Collaborative Research: Conceptualizing an Institute for Empowering Long Tail Research

合作研究：构想一个促进长尾研究的研究所

• 批准号: 1216754
• 负责人: Christine Borgman
• 金额: $ 5万
• 依托单位: University of California-Los Angeles
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2012-10-01 至 2014-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1216754&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Conceptualizing; Institute; Empowering

The majority of NSF-funded research occurs in small and medium-sized laboratories (SMLs) that often comprise a single PI and a few students and postdocs. For these small teams, the growing importance of cyberinfrastructure and its applications in discovery and innovation is as much problem as opportunity. With limited resources and expertise, even simple data discovery, collection, analysis, management, and sharing tasks are difficult. An unfortunate consequence is that in this "long tail" of science, modern computational methods often are not exploited, much valuable data goes unshared, and too much time is consumed by routine tasks. To date, research investments in science cyberinfrastructure have disproportionately emphasized big science projects, providing tools for use by IT staff and technology savvy researchers rather than complete applications consumable by end users. This project's goal is to lay a foundation for a more balanced research agenda by focusing exclusively on the needs of SMLs.This Software Institute Conceptualization project aims to determine whether these obstacles to discovery and innovation can be overcome via the use of software as a service (SaaS) methods. Such methods have proven immensely effective for small and medium businesses due to their ability to deliver advanced capabilities while streamlining the user experience and achieving economies of scale. To determine whether similar benefits can apply for SMLs, the project team will engage with multiple science communities to identify science practices, match science practices against candidate SaaS offerings, and evaluate business models that could permit sustainable development of those offerings. The outcome of this process is intended to be a compelling and competitive strategic plan for an NSF Software Innovation and Sustainability Institute that both meets immediate needs of the initial science communities and provides a basis for a new, more cost-effective method of addressing cyberinfrastructure needs across all NSF directorates.

大多数由NSF资助的研究发生在中小型实验室（SML）中，通常构成单个PI和一些学生和博士后。对于这些小型团队而言，网络基础设施的重要性及其在发现和创新中的应用与机会一样多。由于资源和专业知识有限，甚至简单的数据发现，收集，分析，管理和共享任务都很困难。不幸的结果是，在科学的“长尾巴”中，现代计算方法通常不会被利用，有价值的数据毫无共识，并且日常任务会消耗太多时间。迄今为止，科学网络基础设施的研究投资不成比例地强调了大型科学项目，提供了IT员工和精通技术的研究人员使用的工具，而不是最终用户可消耗的完整应用程序。该项目的目标是通过专门关注SML的需求来为更平衡的研究议程奠定基础。该软件研究所的概念化项目旨在确定是否可以通过使用软件作为服务来克服这些发现和创新的障碍（ SaaS）方法。由于它们能够提供高级功能，同时简化了用户体验并实现规模经济，因此事实证明，这种方法对中小型企业非常有效。为了确定类似的福利是否可以适用于SML，项目团队将与多个科学社区互动，以确定科学实践，与候选人SaaS产品相匹配，并评估可以允许这些产品可持续发展的商业模式。这一过程的结果旨在成为NSF软件创新和可持续发展研究所的一个引人入胜且具有竞争力的战略计划，该计划都满足了初始科学社区的直接需求，并为解决Cyber​​infrastructure需求的新的，更具成本效益的方法提供了基础在所有NSF董事会中。