The Future of the SCEC Community Information System

Edric Pauk, Tran T. Huynh, Mei-Hui Su, & Philip J. Maechling

Published August 15, 2019, SCEC Contribution #9797, 2019 SCEC Annual Meeting Poster #305 (PDF)

SCEC provides scientists with collaborative, computing and data management facilities to support research collaborations, project administration, education and outreach programs, and advanced computational science. The SCEC Community Information System (CIS) is a set of tools, processes, conventions, and websites that facilitate information sharing and the preparation of projects, data, and products for wider release. Dissemination can take many forms such as workshops, publications, articles, web pages, and data access sites.

Future development of the SCEC CIS include: (1) measuring usage and impact of research software, (2) persistent digital object identifiers, and (3) enhanced data access tools. First, we will develop better tools to measure the usage and impact of research software in order to increase awareness of SCEC scientific software and its capabilities. Software developers, sponsors, and other decision makers want to determine who uses the software, what problems are solved, and the broad impact of the work. Increasing the user base increases impact and brings collaborators to the project, improving its longevity. Challenges to address include limited tracking data from third-parties like GitHub, determining the best impact metrics, and the need for better documentation, training, and user interfaces. Next, we will work with SCEC researchers to identify and prepare scientific datasets for release, including assigning Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) and acquiring long-term storage. Datasets that are potentially useful to one or more audiences will be curated, stored with well-defined schemes, and have robust metadata. Data tagged with permanent identifiers also require long-term storage to ensure their continued availability. Commercial options can be costly thus other options will be explored. Finally, we will work towards creating data access tools that allow datasets to be intelligently searched, visualized, and useful data subsets extracted. Even within the same domain, data formats, inputs and outputs can vary. We will consider standardization strategies, including creating data schema and metadata standards right from the start, when the data is being generated or collected.

Our goal is to adapt the SCEC Community Information System to meet the evolving needs of the SCEC community, providing better insights and improved access to data and software to support advances in earthquake science.

Citation
Pauk, E., Huynh, T. T., Su, M., & Maechling, P. J. (2019, 08). The Future of the SCEC Community Information System. Poster Presentation at 2019 SCEC Annual Meeting.

Related Projects & Working Groups
Communication, Education, and Outreach (CEO)