Community support in EMBRC

Context of community support in EMBRC

This section outlines the requirements which have been collected from EMBRC on the topic of "Community support" during Task 5.1 of the ENVRIplus project.

A description of EMBRC was presented in General requirements for EMBRC.

Complete EMBRC report, including Community Support requirements, is available at: https://envriplus.manageprojects.com/projects/requirements/notebooks/470/pages/40

Besides, questionnaire answers from EMBRC/St Andrews on Community support is available at: https://envriplus.manageprojects.com/projects/requirements/notebooks/470/pages/40

Summary of EMBRC requirements for community support

Training Requirements

EMBRC is still to implement its e-infrastructure component. The community is considering using the Cloud for at least some of their data, and they are currently reviewing this with ELIXIR through the EMBRIC cluster.

The marine biology community would be interested in courses that introduce state-of-the-art e-infrastructure technology, and one potential topic of interest would be e-infrastructure solutions which can be useful for the building and modification of data workflows. EMBRC could advertise such courses through their European Marine Training Portal , and host them in one of the EMBRC member institutes, or within the EMBRC headquarters in Paris.

Requirements for the Community Support Subsystem

Community support services will become available through an online portal, which is under development. The first part of this portal is the access system, which will be online within the next year.

The users’ activities will be tracked through the access portal, which will record where they are going, what facilities they are using, and the number of requests. To analyse the impact of the infrastructure, the EMBRC head office will in the future analyse resource DOIs, metrics for number of yearly publications and impact factor, and questionnaires submitted by users about their experience with their services, which are all under development.

References:

Detailed requirements

Training Requirements

EMBRC is still to implement its e-infrastructure component. The community are considering using the Cloud for at least some of their data, and they are currently reviewing this with ELIXIR through the EMBRIC cluster. Some of the EMBRC partners are using HPC and cluster computing, but there has not been a decision yet as to whether they would be included in EMBRC.

EMBRC has a community training plan, but it is centred around equipment, platforms, organisms and research techniques, and not around the planned e-infrastructure. It has developed the European Marine Training Portal, which lists all of the available courses in marine biology, offered by EMBRC or other institutions (e.g. Masters and PhD courses, special workshops for microscopy, etc.). The portal can be used to get an overview of available courses, search for courses, and organize a course (set it up, find a venue), and it does not involve e-learning at the moment. EMBRC currently organizes several summer schools for Masters students on marine stations, marine models and how to cultivate them, and specialist training courses within the different member institutes (e.g. in MBA several advanced microscopy and cell physiology courses are available).

The marine biology community would be interested in courses that introduce state-of-the-art e-infrastructure technology, and one potential topic of interest would be e-infrastructure solutions which can be useful for the building and modification of data workflows. EMBRC could advertise such courses through their European Marine Training Portal. They would mostly appeal to bioinformaticians and IT specialists within the EMBRC member institutes, but also to scientists, including PhD students and post-docs. The RI representative considered that e-learning would not be appropriate for such courses, but rather that they should be organized as a 1-3 day workshop within one of the EMBRC member institutes, or within the EMBRC headquarters in Paris.

Requirements for the Community Support Subsystem

Community support services will become available through an online portal, which is under development. The first part of this portal is the access system, which will be online within the next year. The online portal is developed in house by one of the EMBRC partners, by learning from some of the EMBRC member labs, which have already developed such systems.

In EMBRC, the users’ activities will be tracked through the access portal, which will record where they are going, what facilities they are using, and the number of requests. To evaluate the impact of the infrastructure, EMBRC is developing a system for allocating DOIs for its various resources (culture collections, fish, DNA samples, data, etc) and metrics which can indicate the number of yearly publications involving these resources and their average impact factor. Users will also be asked to fill in a questionnaire after they have used the facilities to provide feedback and suggestions for improving the services. All of these activities are/will be analysed through the EMBRC head office.

In what concerns non-functional requirements, EMBRC does not have any licencing requirements, and performance is not yet a consideration, not having the e-infrastructure in place. In terms of privacy, the EMBRC does not retain intellectual property rights, unless it is involved in an industrial R&D project. Data is usually deposited into a public database, this only being different for the data produced by the private sector.

Questionnaire answers from EMBRC/St Andrews

1. Training Requirements

a. Do you use or plan to use e-Infrastructure technology?

> No

b. What is your community training plan?

> None

c. Is your community interested in training courses that introduce state-of-the-art e-Infrastructure technology?

> Possibly

d. What topics (related to e-Infrastructure solutions) would your community be interested in?

> Not sure

e. Who would be audience? Please describe their knowledge background of e- Infrastructure technology

> Limited knownledge background

f. What are appropriated methods to deliver this training?

> Unsure

2. Requirements for the Community Support Subsystem:

>we don’t have one

Formalities (who & when)

Go-between	Cristina Adriana Alexandru
RI representative	Nicolas Pade
Period of requirements collection	September-October 2015
Status	finalised