UK VRE Programmes

Joint Information Systems Committee

UK VRE Programmes2004 - Present

Matthew J. Dovey

JISC Programme Director (e-Research)


UK Funding Context

Fund

Fund

F

unds

Universities


JISC Mission

To provide world-class leadership in the innovative use of ICT, to support education

and research


Primary JISC Activities

Network

Access Management

e-Infrastructure

e-ContentServices InnovationProgrammes

Outreach &Embedding

Committees &Consultation

e-Le

arni

ng

e-R

esea

rch

e-A

dmin

istra

tion


JISC e-Research Programmes

Research Infrastructures and Services

Research Data Management

Virtual Research Environments

Research Communities Engagement


JISC VRE Programmes

VRE1 VRE2 VRE32004-2007 2007-2009 2009-

15 Projects 4 Demonstrators

Technology Focused User and Research Practice Focused

Broadening Use

Experimental Developmental Embedding

Diverse design and developmental

approached

Unified design and development models

Diverse design – community and challenge

drivenStandalone solutions Integrated pilots Focussed on technical

interoperability, nationally and institutionally

Collaboration

Large and small scale research

Single and Multi-disciplinary Research


Original VRE definition

“A VRE comprises a set of online tools and other network resources and technologies interoperating with each other to facilitate or enhance the processes of research practitioners within and across institutional boundaries.”


VRE1 VRE2 VRE32004-2007 2007-2009 2009-



Broadening Use



approached





Collaboration



VRE Phase 1

Experimental

Application of VLE approaches to research

Application of Service Oriented Architectures to research


VRE Phase 1 - Projects

Name 10/04 01/05 04/05 07/05 10/05 01/06 04/06 07/06 10/06 01/07 04/07 07/07

EdSci

Politic

Sakai Portal

IB

BVRE

Chesh

OGHA

GROW

EVIE

ELVI

MEME

SAGE

ISME

IUGO

CORE


VRE Phase 1 - Geographic Span

Grenoble, France

USA

NZ


VRE Phase 1 - Domain Areas

Social Sciences and Arts and Humanities

· OGHAM· BVREH· Sakai education

research· CHESHIRE 3· Political Discourse

Natural Sciences

· ISME· IBVRE

Cross-Domain· CSAGE · CORE· Sakai portal

demonstrator· EVIE· ELVI· IUGO· GROWL· MEMETIC


VRE Phase 1 – Researcher Needs


VRE Phase 1 – Researcher Needs


VRE Phase 1 - Technologies

Domain Specific

OGHAM

BVREH

ELVIEVIE

Portal

ISMEIBVRE CORE Portal

Demo

Sakai

CheshireEdu ResearchPolitical Discourse

Generic

MEMETIC

CSAGE

Growl

IUGO


VRE Phase 1 – Technical Solutions


VRE Phase 1 – Technical Solutions


The Evolving VRE Definition

To provide an architecture of tools and resources to allow research communities to create multidisciplinary environments which enhance inter-disciplinary research, and to facilitate collaboration within and between institutions.

A VRE can be defined as a set of online tools and other network resources and technologies interoperating with each other to support or enhance the processes of a wide range of research practitioners within and across disciplinary and institutional boundaries. VREs go beyond providing researchers with easy access to data, applications and computational resources; instead they facilitate mobile and distributed researchers, research teams and communities in conducting activities, such as shared problem-solving and shared experimentation. A key characteristic of a VRE, therefore, is that it facilitates collaboration amongst researchers and research teams providing them with more effective means of collaboratively collecting, manipulating and managing data, as well as collaborative knowledge creation.


VRE1 VRE2 VRE32004-2007 2007-2009 2009-



Broadening Use



approached





Collaboration



VRE Phase 2

Developmental

User Centric & Research Focused

VRE Exemplars

“Photogenic” demonstrators


VRE Phase 2 – Four Demonstrators

VRE-SDM Oxford University http://bvreh.humanities.ox.ac.uk/VRE-SDMCREW Manchester University http://www.crew-vre.net/myExperiment Southampton University http://www.myexperiment.org/VERA Reading University http://vera.rdg.ac.uk/


VRE for Study of Documents and Manuscripts



VRE for Study of Documents and Manuscripts



CREW

Joint Information Systems CommitteeOverview Slides April 2009 http://www.crew-vre.net/


CREW


CREW


“Facebook for Scientists” ...but different to Facebook!

A repository of research methods

A community social network A Virtual Research

Environment

Open source (BSD) Ruby on Rails application with HTML, REST and SPARQL interfaces

Project started March 2007 Closed beta since July 2007 Open beta November 2007

myExperiment currently has 1712 registered users, 141 groups, 584 Taverna workflows plus 81 others, and 51 packsGo to www.myexperiment.org to access publicly available content or create an account

http://www.myexperiment.org/


scientists

LocalWeb

Repositories

Graduate Students

Undergraduate Students

Virtual Learning Environment

Technical Reports

Reprints

Peer-Reviewed Journal &

Conference Papers

Preprints &

Metadata

Certified Experimental

Results & Analyses

experimentation

Data, Metadata Provenance WorkflowsOntologies

Digital Libraries

The social process of Science 2.0



User Profiles Groups Friends Sharing Tags Workflows Developer interface Credits and Attributions Fine control over privacy Packs Federation EnactmentD

istin

ctiv

es

myExperiment Features


myExperiment Visitors


VERA


VERA - Internet at the site


VERA – Online presence


VERA – Technology trials


Latest VRE Definition


“A Virtual Research Environment can be considered as short hand for the tools and technologies that a researcher needs to use access the resources and people they need to do their research, and both the technical and social context for those tools”

Latest VRE Definition


VRE1 VRE2 VRE32004-2007 2007-2009 2009-



Broadening Use



approached





Collaboration



VRE Phase 3

Embedding and extending take-up

“Building communities for sharing practice”

Open ended/rolling programme


VRE Phase 3 - Overview



VRE Phase 3 – Initial Projects

Tools Video Converstion for VREs Manchester University

Frameworks

Internet Based Behavioural Research Environment

Southampton University

Collaborative Research in Business Lancaster University

Cancer Imaging VRE Oxford University

One VRE Manchester University

Building Research and Innovation Networks

Coventry University

Interoperability

LinkSphere Reading University

TextVRE Kings College London

Virtual Research Collaboration Integration Southampton University

Institutional Scholarly Comms with Integrated Publication Sharing

Cambridge University


Further Details

Programme Websiteshttp://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/vre1

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/vre2

Matthew Dovey, Programme Director (e-Research)E-Mail: [email protected]

Tel: +44 7876 445403

Frederique Van Till, Programme Manager (e-Research)E-Mail: [email protected]

Tel: +44 7875 338070