Setting the Framework of E-Collaboration for E-Science

Collaboration for e-science, namely executing experiments in a cooperative way by sharing data, tools, and expertise towards a common scientific goal, is becoming more and more appealing in a context like the scientific community. In such a context, a critical mass is needed to address very important and complex new questions arising because of the increasing availability of experimental data made possible by continuous technological achievements. An effective collaboration can be set in place by using the increasing empowerment of the Internet to perform such distributed laboratory. By designing a lab environment able to involve accredited actors, public research centers could benefit from technologies and tools, and could become the first promoters and the key players of collaboration initiatives. Moreover, a possible interest by private actors in adhering to such labs should be stimulated in a proactive way by contracting the mutual beneficial and burdens in such a way that both kinds of actors, as well as the civil society (which eventually funds these initiatives) could all take advantage of such arrangements. In addition, privacy concerns that could arise in this type of environment are instead easily granted under appropriate rules that leave public-only scientific data, while keeping both individual and sensitive data and information protected by copyright reserved. In order to present such initiative as attractive for potential actors, the needed technological tools and applications should be presented as a minimal and nonintrusive tool suite for organizations. To this aim, the technology of Web services (Hey & Fox, 2005) proves very effective, in that the code to be installed at local sites is minimal, easily installable, and easily invoked through a peer-to-peer paradigm. Standard tools coming with a Web service environment should be used, such as XML, UDDI, and WSDL, to exchange data in interoperability environments, to create the services and their public registries, and to communicate in the cooperative environment. Case studies and best practice in the area of information and communication technology (ICT)-supported collaboration (Tilley et al., 2004) show that overall architectures enabling cooperation should be based on the following logical levels: