1. The document discusses the challenges of adopting e-research technologies by everyday researchers and moving from specialized scientists doing specialized science to widespread adoption. 2. It proposes a more data-centric and collaborative approach focused on the social process of science and empowering researchers. 3. Key lessons for repositories include understanding user needs, being open-minded about problems and solutions, embracing the web instead of creating barriers, and thinking of repositories as a cloud service instead of an institutional system.

1. David De Roure
IEEE e-Science 2008

2. “But the Grid
is successful!”

3. So why are there three
projects addressing
lack of uptake?

4. ...and a theme in the
e-Science Institute?
Adoption of e-Research Technologies

5. How did we get here?!
Early adopter success
Then rollout of infrastructure services
And then wondering where the users are
Heard at another repositories event...
“How do we persuade
researchers to populate
our repositories?”

6. e-Science is about global collaboration
in key areas of science, and the next
generation of infrastructure that will
enable it.
Due to the complexity of the software
and the backend infrastructural
requirements, e-Science projects usually
involve large teams managed and
developed by research laboratories,
large universities or governments.

7. What are we really trying to
achieve here?
A. Everyone using the
Grid/Repositories?
B. Research advances on
an everyday basis that
would not have
happened otherwise?
Not just accelerated but new

8. How do we move from heroic scientists doing
heroic science with heroic infrastructure to
everyday scientists doing science they couldn’t
research
do before? humanists
archaeologists
geographers
musicologists
...
It’s the
researchers!
democratisati
on of e-
Research 

9. Jim Downing came up with the idea of “Long Tail
Science”... So we are exploring how big science and
long-tail science work together to communicate
their knowledge. Long-tail science needs its domain
repositories - I am not sanguine that IRs can provide
the metalayers (search, metadata, domain-specific
knowledge, domain data) that are needed for
effective discovery and re-use.
Peter Murray-Rust

10. Virtual Learning
The social process Environment
of science 2.0
Undergraduate
Students
Digital
researchers
Libraries
Graduate
Students
Reprints
Peer-
experimentation
Reviewed Technical
Journal &
Preprints Reports
Conference
&
Papers
Metadata
Local
Web
Data, Metadata
Repositories
Certified
Provenance
Experimental
Workflows
Results & Analyses
Ontologies

13. 1 Everyday researchers doing
everyday research
• Not just a specialist few doing
heroic science with heroic
infrastructure
• Chemists are blogging the lab
• Everyone is mashing up
• Everday hardware – multicore
machines and mobile devices

14. 2 A data-centric perspective, like
researchers
• Data is large, rich, complex and
real-time
• There is new value in
data, through new digital
artefacts and through metadata
e.g.
context, provenance, workflows
• This isn’t “anti-computation” –
design interaction around data

15. 3 Collaborative and participatory
• The social process of science
revisited in the digital age
• Collaborative tools – blogs
and Wikis
• e-Science now focuses
on publishing as well as
consuming
• Scholarly lifecycle perspective

16. 4 Benefitting from the scale of digital
science activity to support science
• This is new and powerful!
• Community intelligence
• Review
• Usage informing
recommendation
• e.g. OpenWetWare
• e.g. myExperiment

17. 5 Increasingly open
• Preprints servers and
institutional repositories
• Open journals
• Open access to data
• Science Commons
• Object Reuse & Exchange

18. 6 Better not Perfect
• The technologies people
are using are not perfect
• They are better
• They are easy to use
• They are chosen by
scientists

19. 7 Empowering researchers
• The success stories come
from the researchers who
have learned to use ICT
• Domain ICT experts are
delivering the solutions
• Anything that takes away
autonomy will be resisted

20. 8 About pervasive computing
• e-Science is about
the intersection of
the digital and
physical worlds
• Sensor networks
• Mobile handheld
devices

21. Onward and Upward
• e-Research is now
enabling
researchers to do
some completely
new stuff!
• As the individual
pieces become easy
to use, researchers
can bring them
together in new
“Standing on the
ways and ask new
shoulders of giants”
questions
• “The next level”
(Everyday researchers are giants
www.w3.org/2007/Talks/www2007-AnsweringScientificQuestions-Ruttenberg.pdf

22. Repositories
Repositories
• Absolutely key role in future research. So
think of a better word!
• Think of a park / reserve / gardens / zoo
– Visitors, rangers, wardens, gardeners, experts,
security, volunteers, ...
– Curation by providers,
experts and consumers

23. www.oreilly.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html
Those 8 Repository points
1. Not just a specialist few doing heroic science with heroic
infrastructure – repositories for all!
2. There is new value in data, through new digital artefacts and
through metadata e.g. context, provenance, workflows
3. e-Science now focuses on publishing as well as consuming
4. Usage informing recommendation
5. Researchers work with collections - Object Reuse &
Exchange
6. They are easy to use
7. Anything that takes away autonomy will be resisted
8. e-Science is about the intersection of the digital and physical
worlds (not 1970s library catalogue interfaces)

24. And we needprocess processes too!
Curation of to curate
Goble & De Roure Educause Review Sep/Oct 2008
• Find a process based on what it and find copies or
similar services usable as alternates.
• Understand how and when it works, how to
operate it correctly and predict its performance.
• Know the conditions for use: permissions, licenses,
platforms, and costs.
• Judge the benefits of adoption based on its
reputation, provenance and validation by peers.
• Estimate the risk of adoption based on its
reliability and stability.
• Get assistance for its incorporation into
applications and workflows.

25. Transformation is already underway
• To understand where we’re going, look at
communities which have been early to embrace
new technology.
• e-Science is one. What can we learn?
• Incidentally, so is music and broadcast!
– Vinyl was like books
– Now the process is digital from the studio through to
playback on an iPod
– People create content
– People publish content
– Has the business adapted?

26. Note to Reader. The next slides are not intended to be
anti-grid. Everyone working on Grid is doing great work.

27. Don’t think rollout of technologies...
Mass
Use by
Researchers
Think roll-in of researchers...
Mass
Use by
Researchers
Knowledge co-production vs Service Delivery!

28. N
N2
N
Without middleware we need lots of bits of software to join things together

29. N
One Middleware
2N
N
With middleware there are fewer arrows!

30. N
Middleware Middleware
Middleware
Middleware
?
Polynomial
involving N1,
Middleware Middleware
N2 and M
N
But this is what happened. Now the picture with lots of thin arrows isn’t quite so scary!

31. use Web 2.0 here
HPC
Grid
Grid
cloud
Web is being embraced for usability and programmability e.g. mashups

32. And Grid is trying to come to terms with multicore and clouds!

33. A Thought Experiment
Imagine Eprints/Dspace/Fedora isn’t
something you download and run on a local
server
Imagine instead that you just go to the cloud
and make one*
How would this repository ecosystem
self-organise to support Research 2.0?
Would there be institutional repositories?
* (Actually you can!)

34. web
Is it a wave or is it a particle?
Tension between data being “out on the
Web” (user view) or in an institutional
machine room (provider view)
What is the curator view?
Issues perceived differently for metadata
servers and data servers

35. Linked Data

36. How Repositories can avoid Failing like the Grid
1. Understand what the users will need by
going on the journey together
2. Be open-minded: are we solving the right
problem? (Don’t forget curation of process!)
3. Don’t create artificial distinctions from Web
4. Beware standards as a barrier to adoption
5. Think cloud, outside the institutional box:
imagine the repository factory
6. Think of a new name for repositories!

37. Contact
David De Roure
dder@ecs.soton.ac.uk
Thanks
Carole Goble
Jeremy Frey
Simon Coles
Peter Murray-Rust