Materials Data Centre

Now we're getting to the end of the EP2DC project it's a good time to reflect. So here's a brief SWOT analysis....

STRENGTHS
Users, users, users... That's what we're all about! We've been completely focussed on what is useful for our research users, materials scientists in this case. We've consulted with them online, in interviews and meetings. This has been particularly easy as the principal investigator, Philippa Reed, is a materials professor and not an IT person. So she's the one we have to convince with our software!

Teamwork. We've had an awesome team on the project. Tim Austin came up with the idea and has been making sure that we've stayed focussed and been doing plenty of EPrints development. Steven Johnston and Mark Scott have been putting together the back-end data centre and web services, using their years of experience. Seb and Tim M-B in the EPrints Services group have delivered in spades, we expect nothing less from these gurus. Philippa Reed and Kenji Takeda have been managing the project and keeping things moving forwards at a real pace. Great people working together, that's what this project has been all about.

Cashing in on JISC investments. We've been lucky enough to be able to build on other JISC proejcts, notably EPrints and the Materials Data Centre (MDC). We've also benefited from the extensive experience from the Microsoft Institute for HPC.

Interoperability. We love mixing it up! We're using EPrints on Linux and MySQL, talking to SharePoint 2007 on top of SQL Server. It all talks seamlessly over REST and Web Services, SOA really does work.

WEAKNESSES
Short Timescales. With only a few months to complete this project it has been challenging. Once everyone was up to speed and working together, several members of the team were off at JISC and other conferences. All good stuff, and certainly worthwhile, particularly the Microsoft SharePoint and Tech Ed conferences. While this saved development time, it proved tricky to balance everyone's workloads.

Distributed teamwork. The project was carefully split to minimise dependencies, so that work could be carried out by each team member independently. That said, Tim Austin was in Amsterdam, and the rest of the team scattered across the Southampton campus.Projects are  always easier when everyone is in the same room!

Dependencies. With so many interacting components we had to be careful about dependencies. The SOA approach helped this, but we did rely on the Materials Data Centre to be up. This project started a bit late, so the MDC wasn't ready when we wanted it to be. However, with lots of hours (and late nights by Mark!) we managed to catch up.

OPPORTUNITIES
Data deluge. This project is really just the tip of the iceberg for managing the data deluge starting to swamp scientists and engineers. By providing linked data, particualrly directly to publications, we can help users manage this brave new world.

New models for research. This project hopes to help develop this new mode of research - linked data and publications. It is part of the Fourth Paradigm vision of the late, great Jim Gray. We really are entering a new era in scientific discovery.

Extensibility. The generic nature of the implementation means that it can be extended to other disciplines, and not just science and engineering.

Protecting research investments. By creating a usable framework for researchers to store and link their data we can help preserve the knowledge gained during years of research. This increases the longevity and usefulness of research, giving better value for money in the long-term, and reducing the danger of duplication by making existing research openly available.

THREATS
Driving uptake. As with any approach, getting users to take it onboard is a challenge. Making it usable is a key enabler, and this is why we are so focussed on what users want. Still, it is a challenge to drive uptake, but one which we are relishing.

Overhead for users. Adding the feature to include data with EPrints uploads is great, but adds additional steps to the process. This may be off=putting for users, as they are busy and just want to get on with their research. We've therefore focussed on making it as painless as possible, and minimise the overhead to users.

Federated security. To make the system usable we need to have seamless, single-sign-on. More difficult is the federated security we need to introduce so that the back-end services can talk to each other securely. This is a classic internet federated security problem. While we have not implemented a full, elegant solution, we now know how to do this :)

Policy barriers. Technology is one thing, but policies are another. We believe we have implemetned a very usable system. However, organisational policies must be defined before wider uptake, particularly regarding data access and ownership. As time goes on and the idea of sharing data becomes more accepted, we are optimistic that policies will modernise to allow this.

Our project review meeting today was great in pinning down the final tasks to complete the project. We're finishing off the MDC back-end and refining the front-end with end-user reviews. On the final stretch with the finish line in sight!!!