some differences caused by traditions and authorities. Sometimes we even could estimate the level of success of a particular country on the way to the problem solution. We also indicate some common elements for all e-infrastructures for research data storage and processing.

ELIXIR is the European infrastructure established specifically for the sharing and sustainability of life science data. To provide up-to-date resources and services, ELIXIR needs to undergo a continuous process of refreshing the services provided by its national Nodes. Here we present the approach taken by ELIXIR-UK to address the advice by the ELIXIR Scientific Advisory Board that Nodes need to develop “ mechanisms to ensure that each Node continues to be representative of the Bioinformatics efforts within the country”. ELIXIR-UK put in place an open and transparent process to identify potential ELIXIR resources within the UK during late 2015 and early to mid-2016. Areas of strategic strength were identified and Expressions of Interest in these priority areas were requested from the UK community. Criteria were established, in discussion with the ELIXIR Hub, and prospective ELIXIR-UK resources were assessed by an independent committee set up by the Node for this purpose. Of 19 resources considered, 14 were judged to be immediately ready to be included in the UK ELIXIR Node’s portfolio. A further five were placed on the Node’s roadmap for future consideration for inclusion. ELIXIR-UK expects to repeat this process regularly to ensure its portfolio continues to reflect its community’s strengths.

Abstract Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBV) are fundamental variables that can be used for assessing biodiversity change over time, for determining adherence to biodiversity policy, for monitoring progress towards sustainable development goals, and for tracking biodiversity responses to disturbances and management interventions. Data from observations or models that provide measured or estimated EBV values, which we refer to as EBV data products, can help to capture the above processes and trends and can serve as a coherent framework for documenting trends in biodiversity. Using primary biodiversity records and other raw data as sources to produce EBV data products depends on cooperation and interoperability among multiple stakeholders, including those collecting and mobilising data for EBVs and those producing, publishing and preserving EBV data products. Here, we encapsulate ten principles for the current best practice in EBV-focused biodiversity informatics as 'The Bari Manifesto', serving as implementation guidelines for data and research infrastructure providers to support the emerging EBV operational framework based on trans-national and cross-infrastructure scientific workflows. The principles provide guidance on how to contribute towards the production of EBV data products that are globally oriented, while remaining appropriate to the producer's own mission, vision and goals. These ten principles cover: data management planning; data structure; metadata; services; data quality; workflows; provenance; ontologies/vocabularies; data preservation; and accessibility. For each principle, desired outcomes and goals have been formulated. Some specific actions related to fulfilling the Bari Manifesto principles are highlighted in the context of each of four groups of organizations contributing to enabling data interoperability - data standards bodies, research data infrastructures, the pertinent research communities, and funders. The Bari Manifesto provides a roadmap enabling support for routine generation of EBV data products, and increases the likelihood of success for a global EBV framework. Highlights • Data products for Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBV) positively improve human ability to address biodiversity challenges • Primary observation data must be processed in a global, trans-national information technology framework • Many technical, social and legal factors influence data interoperability and interoperability across infrastructures • The 'Bari Manifesto' offers ten interoperability principles guiding production and management of EBV data products • Standards bodies, infrastructures, researchers and funders can take practical steps to improve support for EBV data products [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]