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DI4R 2016: The meeting place for e-Infrastructures and their users

Digital Infrastructures for Research (DI4R), 28-30 September 2016, Krakow
OpenAIRE is joining forces with Europe's other leading e-infrastructures to invite all researchers, developers, data practitioners and service providers to the DI4R event to brainstorm and find practical solutions together to support and facilitate science and research across Europe.

Why hold a joint e-Infrastructure user event?
As Europe’s e-Infrastructure for Open Access and Open Science, it’s vital that OpenAIRE reaches out as far as possible to our user base to ensure awareness of our services and to listen to our users' needs. Joining forces with other e-Infrastructures like EGI, EUDAT, GÉANT and RDA enables us to host a truly international user event which allows us to reach beyond our traditional user communities. A joint user event hosted by these e-Infrastructures is also a great idea since our users are often the same in different contexts and our concerns are often aligned in ways narrow or broad. It is very important that we work well together to best serve the needs of our users – this will only become more so as the European Open Science Cloud becomes a reality.

Who should attend DI4R?
DI4R is for researchers from all disciplines who rely upon digital infrastructures for their research, as well as for representatives of research infrastructures and funding organizations. The event is designed with research communities in mind and aims to foster broader adoption of digital infrastructure services and promote user-driven innovation. For researchers, the event is an opportunity to discuss and present your work to all leading e-infrastructures and projects. If you are a service provider, the conference is a chance to hear about what researchers need, brainstorm new services and align strategies with your peers. DI4R 2016 will bring together researchers and infrastructure providers to increase awareness of e-Infrastructure services, but perhaps most importantly, to ensure that researchers can influence the way those services develop in the future.

What is the focus of DI4R?
As a meeting place for service providers and end-users, DI4R’s programme will ensure plenty of time for networking, collaboration and brainstorming. Complemented by training workshops, demonstrations and plenary sessions, the main programme is structured around four main tracks:

Challenges facing users and service providers: emerging needs of research collaborations, the requirements of added value thematic services and the computing needs of data-driven science. (example topics: Working with the research community and industry, community engagement, computing platforms (cloud, HTC, HPC), thematic platforms (science gateways, Virtual Research Environments)
Services enabling research: services and frameworks needed to enable researchers to securely collaborate and share resources in a federated environment combining geographically distributed services from multiple providers and further the opportunities of Open Science. Submissions for this track should highlight benefits and challenges as seen by researchers when using existing frameworks or present ideas to address the future challenges.
A changing environment, changing research: The environment in which research is conducted, and digital infrastructures operate, is changing rapidly. Access and provisioning of services require clear governance, engagement rules, policies and funding models. Submissions should focus on the barriers, opportunities and changes in this environment in order to address the non-technical pressures, for example social, financial, legal and policy that influence the present and future opportunities.
Working with data: requirements of data-driven science and the solutions for finding, accessing, integrating and reusing research data. Papers that highlight requirements and opportunities for a seamless usage of digital infrastructures for data management, storage and curation as well as for linking and publishing all forms of research objects like data, software, tools, pipelines and publications would be particularly topical.

What will be the most important outcome of DI4R?The most important outcome of DI4R for OpenAIRE – in addition to awareness raising of our Open Science services – will be the new knowledge and ideas our users give us for the future development of our services. DI4R will be a meeting place in which our users will be able to openly discuss their needs and problems in order to help us continue to create sustainable, effective services that researchers and others really want and need.