Research Commons Benchmarks & Interoperability at ICRI 2022

ITO Director Dr. Karen Payne presented on the progress of the Research Data Alliance Global Open Research Commons International Model Working Group at the International Conference on Research Infrastructure in Brno, Czech Republic, on October 20th, 2022.

Occurring every two years, the International Conference on Research Infrastructure (ICRI) is an opportunity for research infrastructure stakeholders to meet and discuss, debate, and decide on strategies for international cooperation. ICRI 2022 was intentionally focused on the socioeconomic benefits and social responsibility of research infrastructures, as well as how to develop an integrated research infrastructure system.

A white circle with “ICRI 2022 BRNO .CZ.” in rich blue block letters. Each four-character sequence is on its own line, creating the illusion of a square. — ICRI 2022 Logo

Nine hexagons fitted together in a honey-comb pattern, each with an icon and label. The title in the top left reads “Global Open Research Commons - Essential Elements”, and a copyright icon in the bottom right indicates the image is protected under the Attribution Creative Common licence and must be attributed as “GORC-IG, 2021”. The three top hexagons and two on the outer edges have a white background, and from left to right read “Human Capacity”, “Rules of Participation”, “Governance Structures”, “Engagement”, and “Sustainability”. The central hexagon is dark blue and reads “Interoperability & Standards”. The bottom three hexagons are light blue and read, from left to right, “Compute, Storage, Network”, representing ICT infrastructure, “Research Objects”, and “Services & Tools”. — GORC-IG Typology of Research Commons Essential Elements. These Essential Elements are the foundation for the GORC-WG investigation into research commons benchmarks for interoperability. The three elements in blue are the underpinning digital elements that constitute the parts of the commons with which people interact. The five elements in white are the social/human elements that are needed to make the commons succeed. The central element in dark blue represents that way in which standards are at the core of a commons

Working towards an international research infrastructure system is a main goal of the ITO. As stated in our current deliverables for research infrastructure, the ITO is heavily involved with the Research Data Alliance (RDA) Global Open Research Commons Interest Group (GORC-IG) and International Model Working Group (GORC-WG). The GORC-IG’s and GORC-WG’s common goal is to identify a global online set of services that make data, software, computational resources, publications and other artefacts from scientific research easily findable, openly accessible, intelligently interoperable and abundantly reusable. The GORC-IG is working to develop a roadmap for global alignment to help set priorities for research commons development and integration. In support of the roadmap, the GORC-WG is collecting and curating a set of attributes that will allow research commons developers to compare features across science clouds and commons, effectively identifying and refining benchmarks for international interoperability across research commons.

The work from the GORC-WG is directly tied with international integration of research infrastructure, as research infrastructure is one of the main areas of consideration in the GORC-WG collection and analysis. The GORC-WG is hosting a speaker series to investigate a range of research commons that provide different services, have different governance structures, different research infrastructures, and serve different populations and geographies. The collection of research commons attributes is informed by both the speaker series as well as extracting information from public sources, RDA outputs from other interest and working groups, and external references related to research commons. This work so far has provided a strong basis to identify what is needed for global open research commons interoperability, as well as survey-like data on how each commons in the speaker series identifies with the European Open Science Cloud Resource Profile, specifically the Resource Categories. The GORC-WG speaker series is ongoing, and the evaluation of attributes of research commons to use as interoperability benchmarks has begun in earnest using the foundational work showcased in Dr. Payne’s presentation at ICRI 2022

A snapshot of the aggregated data from participants in the GORC-WG speaker series on their identification with EOSC Resource Categories, also known as eInfra Categories. The interactive graphic is hosted on our WDS-ITO GitHub.

In her presentation, Dr. Payne presented the major global initiatives for the development and alignment of global Open Science infrastructures supporting data sharing, as informed by the GORC-WG speaker series. She showcased the aim of the GORC-WG to identify differences and commonalities between these initiatives and how they (plan to) collaborate with and influence the regional and national initiatives. While not openly available, Dr. Payne’s presentation can be viewed for free by registering for ICRI 2022.

From conversations after the presentation, many international partners were impressed with the progress and preliminary outputs from the GORC-WG. Congratulations Dr. Payne on a well-received presentation!

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