International Science Gateways 2017 Special issue

Technological Advances in Remote Collaborations

“…The biggest concern during the COVID-19 global shutdown was arguably what could be termed the human factor, described variously as lack of connectedness, the need for "real" interactions, and is the main argument for "return to the office" (see next section). There was already a movement towards the formation of global research communities through the rise of collaborative hubs, also known as virtual research environments or science gateways [39]. The idea behind these is to provide a technological infrastructure of shared computational resources: software, data, tools, workflows, HPC access, through a web portal or apps, thus enabling research to a broader scientific community.…”

“…The idea behind these is to provide a technological infrastructure of shared computational resources: software, data, tools, workflows, HPC access, through a web portal or apps, thus enabling research to a broader scientific community. There now exist many well-established communities, as can be seen in the Special Issue on International Science Gateways 2017 [39], and these have proved successful in some disciplines, notably the Galaxy Project [40], started in 2005, which, according to their latest report [41], had "served hundreds of thousands of users, been used in >5700 scientific publications, and provided 500+ developers with a framework provisioning accessible, transparent and reproducible data analysis".…”