9th International Workshop on Science Gateways (IWSG 2017), 19-21 June 2017 The Science Gateways Community Institute: Going Beyond Borders Sandra Gesing Maytal Dahan Michael Zentner University of Notre Dame The University of Texas at Purdue University Notre Dame, USA Austin, USA West Lafayette, USA sandra.gesing@nd.edu maytal@tacc.utexas.edu mzentner@purdue.edu Nancy Wilkins-Diehr Katherine Lawrence University of California University of Michigan San Diego, USA Ann Arbor, USA wilkinsn@sdsc.edu kathla@umich.edu Abstract—The Science Gateways Community Institute leaders who are building discipline-specific cyberinfrastructure (SGCI), opened in August 2016, provides free resources, services, capabilities”. These capabilities were by and large web-based, experts, and ideas for creating and sustaining science gateways. It and the science gateway concept was born. These gateways offers five areas of services to the science gateway developer and came from many disciplines and had many different funding user communities: the Incubator, Extended Developer Support, models. Over the eight years of the program we saw a variety the Scientific Software Collaborative, Community Engagement or gateways large and small come and sometimes go, and Exchange, and Workforce Development. While all these sometimes despite strong user interest [4]. Frequently failing services are available to US-based communities, the Incubator, gateways could undermine confidence in and potential impact the Scientific Software Collaborative and the Community En- of these powerful interfaces. Two subsequent studies and a gagement and Exchange serve also the international commun- ities. We aim at reaching out and supporting beyond borders on 5000-respondent survey [5] highlight characteristics, environ- international scale with diverse measures and our intent is to ments and support systems that contributed to successful form and deepen collaborations with partner organizations and science gateways. These studies have directly informed the coalitions beneficial and/or related to the science gateways com- design of the Science Gateways Community Institute. munity. Research topics are independent of national borders and SGCI’s current conference series builds on significant work researchers spread worldwide can benefit from each other’s by others. The Open Grid Computing Environments program, research results, software, data and from lessons learned — via that advanced the use of web portals, began its workshop series online materials and publications or at international events. The in 2005 [6]. In 2009, the International Workshop on Science gateway community has long benefitted from this type of exchange. This paper will present related work describing the Gateways (IWSG) series began and in 2015 an Australian benefits of international collaborations generally, and specifically series, IWSG-A [7]. These three series have a history of cross as they relate to science gateways. We go into detail regarding attendance as well as keynote speakers from the other series. SGCI’s ongoing work on an international scale and its work II. INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATION IN RESEARCH planned in the near future. The benefits of international collaborations are well sup- Keywords—science gateways community institute; international ported. The Technopolis group and the Manchester Institute of collaboration; community engagement and exchange; scientific Innovation Research analyzed in 2009 the drivers of inter- software collaborative; incubator national collaboration in research [8]. Their examination is based on international collaborations in the EU context but also I. INTRODUCTION: THE ORIGINS OF THE SCIENCE GATEWAYS beyond it including the US, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, COMMUNITY INSTITUTE India, Japan, Mexico, Russia, and South Africa. They found The Science Gateways Community Institute (SGCI) was that the main four drivers of international collaborations are established as one of the US National Science Foundation’s first Software Institutes in August 2016 [1]. This award was the  Improving national competitiveness result of over 10 years’ work studying the community and its  Supporting less developed countries by developing scientific contributions and the benefits that could be gained science, technology and innovation capabilities through a central organization providing increased visibility to these efforts [2]. Seven months in, early interest has been  Tackling global societal challenges strong. Many are recognizing that work they have done for  Creating good and stable diplomatic relationships (and many years can be classified as a science gateway. Many more indirectly ensuring international security) are recognizing what an increased contribution their work might make if it were exposed as a science gateway. While globalization is not a new trend, it becomes more and more evident in industrial research and the worldwide Early work in the National Science Foundation’s TeraGrid mobility of researchers. The success of LIGO [9] and the program [3] involved the creation of policies and a program to detection of gravitational waves is one of the recent provide access to NSF funded supercomputers for “community 9th International Workshop on Science Gateways (IWSG 2017), 19-21 June 2017 achievements of international collaboration that was attained beyond borders (Fig. 1 illustrates the usage of HUBzero-based by more than 1,000 scientists from 15 different countries. The science gateways around the globe) and are success stories for 2009 report elucidates that the increased political debate and international usage of science gateway technologies. urgency of global challenges such as climate change, health issues and sustainable energy resources has led to more The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section international collaborations. Further findings include that 3 covers related international organizations and programs. smaller countries tend to collaborate internationally more often SGCI is described in section 4 with a particular focus on the than bigger ones, and the authors refer to literature reviews that international aspects of each service area. Section 5 goes into show that publications with international partners are more detail about ongoing work between SGCI and its international cited than publications with one author or a group of authors counterparts and future work. from one country. This trend has many reasons and does not III. RELATED WORK refer to the quality of publications by single authors but is evident in citation counts. The UK Software Sustainability Institute (UK SSI) [16] was funded in 2010 and serves the UK’s research software For SGCI, international research has—besides the big community as well as partners on an international level. Its picture of such collaborations—also very practical aspects. goal is to cultivate better, more sustainable, research software Software solutions already developed in countries outside of to enable world-class research. Its investigations have the US can be also applied in the US if the source code is elucidated that 70% of UK researchers rely on software in their openly accessible and if access technologies and policies for its research [17]. The institute has worked with over 50 projects to usage are aligned. Software frameworks and technologies are directly improve their codes, written over 80 best practices and in general not bound to a location; they can be bound to organized training events to teach over 1,000 learners the hardware requirements or require high-speed networks for basics of software engineering. They have built a platform to efficient and effective use. provide researchers and developers access to the contacts, Despite all the possibilities and opportunities of information and training necessary to develop reliable and international collaborations, there are also challenges. The reproducible research software. Besides UK-based and online established system sciences conference series HICSS (Hawaii activities, the UK SSI organizes a yearly Research Software International Conference on System Sciences) [10], for exam- Engineers Conference open for international participation and ple, for more than 10 years has had a minitrack analyzing and is majorly involved in the organization of further events such discussing the challenges for global virtual teams—not only in as the workshop series Working towards Sustainable Software academia but also in industry and governmental projects [11]. for Science: Practice and Experience (WSSSPE) [18]. Similar They investigate challenges including temporal, cultural, and to the goals for international collaborations of SGCI, they have language differences; diversity in management and work established partnerships in Canada, the US, and European styles; and conflict management. Research recommendations countries. They achieved to be the de facto point of contact for suggest alleviating challenges by increasing the awareness of research software good practice. Science gateways form a sub- these challenges and by training people. While SGCI offers group of research software and SGCI aims at building a long- training and webinars in the context of science gateways with term partnership with the UK SSI. The institutes can consideration of these aspects, it will not offer training on the complement each other with services in the international topic of international collaboration itself. research software and science gateways landscape. The last decade has led to diverse, mature, science-gateway Science gateways are often called Virtual Research frameworks such as HUBzero [12], the Agave Platform [13], Environments (VREs) in Europe and the Horizon 2020 Apache Airavata [14], and Galaxy [15]. Their worldwide usage program regularly announces solicitations calling for projects is an example for the potential of sharing science gateways in the context of VREs in general or dedicated to a certain research domain. For example, VRE4EIC (A Europe-wide interoperable Virtual Research Environment to Empower multidisciplinary research communities and accelerate Innovation and Collaboration) [19] targets key data and software challenges in supporting multidisciplinary data-driven sciences. Its specific objectives include among others:  Increase the VRE usability for multi-disciplinary research;  Increase the deployment of VRE on different research infrastructures by abstracting and reusing building blocks and workflows; Figure 1: Global users of HUBzero-based science  Improve the contextual awareness and interoperability of metadata. gateways 9th International Workshop on Science Gateways (IWSG 2017), 19-21 June 2017 These objectives are well aligned with objectives of SGCI based projects and students and are available for US-based that are concerned with supporting the development of user- communities but not on an international level. The restriction friendly science gateways and reusing existing mature science on national scale results inherently from characteristics of the gateway frameworks. A goal is to partner with the project on funding. Thus, we describe here in detail the three areas that suitable best practices. are available to the international community. ENVRIplus [20] is a Horizon 2020 project “bringing A. Community Engagement and Exchange together Environmental and Earth System Research CEE provides a wide variety of measures to interact with Infrastructures, projects and networks together with technical the SGCI and within the community surrounding science specialist partners to create a more coherent, interdisciplinary gateways. The yearly Gateways conference series succeeds the and interoperable cluster of Environmental Research Infra- successful Gateways Computing Environment (GCE) structures across Europe”. The project published a report with a workshop series and attracted more than 120 participants from vision for a worldwide environmental research infrastructure. the US, Poland, Italy, Mexico and Australia in 2016. It is a The recommendations include topics independent of the re- major event for the community to share experiences, present search domain such as improving interdisciplinary collab- their work, identify new issues and shape future directions of oration, sharing computationally expensive results, data- research in the context of science gateways. It takes place in intensive federation support and software sustainability, which the US and partners with the European workshop series overlap with goals of science gateways The project organizes International Workshop on Science Gateways (IWSG) and and teams up on events for best practices to create environ- International Workshop on Science Gateways–Australia mental research infrastructures and is also a very suitable (IWSG-A) on a yearly journal special issue as well as on potential partner for SGCI to share experiences and best invitations of keynote speakers. practices on software solutions for interdisciplinary research. Besides these science-gateway focused events, SGCI staff Science gateways are an increasingly common component also present and publish at international technology-focused or of funded activities by many agencies in the US. The National domain-focused events, which attract communities on different Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institutes of Health scale, e.g., at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall (NIH) directly mention science gateways in solicitations and meeting with approximately 24,000 participants in 2016, at the roadmaps, [21]; moreover, NIH and Intelligence Advanced Hawaiian International Conference on System Sciences Research Projects Activity (IARPA) also allow for applications (HICSS) with about 1000 participants yearly, or the 2nd requesting funding for international partners. SGCI can offer Personalized Medicine Conference with about 40 participants. all services of the institute to such international collaborations when there is support from a US-based partner. In addition to face-to-face meetings, SGCI features diverse online options for interaction with different levels of IV. SGCI’S CONCEPT FOR INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATIONS involvement. Regular newsletters inform not only about news SGCI consists of five service areas, which closely interact regarding the activities and products of the SGCI but about and complement each other to serve the communities tailored related events, publications and achievements of science to their needs and increase the sustainability and reusability of gateway projects. The monthly webinar provides the science gateways. opportunity to present use cases, projects, technologies and/or concepts. Researchers all over the world are also invited to  The Community Engagement and Exchange (CEE) write blog posts, offer their project as a case study, and brings the community together through interaction and advertise related events. SGCI continuously works on best professional development. practices for various topics related to science gateways, especially in the Incubator and Extended Developer Support  The Scientific Software Collaborative (SSC) leverages service areas. We aim for international contributions that and promotes existing investments in gateway consider the distinct science gateway landscapes in different technologies. countries and on different continents with regard to the  The Incubator team provides expertise and guidance for variation of technologies, policies and funding opportunities. the science gateway lifecycle. Additionally, researchers can also request webinars on diverse topics or meetings led by SGCI staff to be presented at their  The Extended Developer Support (EDS) enhances home institutions. For example, they can ask for a webinar on gateways through technical help from experienced software development sustainability via on-campus groups. gateway developers. The partner program has been launched to build long-term  The Workforce Development nurtures the next partnerships between organizations, projects and the SGCI to generation of science gateways users and developers. benefit the community in multiple ways: CEE, SSC and the Incubator present near term targets for  Leverage the expertise of complementary organizations engaging and supporting international collaborations on to support and advise the gateway community in the science gateways via SGCI. These are the areas that can be best possible way. offered to the international community, while the EDS and Workforce Development are actively supporting various US- 9th International Workshop on Science Gateways (IWSG 2017), 19-21 June 2017  Exchange existing services to provide the best array of the preferred expression or their locations. services to gateway clients. B. Scientific Software Collaborative  Cross-promote resources and services offered by SGCI The Scientific Software Collaborative (SSC) area of the and partners. Institute has the goal of engaging a variety of gateway  Provide a streamlined process to access resources and developers—from researchers looking for end-to-end solutions services provided by a partner. to developers looking to contribute their software services—by promoting gateways, software and services available. The SSC  As appropriate, provide student exchange or internship will provide researchers the information they need to build opportunities. their gateway using existing software or by leveraging existing gateways, enabling researchers to focus their efforts on their Interested organizations collaboratively develop a Letter of domain-specific challenges instead of the technology needed to Commitment that includes background information on the get there. organization and a description of how the organization’s services/resources are augmented by involvement with SGCI The SSC will deliver software solutions that facilitate the as well as how it is anticipated that SGCI will benefit from the following: partnership. While this program has started only recently, we plan to immediately reach out to our international collaborators  End-to-end solutions to help developers from various of many years to form partnerships. scientific domains who want an “out-of-the-box” hosted gateway for their application, even if they have minimal With this mixture of the outreach and interaction measures IT support. we aim at reaching out to and growing the existing science gateways community. Researchers might work with or develop  A “use-what-you-need” approach to help developers science gateways without being aware of that their web-based discover available software and services to create their solution is a science gateway and that there are more solutions own customized gateways. and a vibrant community that could be beneficial for their own  Software for developers who want to actively extend research. One of the reasons is that various terms are used to open-source gateway software to meet their needs label science gateways, such as virtual research environments in Europe or virtual labs in Australia. While we do not try to  Discovery of gateways for those looking to find existing unify the various labels, we strive for increasing the visibility gateways they might want to use or collaborate with. of research and developments in the context of science One of the initial milestones of the SSC will be to deliver a gateways and bring the communities together irrespective of community Gateway Catalog. The Gateway Catalog is a Figure 2: Prototype of the Gateway Catalog 9th International Workshop on Science Gateways (IWSG 2017), 19-21 June 2017 publicly available, easy-to-use listing of available science identified areas where a gateway effort needs help. For gateways. The initial catalog will be seeded with entries the gateways in the planning stage, this may take the form of Institute is familiar with and will continue to grow with helping to create a credible case for the value of the proposed community contribution. The community, including gateway to its likely stakeholders. For gateways that are international gateways, will have the ability to create accounts already operational, it may take the form of examining and add their gateway to the listing. The Gateway Catalog alternative ways they may measure impact to demonstrate to includes basic information such as name, description, URL, but funders and other stakeholders the value that they bring to their also more in depth metadata such as language used to build the community. For gateways in the mid-to-late funding stage, it gateway, frameworks, documentation and more. This catalog is may involve helping develop a sustainability strategy. openly accessible and available for international contributions. Future iterations of the catalog will also have an API endpoint While SGCI cannot provide direct to support to specific for automatically sharing and consuming gateway data. The gateway projects based outside the US, our sponsor views catalog team will also look at working with national and international engagement opportunities quite positively and international collaborators to share data in the catalog and encourages ways for us to convey information to and learn consume data with other similar projects. With the changing from groups involved in gateways regardless of the country of landscape and the ever-growing science gateway environment origin. For example, an international group is joining our first researchers aren’t limited to using technologies within their “gateway bootcamp” as observers. Our goal with this borders. Many technology products are open-source and observation is to work with other gateway support available for use. By leveraging SGCI to offer an inclusive organizations as a mutual learning opportunity rather than to environment for promoting gateway projects across borders it help a specific international gateway effort. opens up opportunities for usage from a diverse set of Our expectation therefore is to have a follow-up debrief to participants. An example prototype of the catalog is shown in learn about the gateway-development climate in the observer’s Fig. 2. When the catalog is in production we will engage region, how it differs from our own, and how to adapt our gateway developers from international arenas such as Europe message for international audiences. Given that user bases of and Australia to contribute their gateways to the listing. gateways span national boundaries, this knowledge is impor- As the SSC area continues to expand, we will also be tant in helping gateways understand the implications of some promoting gateway software. We intend to list gateway of their sustainability strategies. Depending on the feedback in frameworks as well as gateway components providing our first session, we may seek to have interested international authentication, information services, workflows, etc. This participants participate as lecturers in future sessions. offers additional opportunities for international collaborators to The Incubator also can offer paid engagements with share software solutions via SSC. The international community international organizations to offer training cohorts in their has an opportunity to collaborate with the SSC area of SGCI in regions and with specific gateway efforts who may benefit various forms as stated above, and the SSC is open to other from the advisory services we offer. Additionally, since the opportunities to collaborate in other ways that advance the Incubator team includes some core SGCI personnel but also software infrastructure of developing science gateways. In independent consultants, those consultants are able to offer addition to being contributors, international opportunities are their services without restriction from our funding agency. available in the form of the affiliates program, which entails a Finally, there are also granting agencies in the US and abroad commitment to support users of their software platforms or that have specific initiatives to foster international components. By having international affiliates become a part of collaboration. Provided that such efforts have a partially US- the program we can leverage the expertise of complementary based team, we are able to offer our services to these efforts. organizations to support and advise the gateway community in the best possible way. Furthermore we can cross-promote V. FIRST STEPS AND FUTURE WORK resources and services to provide the best support to gateway There has been much interest in advancing the progress of clients. science gateways (virtual laboratories, virtual research C. Incubator environments) internationally. The International Coalition of Science Gateways [22] has been proposed as an organization The Incubator is focused on helping people who are at that would provide a framework for organizations, forums and various stages of their gateway lifecycle—ranging from individuals with an interest in international, regional, national, planning through operations—to step back from the effort and cross-institutional, domain-specific, and interdisciplinary view it anew with a different set of eyes that are more focused initiatives in science gateways to exchange information. on the business of gateways than on the technological or Several initial groups have expressed interest in participating. scientific aspects. We accomplish this through two primary These included SGCI (USA), NeCTAR (Australia), NESI activities. The first is a week-long in-person cohort training (New Zealand), Sci-GaIA (Africa), Academia Sinica Grid session called a “gateway bootcamp.” The goals of this session Computing Center (Taiwan), Software Sustainability Institute are to equip participants with that second set of eyes, to (UK), VRE4E1C (Europe), IWSG (Europe), CANARIE establish interpersonal relationships with others in the cohort (Canada), Research Data Canada (Canada), the IEEE Technical engaged in creating gateways, and to familiarize participants Area on Science Gateways (International). First steps included with the in-depth consultations they might seek from the SGCI. drafting a survey paper that would provide an overview of The second is an in-depth consultation to focus on specific 9th International Workshop on Science Gateways (IWSG 2017), 19-21 June 2017 programs internationally, including successes and best ACKNOWLEDGMENTS practices as well as lessons learned. This research is supported by NSF Award Id ACI-1547611. Almost simultaneously in the Research Data Alliance, the Virtual Research Environments Interest Group REFERENCES (https://www.rd-alliance.org/groups/vre-ig.html) was proposed [1] http://sciencegateways.org/ to “bring together those initiatives actively developing VREs, [2] Gesing, S., Wilkins-Diehr, N., Dahan, M., Lawrence, K., Zentner, M., virtual laboratories and science gateways, along with the Pierce, M., Hayden, L.B., and Marru, S. “Science Gateways: The Long representatives of the common infrastructure services and the Road to the Birth of an Institute”. Proc. of HICSS-50 (50th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences), 4-7 January 2017, Hilton researchers seeking to make use of these technologies”. 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